Cash for souls
On the allure of influence, shills for adversarial powers, and the counterweight to making Internet mercenaries
The contemporary ease of content creation has stripped away some of the obstacles that used to stand in the way of producing material for its own sake. On one hand, that frees some worthwhile voices to get exposure that would otherwise have never broken through in the more heavily-mediated past, when editors and publishers and producers decided what got made and disseminated.
■ On the other hand, it sets up incentives that reward people merely for being "influencers" -- no matter what malignant nonsense they project into the universe. And that's ultimately why the US Justice Department has "charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging".
■ The plot made a handful of people very rich in exchange for their dignity. They effectively, whether wittingly or unwittingly, acted as tools of an adversarial foreign government. They may face criminal penalties, too.
■ But they made lots of money, and to people for whom civic duty is no object, then the remuneration is all that matters. The results, of course, tell any honest onlooker that something beyond remuneration must matter -- that civic responsibility really is a meaningful thing.
■ That modern tools have made it easier for people to profit by selling their souls is a fact we can't escape. Teaching the next generation that intangibles like duty still matter is the counterweight.
