Mythbusting Clout: Clearing the Social Throat

There is a peculiar word we have come to use for social power.

Clout.

It means influence. Pull. The ability to make things happen because other people regard your participation, approval, money, reputation, or opinion as consequential. The dictionary is perfectly respectable about it. Oxford defines clout as “power and influence,” while also preserving an older meaning: a hard hit.

But the word itself has a marvelous vulgarity.

Historically, clout referred to a patch, piece, lump, or clod; its sense of a blow developed later, and the influence sense arose as a metaphor of force or “punch.”

So perhaps our ears have been trying to tell us something.

CLout.

It sounds less like a noble human attribute than something one coughs up.

And that turns out to be an excellent metaphor for what happens when social recognition becomes confused with human worth.

The First Myth: Clout Is Proof That Someone Matters

No.

Clout is evidence that someone has influence within some social arrangement.

That is considerably less impressive.

Influence is real. Social power is real. Reputation matters. Networks matter. Attention matters. None of this needs to be denied.

The mistake occurs when we quietly perform an illicit conversion:

People pay attention to youtherefore you are importanttherefore you are valuabletherefore your opinions deserve greater weighttherefore you deserve more attention.

Notice the little engine hiding inside that argument.

Attention creates more attention.

The social sciences have studied versions of this mechanism for decades. Research on prestige and social learning shows that humans often use other people's attention, deference, and copying behavior as cues when deciding whom to learn from. That strategy can be useful: direct evaluation of someone's competence is often expensive, whereas observing whom other people already respect can be a shortcut.

Evolution may therefore have given us a very clever shortcut:

“Those people seem to know what they're doing. Watch whom they follow.”

Useful.

But a shortcut is not a revelation.

The fact that people are paying attention to X tells us that people are paying attention to X.

It does not, by itself, establish wisdom, character, competence, beauty, truthfulness, or moral worth.

The shortcut can become the destination.

And that is where the comedy begins.

The Prestige Laundromat

Imagine a person receives attention.

Another person notices.

“People are paying attention to them. They must be important.”

That person pays attention too.

A third person notices that two people are paying attention.

“Apparently everyone important knows this person.”

Now the third person pays attention.

Soon we have:

attention → recognition → deference → more attention → reputation → more deference.

Eventually the original evidence is forgotten.

The social circle now points to itself.

“Why is this person important?”

“Because important people take them seriously.”

“Who are the important people?”

“Those people over there.”

“And why are they important?”

“Well...”

At this point, somebody should probably clear his throat.

AHEM.

We have entered the Prestige Laundromat:

Where social recognition is repeatedly washed, folded, and returned as evidence of intrinsic merit.

The research literature gives us a sober version of this joke. Prestige-biased social learning can cause people to preferentially learn from individuals who receive attention or deference from others. Researchers have also found that prestige cues can influence learning even when those cues are merely indirect signals of who others are attending to.

This makes evolutionary sense.

It also creates an obvious vulnerability:

what if the prestige signal is wrong?

Recent cultural-evolution research explicitly recognizes that prestige bias can sometimes facilitate the spread of maladaptive traits as well as useful ones.

In other words:

Humans evolved a shortcut for finding good teachers.

We then became extremely good at making the shortcut itself look like proof.

The Second Myth: “Important People” Are Important Everywhere

Important to whom?

This question should be printed on a rubber stamp.

IMPORTANT TO WHOM?

Clout is ecological.

A person can possess enormous influence inside one social world and virtually none outside it.

The celebrity of one industry may be unknown in another.

The spiritual teacher revered in one lineage may be irrelevant in another.

The academic whose name opens doors at one university may mean nothing to a machinist trying to repair a broken engine.

The person who commands an enormous online audience may have no special competence whatsoever in the domain about which someone is asking them for advice.

Research on prestige bias itself has emphasized that prestige can be domain-sensitive: people can distinguish between prestige associated with the relevant subject and prestige imported from elsewhere.

This distinction is crucial.

If a renowned surgeon tells you how to perform surgery, their reputation may be highly relevant.

If that same surgeon tells you which ancient civilization invented algebra, their surgical reputation should not receive a complimentary passport into the history department.

Yet humans routinely perform this transfer.

Prestige leaks.

Someone becomes impressive in one dimension and suddenly receives a discount on scrutiny everywhere else.

That is one of the great hidden subsidies of clout.

The Clout Halo

Social status doesn't merely affect who gets listened to.

Status can affect what people expect from someone.

Status-characteristics research examines precisely this phenomenon: socially significant status cues can generate expectations about competence, and those expectations can in turn influence interaction and behavior. A meta-analysis by Driskell and Mullen found support for the idea that status affects behavior indirectly through expectations.

This produces a delightful little social trick:

The prestigious person gets more opportunities to demonstrate competence.

More opportunities produce more visible successes.

Those successes reinforce the prestige.

Prestige produces still more opportunities.

And then everybody concludes:

“See? They really are exceptional.”

Perhaps.

But the social system may have helped manufacture the evidence.

This doesn't mean prestigious people are incompetent.

Quite the opposite: prestige can often track genuine competence.

The point is subtler:

A social advantage can become self-reinforcing without being wholly fraudulent.

That's much more interesting than simply declaring the whole thing fake.

The Third Myth: Clout Is Character

This one deserves immediate demolition.

Clout is not character.

A person can have enormous influence and be petty.

A person can be famous and dishonest.

A person can be sexually desirable and cruel.

