Did Socrates Try To Warn Us About Social Media Influencers?

How Plato's philosophy can be applied to today's hyper-digital and hyper-artificial world.

Being an undergraduate student, I’ve realized that if I ever want to pursue graduate school within the realm of philosophy, I’ll eventually have to synthesize my own ideas and theories. The transition from learning and studying others as an undergraduate student to eventually making my own intellectual contributions to academia is something that I’m definitely looking forward to.

I’m bringing this up because today’s post will be a bit different from my usual ones. In this post, rather than solely analyzing the ideas of other philosophers, I’ll actually be sharing some of my own observations and ideas. Specifically, I’ll be drawing a connection between some ideas put forth by Socrates (and Plato) over 2000 years ago and our current lives in the modern age. If any of you enjoy today’s post and would like to see more content in the future featuring my own philosophical ideas, be sure to let me know.

Socrates and Plato

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived a little over 2400 years ago. He didn’t produce any surviving written work, so everything that we know about him comes from the works of his followers or students. Most of what we know about Socrates comes from texts which were written by various people, most famously Plato.

Plato was Socrates’ student, and unlike his teacher, Plato conveyed a large portion of his philosophical ideas through written texts. Plato’s philosophical texts were called ‘dialogues’, and he used Socrates as the main character within most of them. While some of them recount what the actual Socrates was like, there’s also a lot of Platonic dialogues in which Plato simply uses Socrates as a character to get his own philosophical ideas across. Due to none of his philosophy being documented by himself, many aspects of Socrates as an individual as well as his philosophy are heavily debated by scholars. In today’s post, we’ll be exploring an interesting part of many Platonic dialogues, and how it may connect with our current lives in the modern age.

Note; I’ll be using the names Plato and Socrates interchangeably, mainly because I’m referring to the character of Socrates as written/described by Plato within his texts. So, in other words, they’re (mostly) Plato’s ideas but conveyed through the character of Socrates.

The Sophists

At the same time that Plato was venturing around around ancient Greece, sophists were incredibly popular. Sophists were teachers that specialized in subjects such as rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, music, athletics, and more. They were often hired by wealthy Athenians to teach their children, and were basically like private tutors or teachers. It was common for sophists to claim to be able to teach virtue (excellence), hence why they often taught children. The vast majority of our present-day knowledge about the sophists comes from the written works of their rivals, such as Plato and Aristotle. This makes it hard to formulate an unbiased perspective on what they were truly like, and it’s important to keep this in mind.

Now, Plato wasn’t exactly the fondest of the sophists. He argued that, although they were skilled orators and had a way with words, they didn’t offer true knowledge and instead distributed mere opinion. Plato viewed the sophists as being completely distinct from true philosophers, and argued that they were most definitely not on the same level. Philosophers searched for the truth and had an affinity for wisdom, whereas the sophists were wordsmiths that sold false knowledge, truth, and wisdom. In other words, they were almost a type of ‘fake’ philosophers.

Due to Plato’s view of the sophists, it’s no surprise that Socrates refutes their ideas and often engages in debate with them within many Platonic dialogues. There are cases in which Socrates defends the ideas of the sophists and perhaps even endorses them, but within the vast majority of cases, they are often framed in a negative or semi-negative light.

When I first started diving into Plato’s works, something struck me. I found myself drawing many parallels between the sophists in Platonic dialogues and the social media influencers, celebrities, and motivational speakers of today. It was odd at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Allow me to explain.

Fake Philosophers

Plato viewed the sophist as a sort of pseudo-philosopher. Unlike philosophers such as Socrates, sophists charged for their intellectual services. In fact, they actually charged pretty high fees, which led Plato to view them as greedy and power-hungry rather than being philosophers who were after truth and wisdom. In Plato’s eyes, they pursued power and greed under the guise of philosophy. Check out the following quote from The Sophist, which is a platonic dialogue written around 360 B.C.

"The sophist, it seems, is a hunter after young men with a view to money-making, not for the sake of instruction but for purposes of a sort of mental sport." - Eleatic Stranger, The Sophist

To highlight what he thought of the sophists, check out Plato’s definition of sophistry;

"Sophistry is a productive art, human, of the imitation kind, copy-making, of the appearance-making kind, uninformed and insincere in the form of contrary-speech-producing art." - The Sophist

I found it interesting that Plato’s remarks on the inauthenticity of the sophists could be applied to our current, modern age of social media. In today’s world, social media is all the rage, and along with this social media obsession comes digital celebrities. I find the vast majority (not all!) of these social media ‘influencers’ to be quite artificial, and not communicative of realistic standards, achievements, or goals for their audience. Whether it’s the ‘fitness’ influencers who have young people wishing they had an unhealthily skinny body, or the ‘finance’ influencers who have people wishing that they could make $5,000 a day trading stocks - I think the vast majority of these influencers are built on a foundation of artificiality and inauthenticity, and I think it’s wrong.

Now, I don’t want to claim that all digital celebrities are inauthentic - there’s a great deal of things that I’ve learned through the internet, whether it be through YouTube, Reddit, or other platforms. A common trait amongst these authentic and genuine digital creators that I’ve learnt stuff from, is that they’re not creating content because they’re after money, fame, or any other ‘surface-level’ reason. Instead, they started making content because they’re passionate about whatever their topic of expertise is, and they want to share information and educate others about it. Sure, when they get popular enough, the money probably isn’t something they complain about, but many remain authentic and genuine alongside this growth by not straying away from the values that they started creating content with. This isn’t something isolated to social media and digital content though, as it also applies to a variety of other things, including music, sports, and more.

