C.C. Monö

When I interviewed people in the early 2000s, many portrayed followers in a negative manner. Words like 'sheep,' 'puppets,' and 'yes-sayers' were used to convey an image of followers as passive, uncritical minions.

Today, many associate followers with individuals engaged on social media platforms. In these settings, followers decide who, when, and how they want to follow. In other words, the power to follow is in the hands of the followers.

Now, imagine what would happen if people were ordered to follow influencers on social media.

First, everyone would realize that the follower count wouldn't truly represent genuine interest in the influencer.

Second, because people wouldn't be following based on interest, their engagement would drop. Just picture a 30-year-old gun-loving biker having his feed overflowing with posts on knitting and crochet. How often do you think he'd log in to his account? In fact, I suspect the overall interest in social media as a whole would plummet.

Third, to get followers to log in and engage in posts, influencers would have to find ways to 'motivate' their followers. This would be next to impossible. How would a knitting expert get a gun-loving biker to start engaging in posts? You can only knit so many gun holsters until you're out of ideas. Besides, the biker is just one follower. The others all have their own interests.

My guess is that this dilemma would give rise to a new industry. Soon, experts would emerge like mushrooms, each promising the moon. Because influencers need their followers, I suspect they'd be willing to enlist these experts.

I'm sure you see where I'm headed with this.

The reason why the term 'follower' is acceptable on social media is its connection to individual freedom.

Following on social media is a choice, not an obligation—at least, not yet. We're free to stop following whenever we please, and because our livelihood isn't influenced by who, when, and how we follow, we can exercise that right whenever we wish.

This behavior resembles what I view as genuine followership in other contexts. Our willingness to follow is driven by our intrinsic interests, which is why I don't use the word 'follower' to describe people in subordinate positions. Things would look very different if we had to follow influencers for a living.

Most people (including scholars) believe that we follow a person because of his or her personality or behaviour. In other words, they believe we follow individuals because of who they (the leaders) are.  According to my findings, this is a myth.

As we discussed previously, we follow those we believe are best suited to help us reach a goal or solve a task. It would be ineffective, and frankly quite stupid, for a group of people to follow a single individual all the time. Especially if the only reason we followed was that a person was charismatic, inspiring, or what have you.

Instead, we follow different people depending on what we want to achieve. We don’t follow a person because of his or her personality or behaviour. Rather we follow because of what we believe a person can do for us. The only reason we follow someone else is that we want to achieve something.  Put differently – different needs require different leaders.

More videos on Youtube