A person can be wealthy and cowardly.

A person can be brilliant and untrustworthy.

A person can be spiritually prestigious and behave terribly toward people who cannot advance their career.

A person can possess extraordinary charisma while having remarkably little judgment.

The relevant question therefore isn't merely:

“How much power does this person have?”

It is:

“What does this person do with power?”

That is a character question.

And character becomes particularly visible when the prestige machinery stops paying dividends.

How does someone behave toward the person who cannot help them?

How do they respond when contradicted?

What happens when they are wrong?

Can they apologize?

Can they share credit?

Can they tolerate another person's brilliance?

Can they behave decently toward someone whose status is lower?

Can they relinquish advantage?

These questions are much harder to answer with a follower count.

The Fourth Myth: Sex Appeal Is Evidence of Worth

Clout isn't the only social currency that gets mistaken for human value.

Sex appeal performs a similar trick.

Someone is attractive.

People look.

Looking becomes attention.

Attention becomes visibility.

Visibility can become status.

Status can make the person still more attractive.

And suddenly:

“People desire this person”

has somehow mutated into

“This person must be extraordinary.”

Desirability is real.

Beauty is real.

Erotic attraction is real.

But desire is not a moral credential.

Neither is popularity.

Neither is wealth.

Neither is fame.

Neither is intelligence.

The human temptation is to take one kind of advantage and let it colonize our entire evaluation of a person.

The Five-Second Prestige Audit

Before surrendering judgment to somebody's clout, ask:

1. Who is conferring it?

A billion people?

A professional association?

A small clique?

A wealthy patron?

A spiritual lineage?

An algorithm?

A group of people who all know one another?

2. What does that group reward?

Competence?

Beauty?

Money?

Conformity?

Novelty?

Political loyalty?

Networking?

Entertainment?

Credentialing?

Fear?

3. Is the reputation domain-specific?

Does the person actually know this subject?

Or are we importing prestige from somewhere else?

4. What is independently verifiable?

What has the person done?

What can be examined without accepting the reputation first?

5. What happens when the applause stops?

This may be the most revealing question of all.

Remove the audience.

Remove the credentials.

Remove the entourage.

Remove the flattering photographs.

Remove the introductions.

Remove the people saying, “Do you know who this is?”

What remains?

A Better Social Currency

If clout isn't enough, what should we use?

Not another simplistic score.

Rather, a richer moral vocabulary.

Competence: Can you actually do the thing?

Wisdom: Can you recognize what matters and what to do about it?

Character: What do you do when power makes misconduct easy?

Integrity: Does your behavior correspond to your professed values?

Humility: Can reality correct you?

Courage: What happens when doing the right thing costs you?

Reciprocity: Do you contribute to the systems and people from whom you benefit?

Generativity: Do other people become more capable because you were here?

These qualities are less glamorous because they're harder to display.

They are also harder to fake consistently.

The Clout-to-Worth Conversion Is Illegal

Let us therefore establish several new social laws.

10,000 followers ≠ 10,000 units of wisdom.

Three famous friends ≠ three units of competence.

A million views ≠ a million people agreeing with you.

A prestigious invitation ≠ divine certification.

Being desired ≠ being lovable.

Being feared ≠ being respected.

Being respected ≠ being wise.

Being credentialed ≠ being trustworthy.

Being controversial ≠ being courageous.

Being ignored ≠ being worthless.

And:

Being famous for wisdom is not the same thing as being wise.

That last distinction is particularly important because wisdom itself can become a prestige costume.

The robes change.

The machinery doesn't.

The Great Clout Paradox

Here is the uncomfortable conclusion.

Clout can be useful.

We shouldn't pretend otherwise.

Social influence helps people coordinate. Prestige can help learners find competent models. Reputation can reduce uncertainty. Networks can transmit knowledge and opportunity. Human societies would be impossible without systems of trust, recognition, authority, and status.

The problem isn't having clout.

The problem is mistaking clout for the thing it sometimes indicates.

Clout is a signal.

A signal can be informative.

A signal can also be noisy.

A signal can become amplified.

A signal can become detached from its original cause.

And a signal can be gamed.

So perhaps the mature social response isn't:

“Ignore status.”

It is:

“Interrogate status.”

Ask what produced it.

Ask whether it travels.

Ask whether the evidence survives outside the circle that confers it.

Ask what happens when the prestigious person is wrong.

Ask whether their influence produces flourishing or merely more influence.

And above all:

Don't confuse the size of the audience with the quality of the person.

In Defense of Clearing the Throat

Which brings us back to that ridiculous little word.

Clout.

A word descended through meanings involving lumps, patches, and blows; a word whose modern sense invokes force and influence.

It turns out to be almost poetically appropriate.

Because social prestige can accumulate into a lump.

It can become lodged.

It can obstruct judgment.

And sometimes the healthiest thing a culture can do is cough it up.

Not because influence is evil.

Not because successful people are fraudulent.

Not because obscurity is automatically virtuous.

But because human beings deserve better instruments for evaluating one another than the volume of applause surrounding them.

Perhaps the social question of the future should not be:

“How much clout does this person have?”

but:

“What is this person's influence actually good for?”

And perhaps the ultimate prestige test is even simpler:

When nobody is watching, is there still somebody worth being?

CLOUT IS NOT CHARACTER.

CLOUT IS NOT WISDOM.

CLOUT IS NOT WORTH.

Clout is what happens when other people think you have clout.

Now please—

clear your social throat before making any further conclusions.