Cult of Personality and Social Media

From Max Weber's "Charismatic Authority" to Graeme Turner's "Demotic Turn" and beyond

In what must be the most bizarre and unexpected twist of fate during my sixty four trips around the sun, over the past three plus years I have become something of a global micro-celebrity. As this has developed, over time I have sought council and guidance from others with more experience in negotiating the treacherous waters I have been required to navigate. Seasoned media and entertainment experts, broadcasters, security experts, and publishers.

Having neither sought nor anticipated notoriety, I had no formal media training to fall back on, but did have some prior experience from my career in 80’s-2000’s as an academic, when I was in high demand to speak on my work in non-viral genetic therapy and vaccines. Among other things, that earlier experience taught me that I really do not like traveling long distances, that being somewhat “high profile” means that a vocal minority will become jealous, envious, or otherwise resentful and seek to take you down a notch, that the classic five minutes of fame is fleeting and inconsequential, and that you need to protect yourself from predators seeking stolen valor and credit for your contributions. Until my speaking out concerning the COVIDcrisis and bioethics brought me out from the defensive crouch I had developed, the key lessons learned from Washington DC culture were “If they can’t see you, they can’t shoot you”, and “no good deed goes unpunished”. Which lessons allowed me to navigate the biotechnology and medical product development industry as a modest, hardworking and productive consultant. To keep the consulting business going and the revenue flowing (and the horses fed), I had adapted to let the client take the credit for ideas, milestones and achievements, and to “lead from below”.

My primary assets as a consultant were my training, work ethic, experience, past achievements, contact network and above all professional reputation. Which is probably why I was so threatened by the character assassination and defamation that started coming at me in an organized fashion from all angles as I began to speak in opposition to what I was observing. Again and again I was advised that I should just ignore the attacks. It has taken years to build up stronger psychological defenses, but I have had come to terms with the duality of my lifelong efforts to develop a more empathetic personality and the vulnerability to psychologic pain which comes with that.

Many years ago, as a young biotechnology and computer science student, Political Science was my preferred “humanities” electives hangout. One thing that really stuck from that period, amplified by repeated encounters with intellectual predation from high profile “principal investigators” and corporate “bosses”, was to be exceedingly wary of those who actively cultivate a “cult of personality” around themselves. Often such “leaders” feature “dark triad” personality disorder traits; narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. In short, predators on humanity. The bane of my existence, and that of far too many others.

Over the last three years, I found myself propelled into a new role as a niche social media celebrity, with constant demands to join podcasts, travel for speaking engagements, and provide “leadership” to a completely decentralized but growing “resistance movement”. I often discussed my distaste for those around me who were leveraging new found fame for personal advancement, power and money with my informal advisory mentors, as well as my personal fear that I might succumb to the same sins. Again and again, as with the defamation and character assassination, I was basically told to get over it and embrace newfound fame and the cult aspect which came with it. But I have not been able to shake off my discomfort, knowing well that embracing and seeking to further advance and exploit micro-celebrity status can lead down a very short path to selling your soul and corrupting all the good that you seek to do.

The PolySci and Sociology literature concerning those who seek to develop and advance a “cult of personality” around themselves is littered with cautionary tales; warfare, totalitarianism and human suffering. Having invested so much time and effort in building a strong, lifelong loving marriage, and forging the mature adult of my imaginings through all my trials and tribulations, I was certainly not going to throw myself on a bonfire of vanity. Yet still I get advised to not worry about it. So time to look inward and ask what is it that I am so concerned about?

The term “cult of personality” has been defined by the American Psychological Association as “exaggerated devotion to a charismatic political, religious, or other leader, often fomented by authoritarian figures or regimes as a means of maintaining their power. Also called personality cult.” Note the key term here - charismatic. Hold that thought.

Cults of personality are often associated with authoritarian leaders of totalitarian political structures. Examples include Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Kim Jong-Un, are often associated with cults of personality. Leaders of cults of personality often use imagery and the manipulation of mass media to form an exalted, even superhuman, version of their persona in the minds of their followers.

Cult of personality followers accept the leader's persona and authority, which leads to their devotion to the leader and their mission to bring about an imagined future (see: Personality cults in modern politics: cases from Russia and China).

