Who Cares What He Says?

It always amuses me when Gary Lineker posts something mildly political on Facebook.

Within seconds, the comments fill up with furious men called Steve demanding to know why anyone should care what he thinks. “Who cares what Gary Lineker thinks?” they type, with the urgency of someone reporting a house fire, as if they’ve stumbled upon an unauthorised thought in progress.

And yet there they are. Reading it. Reacting to it. Commenting on it. Returning later to see who agreed with them.

If nobody cared, the comment section would be empty. Gary would be posting into the digital equivalent of a windswept lay-by somewhere off the A46. But he isn’t. He’s posting into a packed stadium, and the Steves have all turned up early to boo.

This isn’t new, of course. Human beings have always been oddly susceptible to endorsement by familiar faces. For decades, we’ve happily bought aftershave because a man with excellent bone structure emerged from the sea in slow motion. We’ve purchased watches we can’t pronounce because a retired racing driver frowned meaningfully while wearing one. At no point did anyone stop to ask whether being good at driving a car very fast conferred any special insight into timekeeping. It did not matter. The association was enough.

It’s the same mechanism. Familiarity creates trust. Trust creates influence. Influence creates behaviour. It’s not complicated. It’s barely even conscious.

The funny part is that the people most offended by Gary Lineker having opinions are often the same people who have been quietly influenced by celebrity endorsement their entire lives without noticing. They’ll happily buy trainers because a footballer wears them, eat crisps because a television personality - it used to be Gary at one time - smiles reassuringly while holding the packet, and vote for politicians because they present themselves like minor celebrities on daytime television. But Gary expressing an opinion on refugees is apparently where they draw the line. That, they tell us, is manipulation.

What they really mean is that it’s influence they disagree with. Influence they agree with is simply common sense.

Psychologists call this authority bias, or sometimes the halo effect. We assume that competence in one domain spills over into others. Someone who was reliable on Match of the Day must therefore be reliable about everything else. Or, conversely, someone who was reliable on Match of the Day must shut up immediately and never speak again, depending on whether we like what they say.

The irony is that the Steves are part of the process. Their outrage amplifies the message. Every angry comment pushes the post further into the algorithm, exposing it to more people. They are, in effect, unpaid members of Gary Lineker’s publicity team, working tirelessly to ensure maximum reach.

If they truly didn’t care, they would scroll past.

But they don’t. They never do.

And Gary, somewhere in his kitchen, probably with a cup of tea, presses “post” and wanders off to make a sandwich, leaving hundreds of middle-aged men arguing with each other in his living room without supervision.

Which, when you think about it, is an extraordinary level of influence for someone who once persuaded half the country to eat crisps.