Influencers are not new, but the harm they’re spreading might be. The concept of influencers — people whose ideas and presence shape how we move within the world — have been around since before Shakespeare. But in the millennia before social media, influencers were celebrities, playwrights, and politicians so far removed from ourselves that their impact was blurred and shadowed by their distance. On the internet, their power is more palpable. Influence and power can create an air of inauthenticity — today’s social media influencers can combat that. “When we think specifically about social media influencers, that [phenomenon] really