Easy communication making leaders obselete.

Before the dawn of the internet, communicating ideas was much harder. The spoken word was not easily distributable, requiring great infrastructure in either television or radio. This created a barrier to entry, limiting the ability of a “commoner” or someone without capability to appear on TV or radio to spread ideas. Therefore, any person who wanted to bring about prominence to an idea or a movement had to establish themselves as a leader so that they could make avail of media resources. If you had an organization or a group of followers, the media would be willing to give you airtime.

However, with the advent of social media, things have changed intensely. Anyone can express ideas or make a Facebook post and reach people easily. There’s no more need to support someone so that your viewpoint can be expressed; you can express your own views easily. You have incredible agency to do this. Virality has never been easier.

Looking towards a strong leader to promote your ideas is a vestige of times where promotion was not easily accessible. Amassing a following was so much harder before social media; nowadays many people have 500 or so followers on social media and if they make their posts public, it’s super easy for it to be shared.

For instance, just a week or so ago, a group called Canucks Autism Network wished to raise awareness for their cause and were able to use social media to do so. By creating a video, they made go viral, they were able to make a video reach millions. Before the release of their video, they averaged 150 to 200 likes on each post. However, they created a video which they said they’d donate a dollar for every share and immediately people started sharing it. A relative nobody, who would not have had access to the megaphone that is social media, would not have been able to enable and rally others around a cause so effectively before social media.