Cults of personality, preference falsification, and the dictator’s dilemma

(a cautionary tale)

Participation in a cult of personality is psychologically costly whenever it involves preference falsification, with the costs varying across individuals. We highlight two characteristics associated with lower individual costs of preference falsification: (i) loyalty to the regime and (ii) unscrupulousness. Different characteristics might serve the regime better in different roles. Using a simple formal screening model, we demonstrate that one’s participation in a cult of personality improves the dictator’s personnel decisions under a wide variety of circumstances. Decisions are most improved when subordinates’ characteristics that better enable cult participation are correspondingly valued by dictators. Dictators who can manipulate the costs that cult participants pay find it easiest to ensure that correspondence.

So what does this have to do with charisma?

Drawing further from “Personality Cults in Modern Politics”:

Most scholarly work on personality cults is based on tripartite classification of authority developed by the famous sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). It has been argued that the leadership systems of the twentieth century which generated personality cults might be seen as embodying what Weber characterized as charismatic authority.

Foreshadowing Murray Rothbard and his seminal work “Anatomy of the State”, according to Weber a state is a "relationship of rule by human beings over human beings, which rests on the legitimate use of violence". This means that for a state to remain, the ruled must submit to the leadership claimed by whoever rules. In Weber's view inner justifications such as people's belief in the existence of a legitimate order in a particular system are the main reasons for obedience, and provide a reliable basis for authority. Political power is considered legitimate when exercised both with a consciousness on the part of the elite that it has a right to govern and with recognition by the ruled of that right.

Weber famously outlined the three ideal types of legitimate authority, whose validity of the claims to rule are based on traditional, legal-rational or charismatic grounds.

• Traditional authority rests on "an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them". The legitimacy of such an authority derives from tradition, habit and cultural beliefs, e.g. the divine rights of a king in monarchies or paternal authority.

• Legal-rational authority is "a rule by virtue of 'legality, by virtue of belief in the validity of legal statute and the appropriate juridical 'competence' founded on rationally devised rules". In such a system, obedience is owed not to a person, but to a set of impersonal principles. Traditionally, the US Constitutional Republic would be one example.

• The basis of charismatic authority is "the entirely personal devotion to, and personal trust in, revelations, heroism, or other qualities of leadership in an individual". The aim of a personality cult is to generate similar attitudes to the leader.

Weber, drawing on Christian theologians, defined charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Weber is not so precise on what gives rise to charisma, asserting that it may be “regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary,” but the effect of charisma is clear: Those with charisma are treated as authorities, and they attract followers.

In a 2018 essay titled “Charisma and seduction”, Vincent Lloyd defines two types of charisma- Authoritarian and Democratic- using examples from classical Athenian history:

In one sense, Socrates was a champion of such a turn away from charisma. He positioned himself against the sophists, who spoke or wrote speeches for the Athenian crowds with the aim of cultivating certain desires and suppressing other desires, advancing the interests of the speaker. With words meant to elicit the emotions and confuse reason, appealing to social conventions and shared raw intuitions, sophists were unconcerned with truth. Socrates urged his interlocutors to preserve their critical capacities in the face of sophists’ attacks, committing themselves to the pursuit of truth beyond social convention, to goodness beyond self-interest, and to beauty beyond titillation.

In another sense, however, Socrates was himself a charismatic authority, using his extraordinary gifts to persuade the Athenians to turn away from false beliefs and false gods. Like the sophists, Socrates began with views commonly held in his community, but unlike them he did not end there. Rather than molding and sating the desires of his audience, Socrates elicited from his interlocutors new desires. Rather than dispensing answers, Socrates invited his interlocutors to interrogate themselves and their worlds. Rather than a slick performer whose words advanced his own interests, Socrates was utterly ordinary, in fact described as ugly, with the juxtaposition of his ordinary appearance and extraordinary critical capacities eliciting from interlocutors a sense that things are more than they appear.

Socrates and the sophists must certainly have been more complicated than this, but they serve as ideal types of two varieties of charisma that ought to be distinguished. Let us call the sophists exemplars of authoritarian charisma and Socrates an exemplar of democratic charisma. Beyond the conditions of an intellectual laboratory, out in the real world, authoritarian and democratic charisma are difficult to disentangle, but this does not mean we should abandon charisma altogether. The intuition that there might be a type of charisma worth seeking out and redeeming is strengthened when we reflect not on the businessman or politician but on that neighbor, aunt, or colleague who we take to be wise. Not wise in the sense of dispensing answers, but wise in the sense of asking the right questions.

Asking the right questions: Democratic charisma. Telling others what and how to think: Totalitarian charisma. For those who have not been following along with my story, I am a lifelong fan and practitioner of the Socratic approach.

