[froggo]

The one who has a vast audience yet likely lacks expertise, or the one who is respected in a select audience that is more likely to affect policy?
Who do you think is more important, or more influential?

[Wulfschilde]

It's getting moot since most of the professors clearly wish they were Instagram "Influencers" and the few who will tell inconvenient truths get censored and harassed. I can't even criticize comic book scripts on Reddit without getting banned, we are clearly headed for a period of idiocracy whether the professors prevail or not.

[Unthinking Majority]

The one who has a vast audience yet likely lacks expertise, or the one who is respected in a select audience that is more likely to affect policy?
Who do you think is more important, or more influential?

Jordan Peterson vs Kim Kardashian.

[froggo]

Even if a professor were to become an 'influencer' it is unlikely that they would achieve the status of mega-influencer, say 10million+ followers that i am imagining when it comes to affecting cultural persuasion.
Even such thing as glamorization of elite lifestyles has a role on the mindset of the working class 'dreamers'; also the language and the topics of modern concern are largely shaped by instagram-like devices.
But a professor that is highly esteemed is able to present their ideas more convincingly to not the masses but to the people who are in a position to consider policy, and what do policy-makers listen to more; the will of the masses (unless there are extenuating circumstances such as inclinations towards revolt and hysteria--- and even then, it is easy to curtail and de-escalate these situations) or the conglomerate expertise of academics and those who have gone through the academic processes?
And, even if these professors voices are not the direct voice exerting influence, can they not be traced back to as the nascence of such socially transformative ideas?

[fuser]

I voted Instagram influencer only because this is such a ridiculous pole.

Also you need an other option.

[froggo]

I did at first consider putting an other option, but when i thought about the presence of an other option i suspected most people would select other, because there are situations in which a person can say either one has a field of influence. So I wanted to see what people would say if they had to choose one over the other.

Also, if you thought it was a ridiculous pole, the proper thing to do would be to refrain from voting, because now the results aren't fully representative of people's true opinions, unless some intuition within your subconscious led you to select instagram influencer over influential professor?

[fuser]

Other option is kinda mandatory btw. viewtopic.php?f=44&t=33907

[froggo]

I am glad that you pointed that out fuser, but it is *kinda* mandatory; it says a poll *may* be deleted if it doesn't include an other option.
previously it explains that "No matter how well you think that you have thought out a scenario, there is a good chance that you will have missed one or more perspectives regarding the subject matter"
... the reason i did not include an other option is the complete opposite of the encouragement of an other option.... because my poll is vague and general to begin with, an other option would detract from my desire to see people's vague 'hunches' based on their general impressions. There are TOO many scenarios where one or the other could be considered as 'more important', so I would like each person to take their 'too many scenarios' and with those accounted for still try to answer one of the given options.

I personally found it difficult to answer this question myself, and i resignedly selected one option over the other. It is within that resignation of choice that questions arise, those are the kinds of questions I would like to see asked by people in this thread. The other option would detract from people asking themselves the questions of what causes systemic change or from even wondering about the course of cultural transformation.

Jordan Peterson

I didn't know who that was so i googled his name and when i saw his picture i was like, oh shit, that creepy guy!
He was not who I had in mind when I was thinking of influential professors, I was thinking more along the lines of Chomsky or something; even professors beyond the grave perhaps. But I suppose its not up to me to say who one wishes to consider influential. **edit, upon reading more about him I see that he does in fact have a bit more influence than I had presumed based on the seminar i saw him speaking in. I did not find him charismatic in that one seminar in the slightest, in fact, he was off-putting. But maybe he was just having a bad day. Or does he always seem like he is having a bad day? That there is a well of anger within him? But it is i suppose unfair of me to throw an ad hominem attack against a professor, and not look to what he is saying; but he is a professor who has opted to use the means of social media to convey his message; so in some sense, the way he presents would affect how and who he is influencing.