Trends In the Collective: Influencers (No Politics)

Influence is defined as some entity having the power or capacity to cause an effect in an indirect or intangible way. Most everything is marketed via influencers these days, whether the person selling identifies as such or not.
I think about this a lot. I have Venus square Neptune and learned of my own gullibility, long ago. I also have Libra so if you think it, I would like to think it too, on some level.
Point here is that I'm not immune. But I'm also highly aware of everything in this arena, due entirely to my study of astrology.
I want to use a personal example here, so this can read without triggering anyone's defenses. It's about my book.
I wrote this long book. It's about 600 pages long. I had it published on Amazon for a number of years. I wrote the book which is actually a collection of true stories like the ones you can read on this blog. I was not the one who put the book together, though. I was working with an editor at the time.
My editor was talented. Consider that I had about 40 full length stories written. The stories were connected because I'm in all of them. My personality is strong and consistent at any age. So there could have just been a book with great stories. But my editor chose which stories to use with great deliberation. He then came up with an innovative way to structure the book. He felt this would elevate the stories even further and I agreed.
I had no doubt about what we were doing. I trusted him but also, he was just right. He was a Virgo, by the way. So we split the book into three acts. Venus in Leo liked this! Drama, right? Theatre! But that wasn't the point. He set the structure in order to allow the stories to tell a larger story in three acts. I felt he hit this ball clean out of the park.
Eventually, I published my book and a lot of things happened. But this post is about "influence" so I'll get to that.
There was a gal who published a detailed review of my book. She broke down each story in the book adding her remarks.
I want to say this - she did nothing wrong. She's a very good writer and it was a good review but I have to say, she missed the plot. She just didn't catch my editor's fine hand in this and I'm not blaming her!
Maybe it was hard to catch.
Maybe it was impossible to catch?
A person is going to read what they read and if they miss what you wrote, it's probably your fault. But here's what happened next...
People googled the title of my book. Common thing to do! They read her review and then when they read my book, they read it with her eyes. Her review worked like Cliff's Notes. I had someone tell me they wished my book was available but they'd read this review so they knew what it was about. Um....
This is the power of influence. There are plenty of discriminating readers but this gal is a discriminating reader. That's why she was one of the first people to buy my book! She's also an excellent writer with no intent to harm me. In fact, she was probably motivated to help me but look how it turned out.
This happens with movie reviews too. If a good writer takes the time to outline the plot of a movie on IMDb and you read it, chances are you'll watch the movie they wrote about, regardless of anything else. It's a phenomena!
I think people are very willing to be influenced. You can rest your brain and coast along on the other person's thinking, seeing what they saw as you go. Verifying, basically. I guess you could call it, "confirmation bias". Someone you perceive as smart tells you what something means and the prophecy is fulfilled.
I don't have a conclusion here other than to say, having caught on to this, I guard my mind. Also, there's is a flip side to this which I'll go into if there is sufficient interest.
Have you noticed yourself being influenced in this way?