While scholarly work regarding the political and sociologic phenomenon of “Cult of Personality” has historically focused on the role of authoritarian leaders of totalitarian regimes and enabling mass media, a new form of this has emerged in the context of Social media.

In “Ordinary People and the Media: the Demotic Turn” Graeme Turner defines and examines the new demotic media, defined as meaning ‘of or for the common people’, a word combining the demos (= people) without the kratos (= rule, strength, power) offered as relating to decentralized democratic media. Turner insists upon a distinction between the two ideas (demos and kratos), arguing that optimistic critiques of the contemporary transformations in alternative media culture have been too quick to assume that increased participation in media production (podcasts, blogs, YouTubers) will correlate with increased power and control by the populace. Indeed, in a number of examples identified by Turner the inverse may be true. This analysis has given rise to new insights in more modern academic analyses of the “Cult of Personality” concept when applied to social media. These ideas are much more relevant to the unease I have felt as I have encountered self-promotional behaviors of some of the COVIDcrisis “resistance” social media activists that I have been dealing with over the last three years, as they seek to increase their personal fame and fortunes by exploiting the situation for clicks, likes, followers, monetization and various product sales promotions.

Weber’s insights into charismatic authority have been brought into the twenty first century by Cocker and Cronin of Lancaster University, UK in a 2017 academic study titled “YouTuber: Unpacking the new cults of personality” What I find particularly insightful and useful in their work are the observations that, 1) in social media-based microcultures, cults of personality are a joint creation of the personality and their followers; 2) how YouTubers (and by extension content creators active on Substack and other alternative media) legitimize their craft through replacing archaic systems of authority with avant-garde systems of representation, including “how followers bask in the reflected glory of YouTubers being on the precipices of revolution and change”; and 3) on a cautionary note, how charisma dissipates when the individual seeks out more permanent and formal structures or when various rules and institutions emerge to guide and determine it.

Although steeped in high academic sociology language, investing time in following their logic and findings is like looking through a microscope at the complex interpersonal interactions involved in modern social media interactions. Sometimes you have to read through slowly and repeatedly to capture the full impact of their insights. And in some cases these can be uncomfortably close to home, like looking into a high resolution makeup mirror that reveals all your imperfections. Personally, I thought the insights worth the effort, but I like an occasional dive into deeper intellectual waters.

In their introduction, Cocker and Cronin begin with a more mass media-centric definition of Cult of Personality:

A cult of personality has traditionally been understood as the outcome of concerted actions and texts across mass media technologies, aggregated propaganda efforts and other macro communications, which work together to ascribe magnetic, reverential and idealized meanings to a single social actor among a greater population. The mediatized production of these traditional cults of personality warrants high levels of interest, discussion and meaning-making among amassed collective audiences which bestow the social actor with powerful, persuasive influence in society at large. The origins of these actors have mainly been restricted to arenas of politics and religion – those institutional fields that have mass reach, ample resources and legitimate power.

YouTuber: Unpacking the new cults of personality; Findings

The charismatic community and the co-construction of a charismatic personality

A resounding message that emerged early in our analysis is the collectively felt sentiment that it is the followers themselves who are not just the recipients, but the custodians, of their favourite YouTubers’ personalities. Without followers’ continued and active social deconstruction and endorsement of their authorial intent, simulacra and self-presentation, YouTubers’ personalities could never be realized and confirmed, thus forever negating the presence and operation of charisma. … Popular YouTubers seem to galvanize interest among consumer audiences largely due to the participatory meaning-making and sense-making around the personal qualities they (choose to) convey through their videos. It is here that personality rather than talent or skill is what initially grabs the attention of followers and must be refracted through a communal process of demotic evaluation.

The relationships between YouTubers’ personalities and audiences’ allegiance are repeatedly articulated, disarticulated and rearticulated. This can be simple, direct and confirmatory. Review of comments tell us the personal qualities of a YouTuber can be read as not really existing on their own, but rather they need to be co-constructed and socially activated by their followers. Followers were observed to engage in play and social interaction with one another through extended conversations punctuated with emoticons and emojis and styled with circumlocution in the comments section of YouTubers’ videos that playfully and performatively discuss, mimic and deliberate a YouTuber’s personalities.

Weber suggests ‘An organized group subject to charismatic authority will be called a charismatic community (Gemeinde). It is based on an emotional form of communal relationship (Vergemeinschaftung). It is within this charismatic community that the YouTuber stands as a kind of cheval glass for the ‘charismatic quality of its members’. However, deeper than Weber’s imaginings of a united ‘gemeinde’ which reflects the glory of its leader, our analysis demonstrates that YouTubers were mainly experienced by their followers as a receptacle or refraction point for collective self-admiration. Rather than pay unilateral homage to their culted figure, followers recognize that they together with their source of admiration are co-constituting and they vocalize consciousness of their own part in the spectacle.

