The Anxiety of Influencers
harpers.org
harpers.org
Would I have traded it to be an influencer if I could have? Shit yeah in a heartbeat. But unfortunately for me no one wanted to watch me gyrate. (That’s unfair, some people probably would have).
That said. Now I’m a fully bald old man (I just turned 36). I’m not as overweight anymore though I could prob lose a couple of pounds. Blood pressure is good, though.
Would I want to be an influencer? Jet set around the world and stay in lavish hotels for free? Have companies throw products at me? Have thousands or millions of people knowing my every move? Have to give a shit if there’s a stain on my shirt? Hell no.
I want to sit here on my porch with my dog and my wife and do my work. Then at the end of the day I want to turn it off and set it aside. Maybe we’ll go hiking.
I know it sounds glamorous and maybe it’s appealing to some people. But man it’s not for me.
When you're 35, 35 feels pretty old compared to the personal status quo.
10 years later is when things grow on your cheeks and forehead (especially if you're pale-skinned) that you can't do anything about short of plastic surgery you totally cannot afford.
I'm mentally consigning this fellow to the second camp and hope he is either a troll or really content with his situation.
What I mean by old is that I don’t “get” a lot of the newer fads these days. Particularly around the social space. Instagram, Snapchat, tik-tok and the newer voice based services just seem so intrusive and crazy to me. And snap and tik-tok are almost seizure inducing with the amount of content just screaming at you.
It’s just not -for- me. And I get that. But I don’t get it :)
That and as someone else said I do wake up with the occasional creaky back. And I’m noticing more and more gray in my beard every few weeks :)
I'm with you regarding the social space though. I don't understand why entertainment appears to consistently trend toward requiring less conscious thought.
The way I see it we've gone from Physical Experience > Word of Mouth / Live Physical Performance > Books / Woodcuts > Newspapers / Pamphlets / Pulp Novels > Radio > Television > Modern Social Media. To be complete, I'd add a branch from Newspapers... > Telegraphy > Telephony > Usenet / BBS > Non-Walled Garden Internet but that is another story and not the mainstream.
The early steps all exhibit ?clear? trade-offs (more reliable information storage and dissemination at the expense of shallower engagement with the information being transferred), but the later stages appear to be reaching the limit of what we can consciously process.
I feel that at some point soon (if not already), the volume of information that can be received will outstrip conscious processing ability. This has a massively negative side effect of limiting human agency which seriously disturbs me.
I don't think the blame is entirely on social media however and because of reasons stated above, suspect the current state of affairs has been brewing at least as long as network television has existed. Possibly into the preceding era of disposable print. Thus, I don't put the problem into a 'kids these days' frame but more of a 'everyone I have known throughout my life' frame.
Granted the income ceiling without adding skills is much lower but I would rather do a crappy job with trash than do a crappy job with consumers any day (and back when I worked such jobs I made that choice).
EDIT: Jesus, this article is the gift that keeps giving:
> Later, when I ask Chase [about the veracity of the video he] explains that the video must be legit because “it’s gotten deleted multiple times off the internet, which is insane.” Epistemologically, this is where we are as a country: when content gets expurgated because of blatant misinformation, it is taken as a sure sign of that source’s truthfulness.
also the whole post apocalyptic vibe is lit:
> It is raining ash while we play basketball.
"Nano" influencers, according to this particular company, are people with 1000-3000 followers, Micro are 1,000-100,000, Macro are 100,000+, etc. Here's another example with slightly different values: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/social-media-influ...
Because this is now big business, I'd expect convergence on a common definition some time relatively soon.
This is not including the important and elusive count of true influence. The basic ways are usually like/bookmark, repost, replies/comments. An overlap can also be if your posts get referenced outside the social media network a lot too.
Counting a couple thousand followers as categorization is meaningless since they could be barely interacting to really interacting. And at such a small follower count, low interaction could mean someone with a couple hundred followers is more of an influencer in terms of literal influence than someone with 10x followers.
Different social media apps and then non social media like blogs or podcasts all have different thresholds for what is considered “big”.
With smaller counts, usually if someone is following 4K and is followed by 3K, they aren’t any more “influential” than an active liked person with a couple hundred followers.
