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Social media popularity will disease your brain. It will turn you into an arrogant narcissist; a digital dope fiend addicted to platforms like TikTok. It causes what I like to call “special pony syndrome” – where one’s perceived value as a human being comes from an artificial currency of Likes, Followers, and views. Clout is an ugly drug – it gets one high on their perceived self-importance and fuels the idea that one can simply broadcast their life or POV to an audience without having a truly demonstrable talent.
Don’t chase the serotonin dragon. Don’t give in to social media disease-brain.
Be a podcaster, be a blogger, be an actor, be a comedian, be a dancer, be a craftsman, be a creator.
Be a farmer, be a plumber, be a teacher, be a musician.
Just don’t be an influencer.
There’s nothing noble or notable about influencing.
Why? Because influencers share videos like the one below on TikTok from the perch of their multi-million dollar houses.
This particular one is from an influencer organization called the “Honey House” (editor’s note: weird?), which they emphasize is an “Adult Tiktok House.”
The tour shows a group of influencers doing their dedicated roles in the collective from a flashy property in Los Angeles.
The property itself feels like it belongs on Selling Sunset.
https://twitter.com/jackdwagner/status/1302673328210018305
The reality here is that these aren’t really jobs or the way normal people put food on their table – That’s where the cringe comes in.
Even the fitness trainer and the e-comm person; They’re not actually going about the meat and potatoes of what those very specific, skill-driven jobs entail. It’s all for show. It’s all for clout to show off how great their living situation is.
Reality TV brings more to the table.
It’s so out-of-touch with how real human beings actually live. It comes from a place of self-importance and disease-brain social media thinking.
Understandably, they’re getting slammed on Twitter, because the jokes about this write themselves:
nick we gotta work on your life man pic.twitter.com/hEiD7vVKjG
— LB™️ “𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘧𝘧” 🛢 (@LydiaBurrell) September 6, 2020
https://twitter.com/lurkinbag/status/1302681575562203139
E is my manager and guru, so he's ALWAYS on the phone making sure I stay in-sync with my surroundings.
Drama is my chef and trainer, ensuring that my fitness and nutrition stay optomized.
And then there's Turtle…who's a little bit of everything 😉
— Curious Miles (@premiles_) September 6, 2020
"So what's your job?"
"I fire people up and motivate them over the phone"— Beto 🍀 (@sicktransitw) September 6, 2020
Someone woke up and thought “hey guys, let’s show everyone our ‘jobs’ in our house, so people know how hard we work behind the scenes.”
Except they’re not really working? No one is really working here. There’s no hustle. There’s no labor. Like when I was 22, I spent 7AM – 4PM every day in the summer at a tree nursery, lugging around trees for commercial landscaping projects around the Northeast. It was hard, sweaty work with a routine. In retrospect, I probably would have killed it doing that exact job and setting it to ZZ Top’s Shaking Your Tree on TikTok.
But those were the day of the brick phone. Could barely fire off a text to the boys about grabbing beers after a day of planting Japanese Maples in a suburban Maryland office park.
Use social media to share what you make with the world. Then keep that “success” in perspective.
Don’t contribute to the noise.
Resist social media disease brain.
Use your energy and limited time in this life to create the kind of content you want to see in the world.
Stay humble.