Julian Dorey Podcast - #13 - Influencers Part 3: THE "I AM YOU" THEORY

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

SOLO POD - In the third and final part of our conversation about influencers, Julian takes us through some examples of the influencers fighting back against the negative stereotypes within the industry, the Gen-Z trends that may point towards a different influencer of the future, and the influencers coming up who actually aren’t really influencers at all.   Then, in the second half of the episode, Julian discusses a little known influencer theory, introduced back in 2019 by music executive and Nike athlete, Charlie “Rocket” Jabaley, called, The “I AM YOU” Theory. Charlie’s premise with The “I AM YOU” Theory isn’t just about influencers either.    It’s about all of us. ~ YouTube FULL EPISODES: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Show Notes: https://www.trendifier.com/podcastnotes  TRENDIFIER Website: https://www.trendifier.com  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And he said, in reality, the people who have had the most attention in the history of the world in the most important things and who have made the most difference on humanity as a result across culture and pop culture or whatever you want to say are the people who are actually the closest to being just fucking like you. All right. All right. all right all right i i know i was hard on influencers last week i told you that was coming though part two was always going to be focused on the negative stereotypes that have risen up in this industry and that's what we covered let's be honest it was pretty fucking funny too but this week as i promised for the third and final part of our series on influencers and and the state of the influencer industry i told you that we would focus on more of the positives and we're going to do that We're going to talk about some influencers who have fought back against these stereotypes with their content and how they put themselves out there.

But we're also going to talk about some things that have happened in the industry that don't really have to do with the actual influencers at all. You don't know what I mean there, but you'll see soon enough. The final part of this episode is going to cover that theory that I hinted at last week at the end of part two. And it's a theory that Charlie Jabali came up with in the beginning of 2019. And it's called the IMU theory.

And I won't tell you what it's about yet. You'll have to see that at the end of the episode. But the reason I wanted to close this three-part series with it is because not just for influencers, but for all of us. Anyone who has attention, but all of us. Everyone who puts out content on social media and puts themselves or a part of their life out in public. I believe that what Charlie was talking about relates to all of it. And it's something that everyone would do very well for themselves to follow. I'll leave that there.

So anyway, let's get right into it. You know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Treadify. Let's go. This is one of the great questions in our culture. Where is the nuance? You're giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me?

Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it. If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. One of the many trends that has popped up on Instagram over the past year or two, but especially like the last year that we all partake in or many of us do is the instagram versus reality trend now most of you know exactly what i'm talking about when i say that but for those of you who don't it's exactly what it sounds like it's when you put up a picture that shows this overly filtered curated aesthetic of your whatever picture this is on instagram and then you put a picture next to it that shows you without all those things and maybe an exaggerated bad pose that makes you look funny or just for lack of a better word normal and you call it instagram versus

reality i think it's safe to say. That when this started to really take off. Other than maybe one post here and there. No one really expected any influencers. To really run with it. Because influencers. Their whole point is to curate this beautiful aesthetic. You know.

With the basic bitch poses. And I mean that towards both males and females. And all the same shit over and over again that makes their life look perfect and their feed look professional and them look like they are better than so people kind of figured some of them might actually do it for a post and that would be it and for the most part that seems to be the case and most influencers have not really partaken over the long haul with this but the ones who have have developed very loyal followings and in some cases have even built whatever brand they do get out of the movement itself.

And by the way, before I go on, you've heard me use the term brand referring to people a lot. Like I've definitely used it in several episodes where it's applicable. I fucking hate that term. We got to replace this. Like calling people brands, it's like it's dehumanization 101. I feel so stupid. I feel like a bad marketing account executive saying that word out loud. Anyway, I digress.

If people have opinions on a new word we can use, I haven't really thought about it, but I should. And if you think about it and come up with a good one, let me know. I'm all for it. All ears. Anyway, one influencer that I want to bring up first, who's unique in that she has literally taken this trend to the next level and built her entire following, basically, out of it, is this influencer named Geraldine West. Now, Geraldine is not enormous. I think as of the time of this recording, she has like 60,000 followers. But she's a travel and lifestyle influencer. And when I say she's taken it to the next level,

what I mean is she's taken Instagram versus reality and made it an art form. So Geraldine doesn't just post a picture of her doing the nice pose with the perfect side and then on the other side the reality side she again curates an entire aesthetic and you say okay well how is this instagram versus reality the way it's instagram versus reality is because she takes day-to-day normal things like doing the wash or waking up in the morning or cooking food or using public transportation and she exaggerates both ends of it so on the instagram side she shows this bougie almost like princess princess-esque life with all these props everything minus the servants you know putting grapes in her mouth.

