A Challenge to Digital Influencers: Join The #One4One Game

By Deanna Zandt for Forbes | July 9, 2012

Who would you name? We all say we despise those lists that get created to showcase influencers and hotshots in our field. But secretly, (a) we wish we were on them, (b) they didn’t pick the same small group of people all the time, and (c) we all know that people love lists, or else we wouldn’t keep making them. So, how can we break out of ruts that naming-games create?

We’ll create a new game.

Imagine if we could break out of the linear constraints that bind us when we’re making lists of favorite people. What if it were like a trading card game, where you got to pick your Babe Ruths, and also see who’s picked you? And what if we made one of the parameters of the game that you got more points for picking people in your field from underrepresented groups?

Thus, The #One4One Game has been born. Go to Twitter now, and, using the #one4one hashtag, tell the world who your One is.

The #One4One Game, created by me, Melissa Pierce, and Andrew Rasiej, asks digital influencers to name someone whose identity has a radically different trait as their One. If you’re a dude, name a woman. If you’re white, name a person of color. If you’re straight, name an LGBTQ person. You get the picture. Arbitrary points will be assigned by anyone else playing the game– all you have to do is use the hashtag #one4one and share your One (or Ones!), and reply to others’ choices. The best (arbitrarily decided, of course) Ones will be archived on the game’s website, where six smart men have already started naming women they want to champion.

A bunch of us who work in the tech and information industries are tired of pointing out that women and people of color are missing from lists, from panels, from articles about the industry, and that it’s the same six straight white guys having conversations about the future of media, technology and, well, everything. And a lot of people are tired of hearing it. So, let’s jump in and do something, and, as Rachel Sklar has been pushing for, change the ratio.

Go to Twitter right now, before you even finish reading this post, and share your One.

The #One4One Game was borne out of the brouhaha surrounding Newsweek/Daily Beast’s list of 100 digital power brokers. Only 7 out of 100 were women, and there were even worst ratios for people of color. (There are no Black digital influencers? Really?) The panel that picked the people on this list were similarly representative of who they picked as influential. In my recent post about the sociology of Internet meritocracy, I talked about the phenomenon that creates this situation: homophily. Simply put, homophily is bird of a feather flock together. Humans surround themselves with people they think are like them, so when it comes time to pick people from our peer groups, they tend to all look like us.

Not only does that mean the same types of people, and even same people period, get highlighted and supported, but it also means that we’re missing crucial compelling voices in the larger conversations we’re having about the future. And if we’re going to understand fully and capitalize on what the digital revolution holds, we’ve got to have as many different kinds of people as possible in the mix.

After the Newsweek list came out, Andrew Rasiej, who was on the list, had a light-bulb epiphany around creating gender equity in tech. He wrote an editorial asking Newsweek to allow him to give up his spot, and put a woman (me!) in his place. Rasiej’s piece is a must-read for any man who hasn’t understood why gender matters in technology. But not only did he point out inequity; he asked for other men on the list to do the same.

His call fell flat with his fellow Newsweek list-ers. Many didn’t respond at all, but the few that did both feared being paternalistic, and pushed for merits being the most important criteria for making a list.

I won’t entirely rehash my meritocracy arguments here, but I will say: Of course no woman or person of color wants to be picked just for their identity. But we do need to acknowledge that homophily is a real force in how our networks form, and many people with merits up the wazoo are simply not on the same radar screens as those who operate with more traditional structural and hierarchical power. Through discussions on listservs, women responding to the Newsweek list shared their own champions: women like Esther Dyson, Mona Eltahawy, Latoya Peterson, Anna Holmes, Jillian York, Cheryl Contee, Gina Trapani, Samhita Mukhopadyay, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, Melissa Pierce, Elizabeth Stark, Tara Hunt and Cindy Gallop. And those are just a few to start. It isn’t about cherry-picking a few stars, either; it’s about recognizing the oodles of people outside traditional power spheres who are knocking it out of the park.

Asking people who are underrepresented in the wider influence sphere to join you isn’t paternalistic or patronizing, either. It’s being an ally. A patronizing/paternal response to seeing, for example, the lack of women on the Newsweek list would be to say, “Oh, the poor women! Let us say that women are great, and it sure is a shame that they aren’t represented here. Let us (us affluent white guys) start a program for women so that they can become better at what they do an end up on a list like this.” An ally’s response says, “There’s something wrong structurally with how this list is built, and we need to prioritize lots of factors, not just how famous someone is. Gender and race are some of those factors, and here are some amazing people that are integral to a more equitable structure.”

It’s important to note that I’m talking about equity here, and not equality or diversity. Equality is the wrong frame, because it sets up a frame that says one group (in this case, men or white people) are the standard, and those that don’t have that identity are deviant from that standard and must strive to be equal. I don’t, for example, want to be “equal” to men, and I don’t want the world to be “gender-blind.” I want my gender recognized and accounted for, and the perspectives that I bring to the table accounted for.

Which brings me to why “diversity” isn’t the right frame, either– something I’ve learned from my time on the board of the Applied Research Center, publisher of Colorlines.com. The huge difference between these approaches is best summed up by a quote from this blogger:

 

Diversity is when you invite many different kinds of people to sit at your table. You look for difference in terms of age, race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, ethnicity, etc. But equity means addressing the fact that some people come to the table without a fork, some have two plates or none at all, some expect to be waited on, and some are more accustomed to doing the serving. Equity attempts to ensure that everyone can sit down to eat together on terms of equality.

So, let’s all get to that table together, and eat together on the same terms. You can start by bringing your guest to the #One4One game on Twitter.