"You're All Individuals!"

TIME in the waiting room

At the dentist’s office this morning for a regular cleaning, an April 2026 TIME Magazine cover caught my eye.

It promised to reveal “THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE”… one hundred of them.

The headline alone irritated me. Why are we so obsessed with “influence”? So many people wanting to “become influencers”… Influencer culture. We all have a sense of what that is.

But I’m always thinking: Following “influencers” means you are willing to BE INFLUENCED.  Are we so desperate for others to tell us what to think, what to wear, how to be, what to believe?

Certainly, it’s easier to sit back and let someone else articulate an opinion that expresses something you feel. Then you don’t have to put in the work of actually THINKING… puzzling it out for yourself, articulating how you really think or feel about something.

So my question to you, reader, or perhaps my plea… is to please take these BS lists of “who is important” with a grain of salt and view them through a very critical lens. And if you don’t have a critical lens, then spend some time sharpening your interrogation skills, starting with, at the very least, questioning the truth of everything for yourself.*

The last thing we all need is to be overly INFLUENCED. Resist!!! (fist emoji) (see my post A Friend to Culture about Neil Postman’s observation that we’re “amusing ourselves to death.”)

I Heart Brian

One of my favorite films is Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), in which a regular guy named Brian is mistaken for the Messiah and throngs of people obsessively follow him, desperately hanging on his every word as gospel. He’s an unwilling influencer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ

Brian shouts at them:

“Please please please listen… Look, you’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody. You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!”

And the crowd replies in unison: “Yes, we’re all individuals.”

So, back to the TIME cover. I picked up the magazine, curious to know who these 100 are, and by what criteria they were selected. Turns out, there are no criteria. The magazine polls their editors, reporters, and “sources around the world,” also reviewing recommendations that are sent in (from whom?).

“All year, we debate who belongs on the TIME100… Our selections are led by the stories shaping the world each year and the people who write them.”  Barf emoji.

"The World" according to TIME

What does your critical lens observe about this map?

So, let’s look at this interesting map on pp. 12-13 called “Points of Origin” (yes, I took the magazine home, telling the receptionist I’ll return it tomorrow!).

The map shows us “Where the Time100 were born”. I assume this is intended to make their selections look more international than they probably are.

Case in point: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his little face are down there in sub-Saharan Africa, having been born in Uganda. But his father teaches at Columbia University and his mother is an award-winning filmmaker based in New York/Kampala.

This family spends only part of the year in Africa, at best, though it’s true that the family has global influence and I am not questioning Mamdani’s inclusion on this list. He would be on my list.

However, for the entire continent of Africa, the magazine only finds seven people worthy of inclusion. For the entire continent of South America, only five. For the entire continent of Europe, only nine. Zero from Australia and Russia. Only three from India and three from China.

Have you seen this map? China and India contain one half of "The World's" population.

And here's a handy table comparing the regions above with the TIME100 list:

Region	% of World Population	TIME100 honorees
India + South Asia	~25%	3
China + East Asia	~25%	3–4
Africa + Middle East + Oceania	~25%	7
Americas + Europe + Russia	~25%	~86

Now here’s another thing I noticed: TIME has zero of the “world’s most influential” born in the northwestern United States and only one in Canada, but they managed to find three people born in Puerto Rico… without naming Bad Bunny?!

Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl stage earlier this year, richly representing multiple aspects of his Puerto Rican heritage, with vignettes of Puerto Rican culture and history, the Puerto Rican flag, and a message of love projected throughout the show. He closed the show with the message "Together we are America."

Bad Bunny made history, as well as a profound political statement, as the first performer to sing entirely in Spanish for the full Super Bowl halftime set, with no subtitles provided to an audience where roughly 78% of American households speak only English.

He also made history at the 2026 Grammys by becoming the first artist to win Album of the Year for a Spanish-language release.

Citing concerns about ICE activity at concert venues, he decided to exclude the entire United States from his 2025–2026 tour schedule.

Here's a man who performed for what is consistently the largest live TV audience on the planet, made an explicit political statement on behalf of Puerto Rican identity and immigrant communities, and commands a global fanbase — and TIME found three other Puerto Ricans more "influential" (all due respect to Kika Matos!).

TIME's definition of "influence" apparently doesn't include making tens of millions of Americans deeply uncomfortable about their own cultural assumptions — which is arguably one of the most powerful things a single person did so far this year.

Interestingly, TIME Magazine had been published exclusively in English since its founding in 1923 — until, in 2023, Bad Bunny himself became the face of the magazine’s very first Spanish-language cover and bilingual cover story in its 100-year history.

Apparently in 2026, he wasn't influential enough. Unless Bad Bunny himself declined the honor — which, given his track record of demanding to be seen on his own terms, seems unlikely — TIME simply missed the most obvious choice.

“Influence" as TIME defines it isn't really about reach, cultural impact, or even political courage — it's about whatever aligns with the sensibilities of the people (not specifically named) who are compiling the list.

Let’s compare Bad Bunny’s stats to the four entertainers TIME100 selected for its cover(s):

Bad Bunny - Currently around 114 million Spotify monthly listeners. Named Spotify's most-streamed artist worldwide four separate years — the only artist ever to top Spotify's Global Wrapped list four times. Boycotted the entire United States on his world tour over ICE, performed the Super Bowl entirely in Spanish as a deliberate political act, dedicated the show to Puerto Rican identity, and closed with a message of unity — all on the most-watched broadcast of the year.

Luke Combs — roughly 25 million Spotify monthly listeners, a major country star with a devoted domestic fanbase. He's notable mainly for saying he's "not a racist" and apologizing for a past association with the Confederate flag, while carefully avoiding any political label, telling The New York Times he's "not liberal enough for liberals" and "not conservative enough for conservatives." That's about as far as his public stands go.

