Influencers are more a function of very large social networks, they don’t really represent small tightly knit communities very well.

Consider something like a thanksgiving dinner you have what looks like central figures say a grandparent that everyone is related too, but the grand kids have tighter bonds to their parents than the grandparent.

Extend that to a village and you get more social people with more connections across the community, but those aren’t even close to the strongest bonds.