America Is No Longer a “Nation of Joiners.” We Are a Nation of Followers
Research shows people don’t equate fame with success. Yet fame is society’s most dangerous collective illusion.
When the French philosopher Alex Tocqueville arrived in America in the early 1830s, he noticed something strange. Unlike Europe, Americans had a bewildering number of associations, and they “applied this powerful means of action to the greatest variety of objectives.”
From Tocqueville’s essays, America became known as “a nation of joiners.”
Today, Americans have replaced that fundamental tenet of democracy — the act of assembly — with online communities. Benjamin Franklin’s Junto Club, Toastmasters, 4-H clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and vital civic associations have been supplanted by Reddit, Twitter bubbles, Facebook groups, and the ironically named, Discord.
One could argue that online communities build connections, but they are fundamentally different.
First, there is the internet’s monster under the bed — anonymity. Now, tyrants bully and abuse without repercussions. Not so in nineteenth-century America. In 1856, when Democrat Preston Burks disagreed with Republican Charles Sumner, he showed his disapproval by bludgeoning him with his walking cane on the floor of the State Senate. Trolls, take note.
But at least in the good ole days, humans debated with humans. If you think you are having your online squabble with a real person, think again. A 2018 NIH study found that 19% of our online interactions are with bots. That number is probably much higher now.
Another obvious downside to technology is speed. In the nineteenth century, it took days and weeks for opinions to spread. In online communities, misinformation spreads in minutes.
But most dangerously, associations once connected people with differing opinions to debate and reach a consensus. Today, online communities have become echo chambers to reinforce biases.
Author and researcher Todd Rose refers to this dangerous ideology as a collective illusion. In his book, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, he defines a collective illusion as;
“a situation where most people in a group go along with an opinion they don’t agree with, simply because they incorrectly believe that the majority also agrees with it.”
In other words, America is no longer a nation of joiners. We are a nation of followers.
In researching collective illusions, Rose asked a provocative question — do people care about fame as much as they think everyone else cares about fame?
His exhaustive surveys of over 5000 participants found that Americans believed society rated fame as the most important factor in defining success. But when asked how they define personal success, fame came in dead last.¹
Instead, the top three factors that Americans used to define their personal success were education (17.1%), relationships (15.6%), and character (15.4%).
So basically, Americans believe true success is improving your mind, aligning yourself with supportive people, and maintaining those relationships through an honorable character.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Chasing fame certainly doesn’t improve relationships. In one study, researchers examined which traits men and women seek in a partner vs. which traits men and women think the opposite sex wants.
The research found both genders valued trustworthiness, intelligence, and agreeableness. Yet status was ranked high by both men and women for what they thought the opposite sex wanted, even though neither gender valued it.
So if you think a blue check makes you more desirable, think again. It’s just a collective illusion.
More dangerously, collective illusions seed groupthink. We are more likely to adopt an opinion if we think it’s the majority opinion. And in many cases, we have become a deeply divided country that is united on more than we realize.
Part of the problem is the loudest doomsayer voices often speak for the majority. In journalism, the saying “if it bleeds, it leads (ledes)” applies. The more you make people think the sky is falling, the more they will run for your shelter. Consequently, many genocides have been caused by society believing the fears of evil tyrants were the fears of the majority.
But there’s another thorny prick to this problem. Collective illusions have an odious tendency to become a reality over generations. Rose posits that while adults don’t equate fame with success, our children are always watching. Consequently, young adults have become brainwashed to valorize fame.
And this false consensus has hit American children more than other countries.
Case in point. In a 2019 survey, researchers asked children what they want to be when they grow up. In China, the number one answer was an astronaut. In America, it was a YouTube influencer. (This survey explains why China doesn’t promote the same content on its version of TikTok.)
More interestingly, when the researchers asked children how they wanted to “influence” people, they could not answer. In other words, children wanted to be famous for fame’s sake. Gross.
Yet researchers keep pathologizing about why depression rates are rising in young adults. Well, duh. Look at their values — the values WE gave them.
Unfortunately, this desire for fame plays out in two harmful ways.
When fame does not make someone happy, cognitive dissonance sets in, and influencers must grapple with the sad truth that no one cares if they are internet famous. Or their dopamine receptors go on intermittent reward overdrive, and they crave more bogus attention. Rinse and repeat.
Just this week, a young woman disrupted the Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony №5. to have a “full-body” screaming orgasm. That stunt made her internet famous and got her a fair share of followers. Who will outdo her next? Personally, I would like to enjoy the symphony without the melodic hymns of audience members cumming their brains out.
Sadly, fame has become a white rabbit that very few people catch, and the ones that do, don’t get a satisfying feast.
Of course, fame is a tricky subject to dissect because it is often conflated with status. Although healthy people don’t give a shit about someone’s follower count, others attach a false credence to it.
Such was not the case in the pre-modern world. In the past, the focus was the art first, the artist second. Yes, reputation mattered, but Leonardo da Vinci isn’t famous because he worked for the king. He is famous because of what he did for the king.
Today, our society has reversed that value equation. Influencers have replaced artists, and AI is set to deliver the coup de grâce. Once that happens, people will be further admired for who they are and not what they do, even when who they are is a garbage human. Or not even human.
We are all taught to judge someone by their actions in our private lives. So why don’t we follow that rule in the public sphere?
There is an easy solution. Next time you are about to hit that follower button based on someone’s popularity and not their art, take a beat. Dismantling collective illusions begins with the individual.
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(1) Methodology for Success Index Study: Tedd Rose runs the non-partisan think tank group, Populace. Gallop Panel collected the data for this study. The sample size was 5,242 American adults weighted according to gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, and geographical region based on U.S. Census data.
As always, additional sources are available upon request in the comment section.