Someone Tweeted today that it was absurd to have “influencer” as a job title, because it presupposes success — you might as well say you had been hired as a “bestselling novelist” instead of an author, for example.
There are a lot of job titles that are like this, though. It’s commonplace to hear professors of philosophy use the word “philosopher” to mean “professor of philosophy”, for example, as if Socrates had been a professor, or Einstein had been a gravitational field, or as if a tenure committee could confer a love of wisdom on a fool. “Hacker”, too, is a title of acclaim, earned by achievement, not a hobby or a job title; calling yourself a “hacker” is one step below calling yourself a “genius”, which is, of course, also used as a job title nowadays, by Apple.
There’s a persistent meme that “engineer” is a similar sort of arrogant self-praise, since, ever since the disaster in Texas, various places have formal licensing requirements for “engineers” similar to those for braiding hairs or painting nails, with the ostensible purpose of preventing any more children from being exploded by poorly-designed gas systems or other machines. But an “engineer” has been, since at least the 15th century, one who makes engines; the licensing requirements are new and far from universal. Calling your creation an “engine”, however, is a kind of self-praise, at least etymologically — you’re saying it’s ingenious, as the cognate word “engine” has meant “clever scheme” (and thence “machine”) for over a millennium. Moreover, you’re etymologically attributing this cleverness to your inborn qualities, thus “in+genitus”, rather than hard work or good luck.
Surely we could go further with these flattering and optimistic job titles, though. Managers might feel left out of the fun, since their title implies they’re just getting by; let’s call them “organizational geniuses”, or if, that makes them worry that you’ll ask them to fix your iPhone, “master strategists”. We could call taxi drivers “motorsport champions”, and cooks “gourmet chefs” — though I think the world may be ahead of me on that one, since I’m pretty sure I’ve met self-proclaimed “gourmet chefs” who didn’t have even a single Michelin star or prep cook. Oil-change mechanics could be “automotive engineers”, though that doesn’t really capture the same self-satisfied aspirational flavor as “influencer”.