Influence requires nuance and responsibility

Why understanding matters before speaking

Muzamil opens by drawing Ali into a question about influence. In the past few years, he notes, a new kind of voice has emerged online: people with platforms who speak confidently on topics they barely understand. “Influencers are starting to say anything about anything and they don’t have a sort of nuanced understanding of what they’re talking about,” Ali observes. When listeners encounter these opinions delivered with such certainty, anger follows naturally. The person speaking feels validated by engagement. The audience feels heard. But nothing gets clearer.

Ali traces this back to his own journey. In 2007 and 2008, when he was studying engineering, suicide bombings were a daily occurrence in Pakistan. Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar. Muzamil and he watched the body count rise. That violence created a reckoning: which problems mattered most? How could an individual actually help? “It was a shock,” Ali says. He realized that before fighting any specific issue, the foundation had to be peace. Without it, nothing works. “A doctor can do his work, an engineer can do his work, a blogger can do his work, if he is peace.”

Two types of violence nobody talks about

But peace, Ali explains, is not what most people think it is. When Pakistanis hear the word, they imagine the absence of shootings and bombings. They don’t picture the quieter violence that lives inside systems. Discrimination by skin color. Being told your accent is inferior. Small acts of condescension that build into shame over who you are.

Ali introduces the concept clearly: negative peace is the absence of direct violence. Positive peace is the presence of justice, equality, and structures that allow people to thrive. Most people have only ever lived in the first framework. They have inherited stories about which groups belong at the top and which serve. “When someone has no idea of structural violence or cultural violence,” Ali says, “they don’t understand their own name.”

The influencer as product of society

Muzamil shifts the conversation. If influencers are products of their society, and society rewards outrage and extreme positions, then blaming individual creators misses the point. The system is designed to push people toward polarization. Ali agrees, but resists the excuse entirely. “Don’t give this excuse because I am a society product. What do you expect out of me?” A person with reach has a choice.

The challenge is real, though. Influencers face constant pressure to be vulnerable, to share their lives, to be real. But vulnerability without understanding becomes performance. Someone reads a book once and streams it, then speaks about it with certainty. Trolls appear to attack the reading. The creator doubles down. None of this produces actual dialogue.

Muzamil and Ali discuss the case of Kylie Jenner, who tweeted criticism of Snapchat in 2018. She had 2.4 million followers. Her single tweet led to 30,000 comments and 64,000 retweets. When Snapchat’s stock dropped 1.3 billion dollars, the company had to respond to one person’s casual opinion. The damage was done. “So is there any accountability?” Muzamil asks.

Responsibility vs. freedom of speech

This brings them to the harder question: Where does freedom of speech end and incitement begin? Muzamil says their society has been confused about this boundary for decades. Ali pushes deeper. “Freedom of speech is also coming here,” he says. When you ask someone to be thoughtful before speaking, they invoke speech itself as defense. The logic circles: I have the right to speak, therefore my speech needs no examination.

Ali proposes a framework. There are opinions you can hold. There are opinions you can express. And there are expressions that incite violence or deliberately spread falsehoods. The last category needs legal teeth. But the second category, he argues, needs cultural force. If people with platforms understood they were not obligated to share everything they think, much of the noise would clear.

He gives an example. Some influencers promote ideas without understanding what they are promoting. A fashion creator speaks about complex political issues because they have reach and assume reach equals authority. “The subject is also the right way to cover it,” Ali says. Expertise matters. Storytelling is powerful, but storytelling layered over ignorance becomes propaganda.

How institutions stop the personality cult

By the end, Muzamil and Ali are discussing leadership. Pakistan has no shortage of people willing to lead. What it lacks is institutions strong enough to test them, to hold them accountable, to force them to grow beyond ideology. “When institutions are weak, then individuals’ personalities start to dominate,” Ali explains. People turn to strongmen because systems have failed them.

Muzamil brings it back to beginning the work where we are. If critical thinking isn’t in the school curriculum, if people don’t know how to ask questions, if society has taught them that authority is not to be questioned, then even good actors on social media cannot change the picture alone. “I believe that every person is a leader who has its responsibility and is giving their best in their own capacity,” Ali says. Not everyone will command millions. But everyone influences someone. That responsibility is real.

The conversation ends with Muzamil thanking Ali and noting that this is one of his favorite podcasts in hindsight. There is much more to say. Both men acknowledge the format worked, that the time spent in dialogue was the real work. As Muzamil closes, he reminds listeners that what they are watching or listening to is the shape a conversation takes when two people refuse to perform and instead think out loud together.