Still not perfect but looking at basic interaction metrics will help a lot more as well: likes/favs/bookmarks, reposts, replies/comments. There are overlapping metrics like embedded or referenced count outside the social media app itself. Add in trajectory, history especially to verify this isn’t a BS blip of bought interactions and followers.
Further than that, getting a general view of the cohort of followers like how many are active, how many have profile pics, how many are bots or only on to market their own stuff, etc
The standard definition is more or less "someone who posts glamorous shots of themselves on social media to build an audience they can influence and then monetize". A non-standard definition would be one which most people would find misleading or not fitting for the term.
I also wonder what the poll looked like, I find it hard to believe people over 30 would want to become influencers unless it was worded something like "Would you like to make millions of dollars if it meant becoming an influencer?"
The difficulty is that it can mean either it's true and the authorities don't want you to know it, or it's false and they don't want you to believe it. Judging information either way based only on it being censored leads to error of two different types. Neither is correct thinking but plenty of people make the opposite mistake of trusting authorities and I think we need both types if we're going to have either. A country full of conformist sheep of any sort would be at risk of some sort of totalitarianism or other political disaster.
In almost 40 years, my heuristic of trusting the government and ignoring anything being sold to me as “THEY don’t want you to know this!!” has worked out really well for me.
Remember when the US government advised people not to wear masks for Covid and social media sites enforced restricting people from talking about it?
Remember when the US invaded Iraq because they saw a chemical weapons site with some kind of decontamination truck circling the yard?
Remember Edward Snowden showing that some spying that conspiracy theorists had believed turned out to be true?
Remember the Glomar Explorer?
Did you trust everything Trump said in his role as president when it conflicted with public opinion that said he was trying to hide something?
Its funny how oblivious pro-censorship people are to the nature, effects, and history of censorship
The author is mistakenly adding the 12% and 11% numbers. The real proportion is around 12% of young people. Given that in the poll, "influencer" is used basically synonymously with "celebrity" (Will Smith is considered an influencer) I'd say this is pretty reasonable actually.
Most of these influencers looked miserable. It seemed like they were having the best times in various exotic locations. In reality, they were all broke. They barely scratched by staying at the cheapest places, eating cheapest foods, etc. They're stressed out trying to get content and followers
They're fake as well. I took some photos of one influencer in the my studio. She posted the photos few weeks later with the location tagged as Bali, NYC, etc. I thought that was funny.
Another, I mentioned to her that I noticed she's using comment pods due to the way some people commented on her posts. I wasn't accusing her, only stated a fact I noticed. She got embarrassed, denied, and acted like she didn't know what a comment pod was. I pushed it a bit more and she relented she was using pods. Why so fake?
I'm glad I'm out of that world. It adds too much stress in your life to produce content, find followers, and to create world where you seem cool and popular when you're not.
Honestly, there's no incentive to stop this type of work. IG wants engagement; comment pods are peak engagement, you've programmed yourself to beat the machine.
Also, I highly doubt any engagement on social media is genuine. Some people go through random profiles and mass like, comment, follow them hoping for reciprocity. There are bots that do that for your from your account. IG frowns upon that. But some bots have gotten sophisticated enough to randomize their likes/comments/etc to look more human. It's all a big game.
Every time I've even gotten a little bit closer to joining some online community, let alone social media, my anxiety spirals and I have severe mental health symptoms. For my own good and my disinterest I keep off of it for now. Honestly HN is as far as I push those limits!
I can't imagine how this could have been though if social media was a constant throughout my childhood and middle school. It was hard enough dealing with the social fallout in my 20s but I felt like I at least had some degree of choice and control and I feel if I had taken it for granted when I was younger I would have had really severe symptoms growing up probably leading to hospitalization.
Obviously the influencers in that article aren't like me in that regard but I was shocked by the 54% of younger people wanting to make money being an influencer comment, wow! And I do think there's a serious exploitative/mental health factor that's not being addressed here. I wonder how this is going to turn out for those kids later in life. I just can't imagine being under the spotlight and dependent on external validation that much.
It’s not just millennial who deal with this. LinkedIn is becoming inescapable… not to mention any advocacy for a “platform” as part of a resume
As an unrelated irony a local meetup.com group focused on Inclusivity now has switched some Facebook video platform...Supposedly you don't have to have a Facebook account but I don't want to give it a try on Linux and all the privacy issues are there :/
Honestly, I think it just seems to most like the current 'easy money' route. I'm in the UK - I can remember reading an alarming statistic 15 or so years ago, in the hey day of "Nuts" and "Zoo" magazine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuts_(magazine)), regarding the number of young girls who wanted to be a Page 3/Topless model when they were old enough. Because at that time, they were always in the red top papers, with footballer boyfriends, etc etc.