And then on the reality side, she makes her life look like a disheveled mess. And it's almost like, you know, it's an act. She makes overly dramatized faces, and it's kind of funny, and it's very, very relatable. And so her followers have really gravitated towards her. And again, she's built her following out of this because they get a good laugh out of it, and she does extremely high a great job and it's gotten attention in the media i will put a picture right down here if you're watching me and not listening it's below my finger is that yeah that's that's your right sorry i'm like getting dyslexic right now but i think this is the right side of the screen so to be down here i'm using my left hand so i get confused anyway

so i like geraldine and i wanted to lead with that just because she took it to a different level and got really creative with it. As I said, though, she's a smaller influencer. What about the bigger ones? Has anyone really leveled up on this as a big influencer and made it a central part of their brand? And the answer is yes there was an influencer named rihanna meijer i i don't know why i picked the hardest names on here i feel like i say it every episode so i hope that's right rihanna rihanna whatever it is she's she's great anyway back in i want to say the beginning of coronavirus, so maybe March or April,

she made a big leap and made the literal Instagram versus reality trend a central part of her brand. Now, why was this important? It was important because she already had 600 or 700,000 followers. She was already big. And once again, she was also a travel and lifestyle influencer, similarly to Geraldine. But Rihanna had really built her following, not just as a blogger and a vlogger and someone who was a legitimate influencer in these spaces, but as someone who was beautiful and had a perfectly curated feed with perfect pictures that made her figure look like an absolute work of art and her face and everything look amazing at all times.

It was your typical influencer professional aesthetic. And she decided to get on the instagram versus reality trend but when she was later asked about it she admitted that she was very very afraid to do it and the reason she was afraid to do it is because she felt that her following had built an expectation of who she was she was this perfect beautiful never having a flaw on her instagram influencer model whatever insert buzzword here and she thought well if i show people this to be funny are they gonna think i'm a fraud and so at least for a few weeks she held off and she continued her regular when she was thinking

of doing this she continued her regular content and then she said fuck it and she hit the button and she did the instagram versus reality and she said there were a few people who had hate and unfollowed her and called her a fraud but most of the reaction was the complete opposite at the time of this recording i believe she has around like 1.5 million followers now a few months later so clearly she struck a chord there and what's even more notable is she didn't just do it once she kept going with it she kept going and going and going and she went even overboard she would do everything she could to contort her body and and make herself look completely unflattering at any point it was funny i mean you look at it it's it's pretty funny i'll

put another picture down here as well so you can see it but the media clamored towards her because they said you know you're getting a lot of attention out of this and your following loves you. What's the story? Is this something you're going to do long term? And this is when she talked about those fears I mentioned. But she said, yeah. Yeah, I think it is because what people appreciate is, OK, they realize it's possible for someone to actually be beautiful and be a true influencer, which she's both of those things, but also still be human and have their moments and have their

flaws. And as her follower growth pointed out, there are a lot of people who appreciated that more than just the regular perfect curated feed that shows them the same thing that they've seen a million times over and over again from other influencers whose sole job is to convince them that they have a better life than you do meaning you the follower i don't know i i thought these two girls were great examples there are more but this is something we've seen and it's something that's it's it's this growing trend of of reality i should say that's continuing to get more noise the other aspect to this though is a generational one you say what what do you mean by that i've talked about the millennials and Gen Z's

and I've put them all under the same umbrella in a lot of cases not every case and it's true they have a lot of overlap I'm like towards the line I'm a millennial but there's plenty of overlap between the two

the thing about Gen Z though is more than all of the millennials they literally grew up with no reality of anything but the internet and in many cases especially the ones who are in the heart of gen z who are maybe 19 years old right now something like that they don't really have a memory of a world without iPhones. So their concept of their public image on socials and that whole mobile culture is very, very deeply ingrained within them. And they grew up in a world that showed the value of curated content and aesthetics. They grew up in a world that told them that they had to look a certain way to present themselves and that they had to get a certain number of likes to actually have self-worth and value.

