Ah well. If the absolutely not politised Time magazine has placed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, then the guy you replied to is a dork. No questions asked! ;P
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18646781 and marked it off-topic.
You can argue about the exact selection of people. You can say that Time is 'politicised'. But this is clearly a list of people who are very well known.
It's not embarrassing to admit that you had a blind spot about a particular author, musician or politician. But it is a bit silly to then go on to claim that since you haven't heard about them, they can't be that famous after all.
I think the problem is that the world is much more fragmented than we assume it is.