In 2021 you can be a no one, spend a few weeks on "Love Island" and end up with a million followers on Instagram. Your feed is then full of expensive clothes and shoes (#gifted), and there's an article every week about how "[name] from [show] gets £xx,xxx for a single Instagram post!"
Why bother working in an office, or building a business, or learning a skill or a trade - when 20 minutes a day of revealing photos can make you more money than your parents earn? (See also: OnlyFans)
Ironically, I think (and the article seems to show) the bulk of the really successful influencers are the ones that treat it like a business and actually work hard at it and creating content.
For whatever evolutionary reason, we are wired to love attention.
I loathe the notion of social media - but I do play music - and I can attest to the fact that time literally stands still when you have an audience's attention, there is nothing like that.
I think this kind of addiction will be up there with nicotene, barbituates, gambling, anorexia etc..
We probably should be having PSAs in school.
But the issue is more problematic because it's not just a 'habit' - some 'side thing' - it's an 'aspiration'.
Since when did everyone want to grow up just to be famous, and basically contribute nothing? We used to regard that attitude with some skepticism. It's as though Paris Hilton then the Kardashians completely just broke them mould. Kids are really open minded to day, and generally 'good' but the upside down value of 'me me me' vs. at least doing something instrumental for the community (aka anything: doctor, carpenter, teacher, soldier, police, social worker, professor etc.) should have us a little worried. Maybe it's just a phase, or a perspective ... but flipping from communitarian values to brazenly self-oriented values is spooky.
I deleted all (most) of my social media because I know very well that I'm part of the consumers if I'm on there at all. And if I'm consuming, then I'm not producing. So I try to focus on producing during my day - work (career), personal projects, working out, working on projects around the house, building/investing in my friendships and relationship.
Sure, I also consume sometimes. But I try to minimize it.
Really? These people are in the entertainment business. All those 6pm eyeballs which used to be on free-to-air TV moved, and the advert money followed them down the narrowcasting rabbithole.
The usual people are looking to extract rent.
When I see the level of delusions on these most unwelcome tiktok ads I get, I need a moment to calm down from laughing.
Stay away from social media as much as you can. I have deleted fb, ig and WhatsApp, life was never better. People get in touch via call or signal, not missing a thing.
TikTok is really the anti-"influencer" platform. It is a very wide, long tail and doesn't seem to concentrate like many other platforms. People seem to be completely ordinary, versus the delusion that Instagram as an example is pitching, of aspirational perfect living.
Algorithmically TikTok seems to assign very little weight to the creator compared to other venues. Single hits that aren't achieved again are common. Versus say Twitter where if someone has a hit, the platform presumes that every tweet from that person is a brilliant insight.
As to the "age bracket", there is no age bracket for TikTok.
That's possible, but for some reason TikTok keeps showing me 16-year-olds livestreaming themselves talking about nothing interesting. I have no idea why TikTok thinks I'd be interested in seeing that, so I've concluded that that's what the platform has an abundance of.
Except you don't have to have any skills.
> delusions
What else would you expect from an advertising company?
My brain feels radically calmer than it did a few years ago. My parents have Instagram accounts. Why?
For example, the tech industry has its share of perennial celebrity conference circuit speakers for <insert tech du jour> who grace stages with hundreds to thousands in attendance, Twitter personalities who have loyal followings for their respective thought leadership, and a reinforcing cycle of one feeding the other. Where are the lines between one form of cultivation of celebrity and another? Can anyone really fault these people, given they're reaping rewards from the persona they've created? If it's easier to raise money or get a job as a recognizable personality than it is by way of other acumen or expertise, then it seems like it might well be a shrewd and wise pursuit. If not necessarily a particularly fulfilling one by other measures.
I think the obvious thing that different about most generic "influencers" is that they are not "thought leaders" in any domain, but generally just famous for their personality, looks, or "precoital" posturing.
Influencers probably don’t have a huge ego. They know what they are and the game they are playing. You don’t often hear about politicians spiraling downward due to their success. They understand the game they play.
