A Persuasive Essay Doesn't Have to be Personal

While reading The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate, I found myself intrigued by the importance he stressed on the connection of the author to the reader. I suppose what had me thinking about it so much was my personal experience writing persuasive essays. When I usually write them, I don't focus on my connection to just one reader, I sort of imagine myself as speaking to an audience. I focus more on the facts and evidence that needs to be presented in order to make myself sound convincing and build my credibility. In a way, I guess that acts as my personal connection to my readers.

Social media plays a large role in influencing people, in both good and bad ways. People like to be part of the in-crowd, so they'll jump on the bandwagon of whatever they see is popular and trending on social media. It can influence people to vote, if they're seeing a lot of their friends posting about their voting experience. However, it can also influence people to do bad things like the "challenges" that have surfaced in recent years (tide pod challenge, Birdbox challenge, etc.). While some challenges can be relatively harmless, there are some that can cause great danger to the person participating or those around them.

People can also influence others in their every day life, unintentionally. People look up to other people and use them as role-models, and may try to act like their role model in every small way. In some cases, people don't have any type of contact with their role model, so the role model can influence people in ways that they may not realize.

As for me? I'm not sure if I influence people. Like I said before, people can influence other people without the influencer's knowledge. I would like to think that I act in such a way that people would respect me and be so inspired to act in a similar fashion, and I would be flattered to find out if someone looked up to me. However, I simply be myself every day, I don't do that with the intention to influence people.