Nikki Glaser — a comedian whose claim to prominence is hosting the 2025 and 2026 Golden Globe Awards, making her the first solo female host in Golden Globes history. Nothing I could find connects her to any cause, social issue, or platform beyond her career in comedy and award show hosting. Her influence appears entirely confined to entertainment.

Zoe Saldaña — I’ll let her off the hook: She launched a digital news platform called BESE with a mission to highlight positive, untold stories of Latinos, motivated by fears for her biracial sons. She's also served as a Global Advocate for the UN Foundation's Shot@Life vaccination campaign and has supported Haiti earthquake relief.

Wagner Moura — a respected Brazilian actor; nominated for an Oscar in 2026 for the film El agente secreto. I loved him as Pablo Escobar in Narcos, but there is no significant record of using his platform for advocacy.

So, the person with arguably the largest, most global cultural footprint of anyone on the list didn't make it — while four people whose influence is largely confined to American entertainment circles got the covers. And roughly 20% of the TIME100 selections are entertainers.

What does Kate Hudson do that influences the world? 

Or Dakota Johnson? They're famous, they work steadily, their tribute pieces read warmly — but TIME's own tribute for Noah Wyle is essentially "he's such a great guy" and "when he says he'll do something, he genuinely means it." That's a lovely best man speech, not a case for global influence.

And roughly 79% of TIME’s list are born in the U.S.A. The percentage goes up if you include the people born internationally who live and work in the continental U.S.

Reader: Is your critical lens itching at all at this point? Do TIME’s selections influence you? If you even read this garbage in the first place, are you asking yourself: Who would be on my list? Let’s not allow “cultural institutions” like TIME to be anybody’s tastemakers… You’ve got to think for yourselves!

Lost in Translation

Did you know that Spanish is the world's third most widely spoken mother tongue, after Mandarin and Hindi? So, I’m guessing that if the World’s 100 Most Influential People were selected by a committee of Chinese, Indians and the 7.6% of the global population that speaks Spanish, we’d have a vastly different list.

Even just throw a few Bollywood enthusiasts on that panel, and you’d have a much different selection of entertainers. Did TIME do any research beyond the English-speaking world?

Ask my multi-lingual friends in Gabon who is the most influential entertainer for them right now. It might be Lord Ekomy Ndong, a pan-Africanist hip-hop artist and cultural commentator who blends traditional Gabonese instruments like the mvett harp with hip-hop and has been a pillar of the Gabonese hip-hop movement since the early 1990s.

His group's music has been used as literal anthems at opposition demonstrations, with songs denouncing electoral fraud and the Bongo regime becoming calls for political action in the streets of Libreville. That is influence in the most raw, consequential sense of the word.

Or it could be artists like Burna Boy, Rema, Wizkid, and Tems from Nigeria, whose music is absolutely dominant across Central and West Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa’s music consumption surged 114% in recent years, outpacing all other regions globally.

But these news items rarely make it to the mainstream American audience that TIME caters to… and their list reflects their intended readership as much as it reflects the staff’s own contextual and subjective perception of who is influential to whom.

There are other lists out there. New African Magazine publishes what it calls its annual "100 Most Influential Africans" list, which it describes as "the most authoritative, respected and consulted list on the continent and in the diaspora."

The Africa Report  also produces a list of "50 Most Influential Africans". Both publications specifically critique “global” lists like TIME's that don't adequately represent all regions of the globe. The existence of these alternative lists is itself an implicit critique of TIME's blind spots. But it’s not likely I'll find one of those magazines in my dentist’s waiting room.

Beyond entertainers, the New African Magazine 2024 list included climate justice advocates, development finance leaders, Olympic gold medalists, and figures driving real structural change across the continent — a fundamentally different definition of influence than TIME's (who only highlight 5 people doing meaningful work on the continent of 1.4 billion people).

One of those five people overlaps with the New African list: Aliko Dangote — Africa’s richest man ("real-time net worth": $32.5B as of today).

Billionaires

Let’s talk about “influence”. Of course billionaires influence people! Bloomberg notes that to detractors, Dangote “is a predator using connections in a corrupt political economy to tilt the playing field in his favor and sideline potential competition.”

The TIME100 list has no moral framework. It conflates power with virtue, popularity with goodness, and an Oscar nomination with impact.

After dominating sub-Saharan Africa's cement production and cornering large portions of the sugar, salt, and packaging industries, Dangote's group has been accused of moving to monopolize fuel distribution — with Nigeria's oil workers union warning that his tactics are intended to drive out competitors.

Dangote is a complicated figure who has also created jobs and built infrastructure. But TIME makes no distinction about what kind of “influence” they are celebrating. Is influence inherently virtuous?

History’s most destructive figures were enormously influential. All people with power exert influence. A monopolist who controls what a nation pays for cement, sugar, and fuel influences the daily life of hundreds of millions of people — but not necessarily in ways worth celebrating.

TIME isn't measuring influence. They're curating a celebration of people their editors find admirable or fascinating — actors they like, politicians they follow, businessmen whose financial success impresses them. Dangote makes the cut because his wealth is staggering and his refinery is the world's largest.  

The TIME100 list has no moral framework. It conflates power with virtue, popularity with goodness, and an Oscar nomination with impact.

I hope my readers are asking — What are my values? Whom do I admire, and why? Who would I hold up as an example for humanity? Who and what am I allowing to influence me?

Remember: “Don't let anybody tell you what to do!”  — Brian

*In one of her books, can’t remember which, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells a story about her father or uncle pointing out a barn to her and asking her what color it was. “Red” she replied. “How do you know it is red?” “Well, the paint is red…” “But how do you know what color the other side is, without seeing for yourself?” Lesson: It is important to interrogate what is presented as well as what is omitted.