In other words, why would a parasite spiral out of control if they deliberately parasitically establish themselves (versus a celebrity who gets there from sheer talent and luck and has no clue what to make of it)?.
Mega church speakers are similar. Nothing about what they do messes with their sleep at night, not an ounce of ‘Is this really who I am?’.
Textbook shamelessness.
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The big problem with this is that everyone in their formative years (sub 30) shares at least one dilemma with Patrick Bateman (and Evelyn for that matter):
Evelyn: Get married. Have a wedding.
Bateman: No, I can't take the time off work.
Evelyn: Your father practically owns the company. You can do anything you like, silly.
Bateman: I don't want to talk about it.
Evelyn: Well, you hate that job anyway. Why don't you just quit? You don't have to work.
Bateman: Because I want...to fit...in.
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Influencers are going to win this fight sadly.
Once it opens up you'll see more annoying ads because most products don't fit well. That said, even car companies are making things a little less 'advertisy'.
The amount of content produced by people in their 30s and (a lot) over is staggering. You can easily spend hours just scrolling the front page and get stuff you like. And you'll never see any one under 20 unless you specifically go look for that stuff and engage with it.
I do see scantily clad people, but they're mostly in their 30s or 40s. =)
The TokTok algorithm is scary good, it makes Youtube and FB suggestion engines look like someone's high-school project...
And that algorithm is very effective. It's like Google in the 2000's: nobody really knows how it works, and so they can't duplicate it.
Many times I've accidentally watched 5-10 seconds of an ad before I figure out it's an actual ad and not user generated content.
For my sins I’ve wasted many an hour on Tiktok and it’s usually funny videos, memes and other mindless content so you’ve obviously not even seen it.
Honestly, people should need a license to comment on the internet nowadays.... Jeez.
https://fee.org/articles/john-b-calhoun-s-mouse-utopia-exper...
"Kessler 1966 only somewhat resembles Calhoun’s results: while Kessler does describe deviant mice behavior driven by density (such as homosexual matings) and high infant mortality/cannibalism, on the other hand, there are no population crashes or cessation of reproduction but stable populations after initial growth, there are no behavioral sinks, any ‘beautiful ones’ or ‘drinkers’ or ‘autistic’ mice are not described as such by Kessler, the mice are healthy overall, and transplanted mice revert"
Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch?
Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...
The people who follow these sorts of TikTok influencers probably don't earn their own money. I guess parents are shelling out big time?
Saturday morning cartoons were invented to sell things to American kids (by way of them begging their parents).
A friend's son, a newly minted teenager a few years back, had a Logan Paul sweatshirt and T-shirt at the top of the birthday wishlist. Never mind that's it's a generic Old Navy casualware with the Logan Paul logo imprinted on it (and marked up accordingly).
Conspicuous consumption has been a thing for ages, and it's always been about presenting an image as having enough disposable income to be able to buy these sorts of things. The fact that some kids have parents who can afford to lavish this stuff on them only adds to the mystique.
I'd argue that it's also inaccurate to characterize this as just a kids thing. Plenty of people my age and older dump money into brands like Rolex and Mercedes. The main difference I personally see is that the price tags are even higher, and the brands themselves turn over at a slower pace.
Also, poor people aren't buying Lambos and crashing them.
source? no, seriously. All the marketing I see for luxury products and more generally point to yes, rich people are exactly as suceptible to advertising to poor people, if not more so due to having a greater share of disposable income.
I think you only have to look at the truly high-end luxury market to see that that's not true. A _staggering_ amount is spent on absurd products that only multi-millionaires can afford. And they've very much doing it to one-up the other multi-millionaires.
The likes of watches that cost tens of thousands and cars that cost hundreds of thousands are generally actually-wealthy-person territory, say.
And it’s an industry that is deeply dependent on advertising to maintain brand awareness and segment the market. All fried chicken tastes basically the same, so customers choose stores based on brand attributes.
Are you a Popeyes, KFC, or Chick-fil-A kind of person? Influencer marketing helps you figure it out and remember which place is the most desirable for you.
This sort of thing works on many people, but teenagers are especially susceptible to it.
How many places have you had fried chicken in?