And that the whole point of social media was to show your life in the best image you could, regardless of what the actual circumstances in your life were. And like many things in life, where the old law of physics that I've talked about before comes into play, things happen as a result. And you say, what law of physics? The one where for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. And I am not saying that the data or the evidence suggests that this is reflective of the entire Generation Z, what I'm about to say, but it has certainly created a lot of noise across that generation and seems to be growing major focus on influencers and on content for themselves, like the non-influencers, that highlight the realities of life and don't put filters on things and don't curate feeds and aren't worried about aesthetics. They are focused on the realities of life that are real and relatable. To go back to episode four where i talked all about that and we've seen this across some of the influencers that they've really grown over the years so we go to taylor

lorenz who at the time of the writing of this article that i'm going to refer to which was towards the end of 2019 she was with the atlantic but now she's with the new york times in the same capacity as a tech reporter. But Taylor Lorenz did this great piece, and I'll have it in the show notes, about all these influencers, especially focused on the ones who are 17, 18, 19, 20 years old in the heart of Gen Z, who have developed enormous followings without doing any of the traditional things the influencers have had to do to build followings. So she was talking specifically about people like Emma Chamberlain, Jazzy Ann, Joanna Setia, and there were a ton of other names in there. And so the article was great in my opinion because it really went deep into the root attitudes of the situation

and in english what do i mean by that taylor went in and specifically asked the questions to generation z kids and even some of the generation z influencers and marketers who study this stuff about what caused this sudden rise in real content and in things that featured stuff like Hoosier Cam, which is the one where you see the grainy pictures with the 1998 timestamp like it was taken with a disposable camera on Instagram that are so big. What led to things like that as opposed to visco filters becoming the big craze and the big fad and the consistent answers that she got across the board no matter who she was talking to was that these kids who grew up seeing all these influencers take pictures in front of the same walls that painted some bullshit that

they lined up for days or not days but hours just for the chance to take the same picture that the last hundred influencers in front of them just took seeing those walls seeing the same avocado toast pictures and bullshit candids all these curated fake lives that Gen Z had to be witnessing growing up when the millennial influencers were rising and taking over the marketplace, they pushed back against it. And they said, we don't like this. This isn't what we want. These expectations are way too fucking high. And speaking of that term, by the way, brand, that I railed against at the beginning of this, some of the kids specifically have mentioned, like some of the ones that Lorenz quotes in here, they mentioned that there is no such thing as on-brand. There is no such

thing as a feed aesthetic. If they want to take a picture of them in the shower next to a picture of them at the prom, if they're in high school, they're going to do it. And they're not going to care if they look entirely different next to each other on Instagram. They're not worried about how that color pattern looks when you hit the page. They see through it.

They find it to be bullshit. Now, in the article, Lexi Carbone, who's a content marketer at later expanded upon this a little bit and she said everyone is trying to be more authentic people are writing longer captions they're sharing how much money they make and i think it all goes back to you don't want to see a girl standing in front of a wall that you've seen thousands of times we need something new it she actually points in that quote onto transparency as well which was the other main topic of episode four on authenticity and

transparency but this is what it is these kids want to see things that they can actually relate to instead of something that they've learned to be able to have a great bullshit meter and say, I don't think that's how it really is. To capitalize on that point, Gen Z influencer Reese Blutstein, who was quoted in the article, said, for my generation, people are more willing to be who they are and not make up a fake identity. We're trying to show a real person doing cool things as a real person, not trying to create a persona that isn't actually you. At this point, these quotes are repeating what I'm saying. I don't need to read anymore. Check out the article. I think it's great. But the bottom line is Generation Z has just completely learned to see through this,

and it's being reflected in the content that they are now prioritizing. And I need to highlight, it's not all of them. You still absolutely see curated feeds and contests over how many likes they get based on how perfect the picture is. You see all this stuff. It's not a way. Like, those trends aren't gone. But there's a rise in trends that want to fight back as an opposite force against what we've seen throughout the growth of specifically Instagram, but social media as a whole, that whole comparison culture thing. Oh, and one other thing before I move on here. The fact that we've seen so many

negative stereotypes come up with influencers has now led to literal influencers having a strong distaste for that word and pushing back on it and saying no no we don't want to be called an influencer you say okay how does this work specifically the ones who I think also have the best argument on this are influencers from YouTube who much prefer to be called creators and are very vocal about it. Even if they have big followings and create a lot of content on Instagram too. The people who came up on YouTube like the term that YouTube invented, I guess, back in like 2010 of creator. They do not want to be called an influencer. And it's just kind of funny when you listen to them kind of reason about this because the way they explain it ends up technically not really being true

because they say, well, an influencer is someone who creates content specifically for brands to pay them. I guess a content creator on YouTube doesn't have to do that because they get the ads curated for them by YouTube. But many times a lot of creators do do that and they do product placements and they have marketing on the back end, like affiliate marketing with products that they endorse. So it is kind of the same thing. But there's such a bad stereotype on the back end like affiliate marketing with products that they endorse so it is kind of the same thing but there's such a bad stereotype on the word influencer now that a lot of these people are trying to distance themselves from it and the real hypocrisy comes from the people who are literally on instagram as influencers who try to say man i'm not an influencer. No, I don't subscribe to that language.