People love musical artists who don’t let fame and money change their sound, method of creating music, the way they treat their fans, etc. The same goes for sports; we love athletes who don’t let the fame go to their head, who stay genuine to who they were when they entered the league, and who let their points or athletic performance speak for them.

The problem with social media however, is that people can enter into the digital arena with the sole goal of greed and power, similar to the sophists.

For example, if you want to be a professional athlete or a renowned musical artist, you can’t enter into the athletic or musical world with the sole goal of making money and being famous. Sure, you might enjoy these things when they happen, but in order to be a good athlete or musician, you have to love and hone your craft. In other words, the perfection of your craft has to come first, and you have to work to be a really good athlete or musician before you can attain the money and fame that comes with it. You can’t get drafted to the NFL or write a hit song with a sub-par skillset.

With social media however, you can literally start a YouTube channel or an Instagram account with the sole goal of making money and being famous. In the digital world, you don’t have to be an ‘expert’; instead, you just have to be persuasive (similar to being a sophist). This is why we have pseudo-stock market gurus who sell their trading/finance ‘classes’ to naive and desperate people at insane prices. This is also why we have ‘fitness’ influencers or online models who quite literally starve themselves and then go on to preach about fitness and health online. These influencers aren’t skilled stock market traders (in fact, those people typically tend to stay away from the public eye) nor are they realistic beacons of health, rather - they’re skilled orators and rhetoricians who’ve perfected the art of persuasion in pursuit of a materialistic goal.

The sophists weren’t concerned with the truth, and that bothered Plato. Now, I’m not going to get into why being concerned with the truth is important, because that could be an entire post of its own, and also because the value of truth varies from person-to-person. The problem with the digital celebrities of today isn’t even entirely because they’re after money and fame, but rather, the byproduct of this. When someone is fuelled by greed and the desire for power or attention, they will disseminate things that aren’t authentic, truthful, or even real. For digital celebrities, a ‘shortcut’ to fame and money is to tell people what they want to hear, show people what they want to see, and promise people what they want to have. They make things seem easier to attain than they really are. In other words, they distort reality.

People believe them, because trust is in our nature (and that’s not a bad thing), but the problem with this is that it leads to their audience feeling unhappy, unsatisfied, or unworthy. People may blame themselves for their inability to become like the digital influencers online, and this can lead to a myriad of dangerous outcomes. The sad part is, it’s not even their own fault that they can’t be like their favourite influencers, because the influencers themselves are frauds. The byproduct of many influencers taking a ‘shortcut’ to fame and money by presenting their audience with a distorted, untruthful version of reality is that it hurts others, and with virtually everyone using social media nowadays, all of us are being hurt in some way or another.

In Protagoras, Socrates states an interesting reason as to why the sophists can be dangerous. Allow me to illustrate his example in modern terms. When you’re thinking of trying a new restaurant, there’s a variety of ways that you can determine if the restaurant is good or not. You can ask someone who’s gone there for an opinion, you can read their reviews online, and you can even try a small dish to ‘test the waters’ before you go there for an entire dinner service. The same goes for trying to determine the authenticity of a bunch of other things in life, such as using a company’s service, determining a career path, etc.

The problem that Socrates had with the sophists, is that we don’t have a way to verify the authenticity or ‘goodness’ of a sophist before we use his/her services. If a sophist isn’t good, his words can “corrupt” your mind and ways of thinking before you even realize it. There’s no reviews you can read, or friends you can consult, because when you’re dealing with philosophy, information and ways of thinking can corrupt your mind without you even realizing.

“For I tell you there is far more serious risk in the purchase of doctrines than in that of eatables. When you buy victuals and liquors you can carry them off from the dealer or merchant in separate vessels, and before you take them into your body by drinking or eating you can lay them in your house and take the advice of an expert whom you can call in, as to what is fit to eat or drink and what is not, and how much you should take and when; so that in this purchase the risk is not serious.”

“But you cannot carry away doctrines in a separate vessel: you are compelled, when you have handed over the price, to take the doctrine in your very soul by learning it, and so to depart either an injured or a benefited man.” - Socrates in Protagoras, 314a-b

The same critique can be applied to the world of social media. If an influencer isn’t authentic or is spreading harmful ideas, these ideas can infect your mind without you even realizing. There’s no ‘taste test’ or ‘testing of the waters’ you can perform to protect yourself against harmful ideas or persuasive rhetoric. This is why even the brightest of people can fall victim to false reasoning, scams, or could unwaveringly look up to artificial people; because in order to try and truly comprehend an idea, you have to approach it with an open mind, which also leaves you open for epistemic injury.

Now, I don’t know what the solution for this is. Perhaps a good start is awareness; if we’re aware of this, it may help us think twice about this sort of stuff. The parallels between the inauthentic social media ‘influencers’ of today and the sophists of Plato’s time are uncanny yet abundant, but luckily for us, that also means that Plato’s critiques of sophistry hold true today too.

In a digital world where everyone and anyone can be an ‘expert’ in whatever field they choose, it’s important to always put an emphasis on truth, authenticity, and to examine the motives of who we listen to, all which are unfortunately easier said than done.

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