Yes, there’s bad fried chicken and good fried chicken. But when you’re hungry cruising down the commercial strip, there may be two national brands you need to quickly choose from. One of those brands comes out on top because their millions of ad spend got you in there once or twice and now they’re you’re favorite.
Source: we got chick-fil-a curbside many Saturdays last year but at least two other fried chicken places are closer and we generally eat much healthier food.
Just sticking to a single brand, KFC in China uses a lot of red pepper. KFC in the US doesn't.
What I don't understand is that we, as a society, allow it.
If you look online, you'll also find baby naming websites that e.g recommend your kid to be named like a Disney comic figure.
I can't pinpoint, of course, that this their motivation, but to me it'd make sense.
This is where the race to the emotional rock bottom starts. What if those influencers become irrelevant in 10 years time and are replaced by another generation?
The key here is to expand to other ventures. The ones who stay on the same platform for years will gradually become irrelevant.
Companies will trade for a younger, cheaper model just like your mustang driving Weekend Dad did
Hell, back in the times of Motown they made the child stars go to school. This is in some ways less organized than, but also less moral than, the music business and the film industry.
And that takes some DOING, to be worse than the music business and the film industry. I think it's the decentralization that does it: platforms that are very algorithmic, distributed, with nobody to claim responsibility for anything.
In the absence of oversight or obvious control we're supposed to see the true nature of what all this stuff becomes when it's free of top-down control.
We are, and it's Lord of the Flies, but for celebrity children. It's not far off child abuse, but with a nice little disconnect between what happens and how the situation's created.
These kids aren't the product, they're the Soylent Green. They're there to die for the algorithm.
Or maybe enough money (if they are wise, or their parents are) to dampen the effects of the inevitable transition.
You'll get the occasional one who's bright enough to sock money away secretly (from what little I understand, the rapper Chamillionaire was like this?) and pivot into being one of the exploiters with age and maturity, or just be able to make a graceful exit. The thing is, these kids are meant to LOOK like your classic MC Hammer, acting like lottery winners and living large. To figure out that you have to fake that while secretly being a bit cleverer, and pull it off, is impressively shrewd, and I don't think the system selects for it. The system is not assigning extra points for wise.
I would add that a systemic side-benefit to the group form seen here and in K-Pop is that it's easier to swap out kids and discard them, where in a more isolated celebrity model there's more of an incongruity behind building up a star only to then drop 'em and present a different, younger star to replace them. In a group house it's the house that is the star and it's easier to drop a kid.
At least toilet paper serves a useful function.
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a 1973 book by Harold Bloom.
It's a values thing -- I learned from my parents and grandparents to think futuristically, to get value by creating value, to be suspicious of the free lunch, to not orient my sense of self too much around what others around me are thinking and doing.
This set of thinking prevents me from being interested in being an influencer, which is the same thing that kept me from being sucked into the dot-com boom and bust, from getting excited about crypto, from being sucked into the ebbs and flows of caring about what twitter cares about, etc.
There's a sort of steadiness that comes from your parenting and your values. And in the lack of that, you fall for one thing or another. If it wasn't "influencing," it'd be something else.
To me, the point of the article was that the influencers are just a symptom of a deeper malaise stemming from social media of raising everyone's expectations of themselves, the increased isolation as people spend more time online and have less real friends, and the (flawed) assumption that the average person is a good judge of quality.
All the comments just talking about influencers are missing the point.
They are being 'paid' with useless perks like luxury accommodations, and shoes and clothes.
The 'perks' aren't even a reward, but are the just 'products in use' that the advertisers are using to make money.
In olden days, as exploitative as it was, you'd still have to pay a model to wear your clothes if you wanted to create an ad campaign. Now they'll do it for the 'privilege' of having cool gear.
It is not my place to judge this, but some will look back and reflect.
[0] https://www.dailydot.com/irl/china-influencer-school-video/
> not being a boring archaic Luddite for a living.
... proceeds to advertise new Nike shoes / holiday destination in a video for a living.
Are they so bad?
Once people are freed from that yoke, they'll find better things to do.
If they were being raised to be slaughtered, you might have an easier time finding empathy, even when this raising is not doing great at giving them human qualities. Well, they ARE being raised to be slaughtered, in a slightly more abstract sense. I think empathy is completely reasonable.