Like, yes, you are. If you work with brands who pay you to push products that hopefully you are very passionate about on Instagram, you're an influencer. It's just people don't like that now because they hate what it has to say. That's the negativity implied with the word. Now, I told you that we were going to talk about influencers who are invading the market who aren't influencers. I said something like that in the intro.

And I know that sounded confusing. But to start off this point, I want to talk about an influencer who hit the marketplace I think a couple years ago now. And she went by the name of Shudu. Now Shudu showed up on Instagram as a supermodel. a perfect-looking, prototype African model who posted content that looked like it was straight out of Vanity Fair. And so she hit the feed on Instagram and immediately got some attention

and even got some models around the world to follow her because her aesthetic and her skills as a model were incredible and the thing is no one could pinpoint who shudu was they'd never heard of her they didn't know who was taking these pictures what brands she was sponsoring and there was really no background So people began to get very suspicious. And they started to reach out to Shudu, asking some probing questions, trying to figure out who the fuck she was. And that's when the person behind the account of Shudu decided to come clean. And the person behind the account was a British photographer named Cameron

James Wilson and when he came clean what I mean is he came clean by saying that Shudu doesn't exist you see Shudu was a CGI creation of his. And what Cameron wanted to do was, in his words, create an art piece. And he saw her as a, quote, virtual celebration of beautiful dark-skinned women. Which all might be true. But the bigger point here was that Shudu was a virtual influencer. She was not a human being. And yet she was able to develop, I think she got like 200,000 followers out of that, like quick, before the cat was out of the bag.

And it started to raise a greater point. A couple greater points for one thing were we at a point in time now where influencers had become so homogenized and so similar across every single one that we were sick of what they were putting out and we would turn to anything that just showed us something that was the best and maybe a little bit different even if it didn't exist i mean that's almost like a moral question but that was one thing to come out of it and the other thing was was shudu going to be some random exception to a rule or was it going to slowly now entered was shudu now going to introduce a new rule

meaning virtual influencers were going to start to become the craze. Obviously, Cameron James Wilson, the photographer, did not realize just how much Shudu would spread. And it sounds like, I'm speculating here based on his comments in the article, it sounds like he never expected Shudu to get anywhere near the level of attention that she did nonetheless after revealing shudu's identity he continued the account and continues it to this day at the time of this recording and listening to him talk about it cameron despite the fact that he felt conflicted about admitting it in the first place has joined the team of people who think that virtual influencers are in fact the next craze and represent a better departure or however you say it

a better alternative to the content we see from human influencers in our already virtual world. And I said that Shudu, the big question around her was, was she going to be the rule or the exception to the rule? Was she going to be a new rule or the exception to the rule? And it seems like we're at least starting to get our answer that Shudu was going to be a new rule because sometime later, I think it was less than a year later, another account popped up. And unlike Shudu, this account looked very obviously virtual reality. I would almost describe it as Pixar-esque.

Beautifully curated, beautifully designed, looks human, but you can tell it's completely CGI. And this account was called Lil Mikaela. And Lil Mikaela, even at the beginning, there were still people who weren't sure if she was virtual or not. People thought, well, maybe there's just some kind of crazy filter job or CGI cartoon job of a real person, and Mikaela's real, and we just don't know it. But Mikaela was another step beyond Shudu.

Michaela was more like a person. She had opinions. She stood for things. She had interests and likes. She wasn't just putting out pictures that looked great. Michaela was a social justice warrior she was an advocate for groups like black lives matter black girls code and other causes she was also someone who had commentary in her posts it's like she was talking to her following like she was a regular kid

she was I guess she was supposed to be like late teens. And then the situation really exploded when Mikaela basically announced to the world that she was a singer too. And she had actual songs and singles. And if you don't believe me, go to YouTube and look at some of her latest singles. One came out like two months ago, I think. These things get millions of views. Today, Mikaela has like two and a half, three million followers, something like that. She was featured in a major ad campaign alongside, I think, Bella Hadid.

