- EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 23/Jul 23:45

The Golden Idol Machine – OpEd

The other day, I found my high school yearbook. My kids were flipping through it, laughing at old photos and hairstyles, and one of them paused, surprised. “You and your friends were in all these clubs?” Debate, theater, student council, wrestling—page after page of awkward group photos and teenage optimism. It made me smile. I hadn’t thought about that version of myself in a long time. I told them the truth: I joined everything, not because I had it all figured out, but because I didn’t. When you’re a kid, you need spaces like that—launching pads for connection, experiments in identity. Trying things on. Figuring out where you fit, and just as often, where you don’t. These days, I’ve taken on more of the Groucho Marx philosophy—I’d never join a club that would have me as a member—but back then, those communities mattered. They were real. Messy. Human. They involved showing up, in person, with all your imperfections. There were no filters. No followers. No likes. Most importantly, they weren’t content. We joined because we cared about the thing itself—the debate, the play, the game—and because we were hanging with friends who were actually there. Success wasn’t measured in views or engagement, but in whether you got better, whether you belonged, whether you contributed something real. That’s what’s been on my mind lately: what it means to grow up in a world where being known has been untethered from being known by the people around you, where every human experience gets filtered through the question of whether it’s worth posting. The Economic Engine of Performance There is something deeply unnatural about being famous—or even semi-famous—outside the borders of your own community. Once, reputation was earned slowly, through presence and action. Now, you can be ‘known’ by millions who don’t actually know you at all. I’ve watched this machine operate across different worlds. In tech, I saw smart friends get their faces on magazine covers and slowly transform into their own press releases. In the brewery business, I watched food industry people inflate their own importance, turning craft into performance, substance into brand. Most recently, in medical freedom activism, I’ve seen principled people get seduced by follower counts, optimizing for viral moments or proximity to power instead of genuine change. The pattern is always the same: the work becomes secondary to the platform. Authenticity gets traded for amplification. And the person—the real person—disappears behind the persona. Now I see the same thing happening to an entire generation. Young people today are choosing influencer culture over traditional paths—and I could sound like every generation before me complaining about “young people these days.” But here’s what I’ve come to understand through watching this across industries: they’re not choosing this path just because they’re shallow or narcissistic. They’re choosing it because we’ve made everything else economically impossible. When housing costs have far outpaced wage growth, when traditional career paths no longer guarantee basic stability, when you can struggle to afford rent while doing meaningful work or potentially make real money by turning yourself into a brand—what would any rational person choose? The traditional middle path has been systematically eliminated. You can join corporate America and surrender your soul to institutional conformity, or you can be a small business person and struggle financially while competing against algorithmic systems designed to favor monopolistic forces—working 80-hour weeks for what used to be a comfortable middle-class living, watching Amazon destroy your retail business, or Google bury your website in search results. Influencing promises a third way—entrepreneurship without the overhead, creativity without corporate constraints, financial success without traditional gatekeepers. Of course, it’s a lie. You’re still surrendering to an algorithm, still conforming to platform demands, still subject to powers you can’t control. But when the other options feel impossible, the lie becomes irresistible. And it’s a road to nowhere—a few winners, millions of casualties, and an entire generation taught that their value lies in their ability to perform rather than create, to influence rather than contribute, to be seen rather than to matter. We’ve created an economy where selling yourself is more profitable than making something of value. The American dream of homeownership, stable work, and raising a family has become so financially out of reach that “become an influencer” represents one of the few remaining paths to economic security. And the tragic irony is that even those who “succeed” in this system often find themselves isolated. I’ve watched friends and acquaintances who became influencers grow paranoid about every relationship, unable to tell if people genuinely like them or just want access to their platform. The very system that promises connection destroys their ability to trust authentic human bonds. This economic trap doesn’t just limit choices—it severs something deeper, leaving us grasping for meaning in a world that’s lost its natural rhythm. And girls, especially, are pushed into this with terrifying precision. The message is everywhere: your power lies in your image, your value in your sexuality, your success in monetizing both. It’s not subtle. It’s a pipeline—Instagram to influencer to OnlyFans—that platforms systematically engineer. OnlyFans scouts actively recruit from Instagram’s most popular creators, while algorithms reward increasingly sexualized content with greater reach and visibility. As recent research documents, the platform’s design encourages ‘upskilling’ in sexualized content, making financial success directly tied to intimate performance. What the Washington Post calls ‘the creator economy at its most transactional’ has turned young women’s bodies into monetizable units. It’s devastating. Not just economically, not just emotionally, but spiritually. The Deeper Disconnection But there’s something even more fundamental at work here. What if this desperate seeking for external validation represents something deeper—the symptom of a species that’s lost its natural guidance system? Julian Jaynes theorized that humans once received direct coordination through what he called the bicameral mind—a state where people heard guiding voices they experienced as gods. But I wonder if our ancestors weren’t actually hearing random hallucinations but were basically human antennas picking up electromagnetic signals from the sun and moon that told them when to plant, harvest, and coordinate as a society. The ancient Egyptians understood this system perfectly. They had Ptah, the creator god who brought reality into being through pure spoken command—not through physical action, but through divine voice alone. Ptah represented the ultimate cosmic command center, the source of coordinating guidance that aligned civilization with natural cycles. Now we have Oscar statues—golden idols that honor people who pretend to be other people. Where Ptah once commanded when to plant and harvest, today’s celebrities command what to wear, how to think, who to be. Young people don’t just watch them; they follow their lifestyle guidance as if it were divine instruction. We’ve gone from divine coordination to celebrity performance, from cosmic guidance to consumer programming. This lost connection explains why artific...