EDITORIAL — It’s not all about how much or how many

As reported on CBCPNews, Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz, the Vatican’s secretary of the Dicastery for Communication, said Catholic digital influencers should strive to connect with compassion with their audience instead of focusing on the number of content and followers.

Ruiz said this during a meeting with online missionaries and Catholic influencers at the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila last Friday.

“Our mission is not by how much content we produce or how many followers we have. It is to accompany, listen and respond with tenderness,” Ruiz said.

Let’s not forget what content creators, influences, vloggers, and others who make a living online are willing to do just to get likes and followers these days: a Russian filmed himself being nasty to Filipinos just so he can have something to post online. He is now in jail for that. Two local vloggers dressed up as anime characters and tried to distract drivers in the Cebu Transcentral Highway for a laugh. Another dressed up as a snail and impeded traffic in Consolacion.

The latest stunt by an influencer was to hide a ?500 bill in the Heroes of Vivo Shrine in Tangalan, Aklan, for whoever can find it. Overenthusiastic participants almost damaged the monument.

But, yes, Catholic digital influencers are of a different stripe. They aren’t there to get famous personally but to spread the world of the Lord. However, the examples cited above, although not acts of Catholic digital influencers, should still be mentioned as cautionary tales of the things people are willing to do to get likes, views, shares, and such. Even just to stay relevant in a world with such a short attention span.

In the end we also like to think that this message, while it was directed at Catholic digital influencers, should also apply to content creators, influences, and vloggers regardless of religion, faith, or philosophy. It’s not all about how much content they can produce or how many followers they have.