Gigi or Bella, I think it was Bella. At the Milan fashion show, I think. I could be wrong about that. It was one of the major fashion shows. And she was working, in air quotes there, with Bella Hadid and some other models on the red carpet and being sponsored by major brands like Louis Vuitton and Versace all those and so people did quickly figure out that she wasn't real but some of the reporters who wanted to get confirmation reached out to Michaela and actually got a response that agreed to some DM interviews and so the reporters would have questions ready to see where they could get

her in case you know she was a bot or something like that and michaela's answers showed like a real person behind her and so that one was actually a simpler explanation there were people on the other end there were representatives representatives of a company called brud or brood it's an artificial intelligence and robotics company that this this part was a little confusing to me but they have like a music arm too which would explain the music i don't know if if the music that michaela puts out is actually a manufactured voice and sound or if they do have a voice who's doing that for that part i'm a little confused about but it was this company that was trying to prove point with a virtual influencer

and who has obviously had a lot of success now we've seen some other influencers i don't have the names in front of me but we've seen other influencers who virtual ones who look similar to michaela who have now started to creep up on social media and have a following not as big as hers but get one so we've started to see this trend take off and for one thing I in I view the trend as an indictment on the influencer industry as I alluded to earlier because it's basically saying okay everything's gotten so homogenized i already explained this part but everything's gotten so homogenized that hey let's turn to people who aren't even people it's got to be better it's got to give us something

different right and the scariest part of all is that these virtual influencers like Lil Miquela have managed to build an actual psychological relationship with at least some of their following. I mean, it's pretty legit. And if you don't believe me, there was a quote from a kid named Anthony Reyes, and this was in a BBC article. He's a kid from Michigan, talking about Lil Miquela and what he thinks of her. And I couldn't stop reading what he said because to me it was actually a little scary. I read this quote, I worry about a world where we have such incredible innovations from machines that we forget about the fine line between what's human and what's not. And some people roll their eyes and say, you're nuts. We know if it's human or if it's not. When you hear quotes like what Anthony said, okay, maybe you and I know, but the younger generations, who's to say they do? Who's

to say they think the same way? Who's to say they don't view machines as just as human as anything else they see? So here's what Anthony had to say. I was drawn to Michaela not only for her artistic aesthetic, her, he's already calling her a person. But for her activism. Michaela is Michaela, whatever that entails. People have attempted to discredit her and her artistry due to the way she presents herself, but they're missing the point. Despite gaining a massive following, Mick remains someone who cares about her fans. He gave her a nickname in there. He referred to her repeatedly as her. He mentioned things like her artistry,

the way she presents herself as if she's fucking presenting herself. This kid is talking about her like she's a human fucking being. I mean, it's right here in front of us. We can hear it. The article then goes on to state, but what about the fact that she's a virtual character and anthony continues in reality isn't every influencer digital you only know them

to exist due to them existing on a digital platform whether that's Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. This kid, and he does not necessarily speak for everyone. For all we know, he could be an outlier here. But he was quoted in this story, and he's an 18-year-old prime Gen Z member of America, and so it got my attention but this kid just said in that quote implicitly that the influencers he's grown up witnessing he doesn't really even view as human because they come to him through his phone he doesn't see the beating heart on the other end regardless of how great or bad they are they are are a human being before people like Lil Miquela. He grew up not noticing that difference. He grew up in a world where he considered them this false reality that's just there for his entertainment.

So what's the difference of do they actually exist or don't they? This is a scary thing to me it's a scary thing because we also are looking at a world where things like sex robots and stuff like that are very much a almost present-day reality but five ten years out they'll actually be full-blown realities. And where people will suddenly maybe fall back on having relationships with inanimate objects who have to respond to every beck and call. And whose opinions don't count. And whose logic isn't logic. It's not real. And I worry about the disconnect this can cause among each other as humans. And the feelings we can have within our groups.

These are questions and moral conundrums we have to talk about. made their lives look so great that people, especially the younger generations, will find anything to go feel a little bit more realistic with the content they're looking at. This world is now on a collision course with the incoming societal quandary about man versus machine and whether or not the fine line between the two remains or if it starts to get crazily blurred so this goes far beyond just this part one part two part three of influencers this is a societal question about humanity and influencers are just naturally with all the attention they have the good and the bad and the questions that they raise they are even now in some way in the middle of the entire thing themselves as an industry to close out this little segment right here i want to go back to the cameron james wilson guy the photographer who created Shudu.