(In the event that there is an) absence of calls to action (by the YouTuber, this) deprives the charismatic community of opportunities for play and participation weakening their felt sense of vergemeinschaftung, thereby eroding the cult of personality. At the frontline of interaction, that is, the comments section, any perceived threat to the charismatic followers’ belief that they really ‘know’ the YouTuber or the sense that they have helped create the YouTuber is observed to result in pseudo-aggressive behavior in the form of ‘venting’ . In the extreme, activities such as wars of words between one another, abusive criticism of the YouTuber and even statements that they will ‘unfollow’ the YouTuber constitute a form of what Weber refers to as a ‘state of a “berserk”’ expressed by and contingent upon ‘spells of maniac passion’.

Unlike the fortress behaviour of traditional figureheads of cults of personality, the sense of ‘copresence’ on YouTube, the space for positive and critical commentary and the greater possibilities for ‘direct para-social contact’ with the YouTuber are critical in building and maintaining charismatic authority and a sense of community.

Creating and institutionalizing new orders

Weber asserts that charismatic individuals characteristically innovate, initiate and reorientate, forcibly bringing about change to existing ways of being or doing: ‘charismatic authority repudiates the past, and is in this sense a specifically revolutionary force’. This is reflected in media reports which describe the new wave of YouTube personalities as revolutionizing the entertainment industry and posing a significant threat to the dominance of traditional mass-media technologies:

Meet the self-made stars who are taking on TV – and winning: The revolution will not be televised but who cares? It’s already online, as a new generation of ‘YouTubers’ threaten traditional TV with their sharp video blogs . . . (Lewis, The Guardian, 2013).

Following Weber, revolutionary ideals can be advocated but also embodied by a charismatic leader whose pursuit of self-serving ends via novel, avant-garde or abstract approaches can weaken archaic systems of authority and in their place establish seemingly exciting and neoteric ways of life. These early content creators ‘represent novel possibilities, do unexpected things, things that can change ideas of what is possible’, similar to the ‘originary charismatic leaders’ . YouTubers have navigated new routes to fame and, by association, followers bask in the reflected glory – prolonging a sense that what they as a community are doing is revolutionary, novel and radical in contrast to the passive audiences of TV before them.

In all cases, the ideas of social reinvention driven by self-made visionaries map on to many of the fundamental visions of Weber held for charismatic leadership whereby he imagines that ‘in a revolutionary and sovereign manner, charismatic domination transforms all values and breaks all traditional and rational norms’ . It is with this necessity to destabilize the existing marketplace orders and bring about neoteric systems and norms that charismatic authority comes with its own natural instability and impermanence that brings us to consider the third and final part of our analysis: the finite appeal of YouTubers.

Finite appeal: The fading and routinization of charisma

Weber is keen to articulate that ‘in its pure form, charismatic authority may be said to exist only in statu nascendi (the state of being born or just emerging). It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized, or a combination of both’. Our analysis is consistent with the transitory flux of charismatic authority as we found that once the task of creating and institutionalizing new orders has been accomplished, quite often charisma can fade or become routinized. Charisma dissipates when the individual seeks out more permanent and formal structures or when various rules and institutions emerge to guide it. In the case of this study, a whole industry has cohered around YouTubers ‘from talent agencies like Gleam to multichannel networks like BroadbandTV, Maker Studios and Fullscreen that sign up YouTubers and devise new shows and commercial deals for them’. Many of the more popular YouTubers have been able to capitalize on their popularity, routinize their broadcasts and generate large amounts of capital through selling merchandise and promoting products and brands. There is also a ‘growing sense of commercialization’ evident on the platform with YouTubers’ videos becoming more ‘polished’ with many opting to become a ‘YouTube partner’ allowing advertisements shown alongside their videos. However, the commercialization of their personality and the routinization of their content are a double edge sword, it does not just stabilize and guarantee their outputs for the charismatic community but also brings with it the stifling and impersonal bureaucracies and rationalities of commerce that consumers naturally try to injunct.

(By analyzing specific comments, Cocker and Cronin demonstrate that) in publicly thinking through the commercial side of YouTube, and the professionalization of video blogging demonstrates ‘marketplace metacognition’ defined as ‘awareness individuals have about persuasion techniques, their relevance and effectiveness in convincing them and their own susceptibility to these tactics’. The closing judgement that the whole thing has become ‘generic’ problematizes the neoteric nature of the YouTuber cult of personality and is perhaps the most severe condemnation of YouTubers’ charismatic authority. Generic stands at odds with what Weber considers to be the ‘extraordinary’ nature of charismatic authority which should be ‘sharply opposed to rational, and particularly bureaucratic authority, and to traditional authority’ and is ‘specifically irrational’ by virtue of its incompatibility to extant rules and order.

Social media talent agencies such as Gleam Futures have emerged in order to manage, guide and hegemonize the careers of charismatic personalities who have built significant audiences and influence on YouTube. (The analyzed YouTubers) have all signed to Gleam Futures to help generate publicity and facilitate and negotiate deals with companies/ advertisers. While this has proven to be a financially lucrative move for YouTubers, this has also contributed to the dissipation of the charismatic relationship between them and their original subscribers. Weber asserts that charismatic authority exists ‘outside the realm of everyday routine and the profane sphere’ and in line with the circumvention of charisma by the routine or ‘profane’, a number of original subscribers attribute the loss of appeal and vigor to the institutionalization and commercialization of YouTube, with many YouTubers now seeing the platform as a career choice rather than a hobby. What was once neoteric and frenetic has seemingly become bureaucratized through the contaminating influence of the market and altered the product into a form of labour that is more scripted, managed and commoditized.

Here, the idea of a leader leveraging his or her command over followers as a ‘job’ runs uncomfortably against the grain of Weber’s envisioning of charismatic authority whereby ‘in the pure type, it disdains and repudiates economic exploitation of the gifts of grace as a source of income’. Original subscribers see the commercial aspects of video blogging as spoiling the authenticity or ‘purity’ of the YouTube consumptionscape and their favourite YouTubers. In response, many followers have begun to mobilize their disapproval in the comments section of videos to express their dislike for changes made to the brand. Moreover, some followers have reacted unfavourably to the inclusion of paid-for advertising and product placement in YouTubers’ content.

YouTuber: Unpacking the new cults of personality; Conclusions

Following our analysis, we submit that in consumer culture’s current era of consent, it is the coconstructed and socially activated nature of ‘consumer charisma’ that has allowed YouTubers to enhance their level of authority, disrupt orthodoxies and spark interest in a new order. However, once these new orders have been established, various rules and institutions emerge to guide their influence, ultimately leading to the routinization and fading of charisma.

Our analysis is particularly useful in isolating the points of difference between the role of audience/followers in traditional cults of personality versus the new tribal self-selecting formations. Importantly, the use of ‘new’ and ‘traditional’ is to signify that we cannot assume a stable referent or construct called cult of personality. In this article, we have studied an emergent social phenomenon that shares a lot, but also differs significantly, with an earlier comparable social phenomenon. In traditional formations, followers were subjected to the adulation of culted figures through the anonymous and technocratic efforts of promoters, propagandists and specialists of mass-media technologies, and followers had little involvement in negotiating the imposed personality of these figures. Conversely, personality becomes an item of co-creation in new cults, and adulation becomes elective as contact is made through ostensibly intimate, amateur and do-ityourself (DIY) technologies. This deepens conversation around and provides an alternative explanation to recent conceptualizations of the influence and power of media personalities in marketing scholarship.

Our current analysis implies that there is a more nuanced strain of authority at play among new cults of personality in the online era of consent – one which is not ‘awesome’ or unconditional in so much as it tenuously hinges on followers’ own complicity, collective self-admiration and neoliberal agency. Where Hackley et al. suggest that the mass-media TV personality ‘is a coalescence, a composite, a conflation of primal prototypes’ (2012: 464), we suggest that the YouTuber vlogging personality is a careful and outwardly transparent or (seemingly) authentic refraction, emulation and bastardization of followers’ own sense of self, normalcy and centeredness. The YouTubers authority is not ‘absolute’ or confined to a liminal ritual and unlike traditional cults of personality; both sides of the new cult of personality – the celebrity figure and fan – can subject each other to more or less equal demands creating a zero sum game. Specifically, while followers might be dependent on these celebrities for identity purposes, followers themselves can challenge ‘discursive and productive monopolies’ and ‘delegitimize institutional authority’ if they feel these figures or the market itself threaten or destabilize their identity investments. For as much adulation followers have for the cult-like figure, there is an equal measure of frustration and antagonism on reserve if needed.

