{"id":2903,"date":"2011-04-16T03:12:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T03:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=2903"},"modified":"2011-04-16T03:12:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T03:12:03","slug":"the-twisted-reality-of-influence-scoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/the-twisted-reality-of-influence-scoring\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twisted Reality of Influence Scoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

What compels us to believe in something even when we know deep down it is inherently flawed? What emotional need does it fulfill in us that we are willing to set aside our reason and embrace a vision of who we are that is not true or, at the very least, is a murky reflection of real life.<\/p>\n

The current drive to measure influence reminds me very much of Plato\u2019s Theory of Forms from The Republic in which he uses the \u201cAllegory of The Cave\u201d. Through \u201cThe Cave\u201d\u00a0 Plato theorizes the world we believe to be real is in fact illusion. Rather than subjecting you to Plato\u2019s actual works (although I thoroughly encourage it on your own time), I will draw from that information wonder Wikipedia to help provide an understanding of the Allegory of the Cave<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"From Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads \u201cincluding figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials\u201d. The prisoners watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.<\/p>\n

Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.<\/p>\n

Socrates next introduces something new to this scenario. Suppose that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuppose further,\u201d Socrates says, \u201cthat the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn\u2019t he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn\u2019t the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn\u2019t he be distressed and unable to see \u201ceven one of the things now said to be true?\u201d<\/p>\n

So I ask you now, is what you see in front of reality or illusion? Do you really believe that your influence score is a realistic representation of your true influence or simply a distorted reflection on a cave wall?<\/em><\/p>\n

Am I Chained to the Cave Wall?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think what we struggle with most is how inconsequential we really are in the grand scheme of things. We all want to matter of course, but do we really?<\/p>\n

What I have come to recognize is that influence is far more complex than we realize. That its forms, dozens to be precise, all represented by adaptive layers around us (within us really but that\u2019s another post) all fight to control our perception based on our emotional and rational needs at that specific time and for a specific situation. These layers of influence drive how we interpret the world and define our own role within it. I refer to this as an \u201cinfluence persona\u201d.<\/p>\n

An influence persona does two things:<\/p>\n