The thing is you have to have empathy for what they MIGHT have been if they weren't yanked out of normal life, kept from growing up or seeing any reality, and trained to be incredibly vacant and damaged. You're seeing human beings getting ruined. Maybe they could have been a lot better if they didn't get sucked into this madness.
It read like he used an auto-thesaurus, or purposefully chooses more esoteric words simply to up the contrast between how he sees himself - the professor writing smart think pieces whilst going for tenure - versus those dumb vapid teenagers.
Fine whatever, but it is poison candy for children.
I guess the quantity and variety of interactions you get with fame will quickly desensitise you to the point where normal interaction with people becomes awkward.
Not really, such lists are typically a function of personal experiences. For example, plenty of people would happily take family out from the list.
Family is a universal component of human civilization. Our current president has repeatedly stated the utmost importance of his family, as has every president.
What makes family bonds so strong is that they won’t turn your back on you when you are in a bind. They are much stronger than friends. Stable households are the most important predictor for childhood success.
You won’t find many who are bitterly opposed to the concept of family except those that are lonely during the holidays.
Part of the reason for this is that when I was much younger, my family DID turn their back on me, and I became homeless, and I was treated as a black sheep loser all my life and was compelled to reach for other things. I did not have friends for the most part, and my family ties were much worse than that, and I dreaded any connections I had to have.
Made for a lot of free time to work on things that interested me. I was happier during the holidays when I'd got past whatever obligations I even had, those being as minimal as possible.
It didn't make me a good person. It made me a bad person. I've spent years trying to overcome that badness, with some success, despite not getting a lot of reason to bother: I didn't grow up with any sort of positive role models or connections (Dad having rage and guilt issues, and Mom literally being a secret heroin addict). I'd probably be dead if Mom hadn't got clean, then got me clean (we were both so miserable that any change seemed exciting) and started a long slow road towards being less toxic.
You will find damaged people without the importance of family (in a normal sense) among the most significant and influential people in hacker culture, and in SV unicorn culture. These are the people who ride the unicorns, because they aren't normal and aren't good people… just inhumanly driven.
GOOD family makes for good people. Good people aren't always what you look for when you're trying to make the next billion-dollar tech unicorn. Certainly not in leadership.
I have found it much better to come to amends with past family I have had issue with than it is to hold grudges and become estranged. I’m not saying your situation is salvageable but that is my experience.
I am also a very driven person and work in tech startups at the executive level. My ability to work long hours and succeed is enhanced by the love of my family rather than fueled by past wrongs.
However, this is the same problem I faced as an entrepreneur, so naturally I am doing my best with it. One thing I am, is stubborn :D
IMO dating is a numbers game. I met my wife on Tinder ~9 years ago. No idea the online dating scene now but even back then Tinder was known as a hookup app. I was very upfront that I was looking for a long-term relationship, on Tinder and another app I was on. I believe you can learn more about a person in 5 minutes in person than you can in any amount of digital communication pre-meet. Another good thing about online dating is both of you know exactly why you are speaking - when you try to convert acquaintances into romantic partners there is a bit of confusion there.
Numbers game because most will not be a good fit, and also you will get rejected a lot. If you are emotionally prepared for commitment then you can be emotionally prepared for disappointment. But once you find a good fit you will find a partner for life! I think you can do it.
This is blanket generalization. Such generalizations are (rightfully) hard to prove. It is likely that families are a positive force for _most_ people, but I am not sure if there is research that concludes that every single human would benefit from having a family/should put up with whatever family they have?
Going back to my original point, any "list" of N things cannot possibly fit all humans. Other people might have different opinions based on their own life experiences.
What about scientific beliefs? Only a handful of people can really understand (or to align with your phrasing, _experience_ understanding) all the evidence there is to support the Big Bang theory. Yet, a much larger number accepts it.
And lemmas? I'm sure there are some lemmas I just use in proofs but have never proved from the first principles.
How did you know who or what you could trust? Why do you believe in some books and not others? Again, your experience tells you which are more trustworthy. You have experiences that make you trust textbooks and so you trust the information you get by experiencing reading the textbook.
My point is really that it's absurd to claim someone only believes something because of their experience. Everyone believes everything because of their experiences.
Not sure what you mean by that? Is family always a good thing by definition in your books? (i.e., if X is bad, X is not a family). If so, then your deduction is correct but trivial, and overall the argument doesn't make much sense to me.