Our analysis also clarifies and extends insights from recent celebrity studies scholarship such as Smith’s theorization of the YouTube persona as ‘self-celebratized’ through conscious appeals to aspects of identity. For Smith (2014, 2016: 272), YouTube celebrities are ‘meta-celebrities’, as they become acutely self-aware of the surrounding conditions of their celebrity persona and knowingly emphasize, or sell, certain qualities of theirs in the content they produce. Our analysis highlights the active role of the audience in this process and argues that for these personal qualities to be realized and confirmed, they need to be endorsed and socially deconstructed by fans or followers. In other words, while Smith accounts for a kind of introspective-performative or meta-conscious ‘cult of the individual’, our Weberian outlook casts attention to the wider social currents of the charismatic community that actualize this cult and receive and promote the longevity of the central personality. Furthermore, the socially activated and co-constructed nature of these new cults of personality helps to accumulate an impassioned audience for the YouTuber but also contributes to the fragility and instability of their charismatic appeal. The self in a digital age is a ‘joint project resulting in an aggregate self that belongs as much to the others who have helped to form it as it does to oneself’.

While viewership metrics indicate bureaucratization and routinization do not appear to be fueling a fall in overall audience numbers that would lead to the ultimate demise of celebrity brands/cult-like appeal, the combination of market-led changes and followers’ subsequent venting and ‘states of berserk’ nevertheless seems to be stimulating the fading of charismatic authority and the dissipation of the charismatic community. This is not to suggest that this will necessarily result in the short-lived, here-today-gone-tomorrow sort of fame typical of Rojek’s (2001) ‘celetoids’. Rather, these YouTubers seem to be migrating further along the continuum from renown towards ‘celebrity status as the level of proximity and interaction between they and their followers diminishes. Our findings also contrast with McQuarrie et al. (2013) who defend commercialization and overt marketing on successful fashion blogs as acceptable proof of bloggers’ taste leadership by their followers. This contrast perhaps owes to a systemic and irreconcilable difference in culture between blogging and vlogging contexts or might hint further at the instability of a referent such as cult of personality and the incongruity and indeterminacy of charismatic authority. For our YouTubers, displays of aesthetic discrimination would nullify the demotic, participatory and ludic co-construction efforts by the charismatic community, and any threat of commercialization of charismatic leaders conflicts with Weber’s cautionary writings that:

Charisma knows no formal and regulated appointment or dismissal, no career, advancement or salary, no supervisory or appeals body, no local or purely technical jurisdiction, and no permanent institutions in the manner of bureaucratic agencies, which are independent of the incumbents and their personal charisma.

In closing, the finite nature of new cults of personality and their spoilage through marketers’ institutional growth efforts implies the need to carefully and responsibly manage the increasing commercialization of the YouTube consumptionscape, as to avoid doing so poses a significant threat to the charismatic appeal and authenticity of many of its cult-like denizens.

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The “Cult of Personality” concerns that have been nagging at me for three years have been grounded in traditional PolySci and Sociology scholarship regarding the likes of Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Kim Jong-Un and the “dark triangle” personality disorder traits commonly seen in many (most?) modern political leaders.

However, just as alternative media is challenging and transforming the ability of modern corporate media to define and control the narrative stream (as well as public perception of endorsed State leaders), the historical concept of “Cult of Personality” as a guiding principle in understanding patterns of top-down coordinated messaging concerning totalitarian society leadership is being transformed by a dynamic and “demotic” process involving co-creation of personality cults surrounding social media “meta-celebrities”. These new “cults” (which may not really fit traditional definitions of a cult) emerge organically from the interaction of alternative media content creators and their followers; each with co-ownership of the resulting “cult of personality” product.

The danger forever lurking within this more modern dynamic transaction is the risk of perceived faithlessness, lack of integrity and genuineness by followers regarding meta-celebrities as the focus of attention transitions to structuring, monetizing and commercializing their newfound fame and following. Charisma dissipates when the individual seeks out more permanent and formal structures or when various rules and institutions emerge to guide and determine it. The result can be rapid diffusion and loss of support by core followers, and written or verbal attacks by disappointed followers acting in ways consistent with what Weber refers to as a ‘state of a “berserk”’ expressed by and contingent upon ‘spells of maniac passion’.

Although social media “cults of personality” are quite different from those traditionally created by mass media to support totalitarian leaders, analyses of this more modern form serves as a warning to us all, for there still be manic dragons, haters, and Trolls lurking therein.

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