The Stockholm Syndrome of the Influencers

The substack model is a newsletter (not a classic website), that’s why email subscriptions are so important for this platform. For me, they seem a bit intrusive, like invasion of the inbox every time you say something. I also try to resist links. When I was cleaning out (in progress) my old blogs, link posts seem temporal and unimportant. But let me start a conversation.

The Perils of Audience Capture by Gurwinder is a significant take that makes you think about people and the modern phenomenon differently. I am still thinking about it. So let me think out loud. Say Rabbi Michoel Green, has he been captured by his massive audience? I actually agree with many things he says, but his one dimensioness strikes me as crazy. How could a human talk on one subject all the time? His audience is not some ten people in his shule, ther’re many thousands all over the world who follow him. Same phenomenon with the late Zev Zelenko.

I sometimes wonder how great to be in the bias confirmation business, telling people what they already want to hear. I am on the other hand is cursed with changing people’s mind. But let’s say Jacobson brothers or Shais Taub, have they been transformed by the demands of their listeners as Gurwinder writes? Is it crazy to think that Ramash “the influencer”, was transformed into the meshichist expectation of his own Hasidim? Subconsciously? Especially in his later years, when the human identity becomes blurry? I think this phenomenon allows you to look at human expression differently. I would say that people always underestimate how they are influenced by others as they articulate what the crowd or individuals expect.

It also gives you an appreciation for doing things l’shmo like this mentalblog.

It’s 17 of Tamuz. There is something else I have in mind. The entire story of the Ukrainian pogroms. Yasha Levine is one of the few who writes about it: My Ukrainian grandma and our lost history of pogroms. People didn’t speak about this. Did the audience expect them to? But there is a problem with Ukrainian Holocaust. Most documents are in Yiddish or Russian. It has been overshadowed by other grandiose tragedies. Yet there are books: Еврейские погромы 1918-1921гг. (I am sick of talking about Scheersons, I think the point has been proven already. What point, that no one cares? No, that doesn’t need proving.) I am thinking of translating some chapters. But it is so wrenchingly horrible, I am afraid I will lose the remnants of my mind.

I wish I could escape to the sweet nostalgia like Etti Hazan, or some nerdiness like Ksovim, but no, not possible, not enough audience to change the identity?