be goddamn yourself

A friend of mine is a big Instagram influencer in Mexico (nearly a million followers and deals with lots of brands). As far as I can tell, he is a happy man. He freely admits that he is selling a fake persona, and has achieved peace with it. I asked him if he could do something interesting with his account (from activism to conceptual art). His response: "every time I say anything that isn't consistent with the superficial Brand-aware junior/'hijo de papi' persona I get punished by the algorithm and it even makes me lose a lot of followers." The takeaway for me from this is that the strategy of "first become famous in a certain way and then cash out the social capital into something more meaningful" doesn't work. Superficial social capital can't be easily converted into meaningful and ethically useful social capital. This is why you should be 100% open about *being a weirdo* from day one. At least that's my strategy, and it seems to be working out.

by Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson