Why can’t I be an influencer?

June 10, 2026

Dell Franklin walking his dog on the beach

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

Everybody seems to be an “influencer” these days. I read where an 8-year-old was an influencer. Influencer to do whom? It can’t be true that an 8-year-old infuencer recommended a certain facial cream to other 8 year-old-old’s so their skin won’t start wrinkling at 12.

This was what I read in a large metropolitan newspaper. I presume these are 8-year-old girls, but one never knows these days when other 8-year-old influencers might be discussing sex changes on something called Tik Tok.

All I know is that when I was 8, I wanted to look and play baseball like Mickey Mantle and box like Sugar Ray Robinson and did my best to imitate them.

What’s going on today is confusing. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going as far as information or news or entertainment anymore because it seems everybody is an influencer on internet platforms, or they have a podcast. I watch the news and almost every so-called expert or pundit when it comes to politics, fashion, sports, religion, hygiene, health, beauty, cosmetology, finance, movies, military strategy, celebrity, sex, love, gossip, etc, has a podcast.

I have hobbling, geriatric old friends from down south whom I once played basketball with and have half a brain left, who have podcasts. Evidently it’s pretty simple to set up a podcast if you’re technically capable and have an agenda and perhaps plenty of money.

Some of these big time pod-casters repeat the same canned nonsense on TV cable news that they do on their podcasts. There is only so much one can say on any podcast or news agency about any subject. Once in a while, though, some pod-caster or influencer will rock the boat by uttering such outrageous crackpot bullshit that soon they have half a million followers going apeshit over their bullshit, which proves once again how utterly stupid and uninformed and bored and intellectually lazy and incurious most Americans are.

I heard somewhere that most Gen Z goofs can’t spell or write a proper sentence, have no idea there are three branches of government, couldn’t find Ecuador on a map without a cell phone, don’t care about getting laid or getting drunk and cozy in a bar, but at least want to save the world and halt stupid wars and be kind to each other.

I keep nagging my friend, Big Malcolm, to join me in a local podcast. Big M can recite history going back thousands of years, is astute politically, has a photographic mind for names, places and sports statistics, and can edit me as I sound off with too much bullshit as an opinionated person full of cynicism and mockery of the human race.

Big Malcolm is always calm while I can be excitable and profane. Big Malcolm refrains from profanity, though I have noticed that more and more pod-casters use the F-world savagely while expounding in outrage over pansy woke liberals.

One famous pod-caster, Joe Rogan, a tough and tough-looking guy with a deep voice and tattoos and big biceps and a shaved head and millions of followers reportedly is responsible for getting Donald Trump elected president by having him on his podcast. Evidently, Rogan’s podcast influenced all the tough white guys who follow Rogan to vote for Trump.

It seems to me that there are more podcasters out there like Rogan–and other tough guys Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson–than there are pussycat libs hiding in the bushes.

I figure Big Malcolm and I can sling some vicious bullshit out there if we get the podcast I’ve been bugging him about starting for years now. Every time I mention it to him in Schooner’s Wharf over beers, he acts like a big scared chicken, probably because he fears I’ll hog all the attention and make him look bad by association with a crank, which I’m not.

I know my shit. Right now I can name every capital of  every state in the United States and most capitals of countries throughout the world without picking up a stupid phone. In fact, I don’t have one of those phones and don’t want one.

I figure if Big Malcolm and I get a podcast, there will be no special agenda, because we will be experts on everything except home maintenance and repair of anything broken or ailing. We are both addicted to reading just about anything we can get our hands on and ready to cut loose and perform!

So look out fans and detractors and Joe Rogan impersonators, we might be coming for you with a load of toxic bullshit that’ll knock you for a loop like a Sugar Ray Robinson left hook.

I don’t suppose any of you fucking Gen Z goofs even know who Sugar Ray is, though. Nor a left hook. Poor things.