And the quote that he gave the Huffington Post where he was justifying Shudu and more influencers like her. Quote, I think we are, as ourselves, becoming more virtual in our everyday lives. Everything we experience is kind of through some kind of virtual network now. So it wouldn't surprise me if digital models became more popular and more standard. I think it's quite surprising that someone like Shudu can look more realistic than some of the real influencers out there. We kind of live in a shocking time where 3d people are more genuine than real people i think that's kind of more scary in my eyes so even one of the guys who is enabling this whole thing finds that scary and he's still doing it and being a part of it because

he's gotten to a point where he thinks that everything we see is so fake that the things that are actually fake might actually be more real i told you we were going to be positive in this episode this is one thing that's a moral conundrum that i have to raise so yes i really appreciate some of the influencers who are fighting back against these stereotypes be it geraldine west or rihanna meyer or whoever else is doing it and there are plenty who do I really appreciate the influencers who do great work and put out consistent content and give a ton of value to their following, in some cases where they're not paid enough for all the work they do and the free advice and value that they give out. But to all the influencers who have perpetuated the negative stereotypes

and tried to compete with each other just to do the same shit and try to get an extra follow or an extra like or more than the other person doing it, yeah, it's part of what's caused a problem here. And it's now joined the ranks of a greater problem and made it even bigger in the incoming machine age so we're coming towards the end here now and at this point we know why people follow influencers when they do and we know all the hot button points that make influencers fall into the bad stereotypes and therefore make us not like them i think it's been

i think the horse has been beaten dead on this one and i don't need to talk about it much more but i told you i was going to close with the theory from charlie rocket chabali called the imu theory and i told you i was going to close with it because i think it is a general magic wand or magic law whatever you want to say for not just the entire influencer industry to follow not just for anyone who has attention in society to follow but even for all of us regular people who don't have major followings and maybe never will, it's something that we should all follow. And the theory, the IMU theory, was something that Charlie discussed publicly for the first time on the Ed Milet Show back at the beginning of 2019. Now, I actually haven't heard anything from Ed Milet in a while. I know he was a top 100

podcast, but I feel like maybe he's not doing it anymore. I could be wrong about that. He might still be doing it every day. But there was a point there where Ed Milet was huge. And it's like a personal improvement type podcast, one of those. And so he had on this guy, Charlie Rocket, and the very short end of it is Charlie Rocket's story is he was a very obese, overweight kid who pretty much grew up spending all his time in his mom's basement in Atlanta or the Atlanta area and was a white guy but absolutely loved hip-hop like a lot of white guys i did too charlie though took that to a whole new level and built a studio in his basement and actively networked in the hip-hop space and eventually he would get some acts or acts were trying to be acts to come over record some songs and his network grew and he started to get access to people who had more and more talent and it all really crystallized for him when a guy walked in i think to his basement i guess one day and agreed to work with him and then blew up and that guy was two chains

and there was another i forget the name but there was another two-person rap group who you would know right away. I should know the name, but I forget it, that he also helped blow up and worked with. And he was a music manager and business manager for these guys and obviously, especially with 2 Chainz, did very well for himself, made a lot of money and was a young, I guess, millionaire. But like I said, Charlie was obese and he always battled his weight and he was very insecure about it too. And so when he was in, I think his mid twenties, he got diagnosed with a brain tumor. So he went in and had surgery and he recovered from the brain tumor and obviously had to lose a lot of weight. He had to change his life around. And he started to think about his dreams and decided that like not every kid, but a lot of kids, he had grown up wanting to be a professional athlete at some point. And especially for a kid who was fat living in his mom's basement, that was always a – that's never going to happen. So he said said all right

i'm gonna become some kind of athlete some kind of professional athlete however you could designate it professional fuck it i'll become a nike athlete i'll lose all this weight and i'll compete in a triathlon or a marathon or something and i will become an inspiration through that and he did and he left behind the music career during all this and then ended up appearing in some commercials for nike so he was officially a nike athlete and has made basically like a motivational speaker career out of this as a result and i think he's only like 31 or 32 years old he's young but charlie who still battles all his demons and is very open about it, Charlie got on the Ed Milet podcast and in the context of the hour wondering who's the highest grossing superhero of all time, be it movies, book sales, comic book sales, whatever, all in. surprised to find out it was spider-man he said that's interesting i would have thought it was superman or batman you know the the good-looking one with the chiseled chin the one who was your prototypical six-pack and big chest superhero but instead it was spider-man he started to think

about that he said okay well spider-man did not have a chiseled chin his entire body was covered by his suit like you you couldn't even see any part of his face he wasn't particularly good looking he was kind of your average schmo he grew up his parents were dead and he grew up lower class or lower middle class at best with his aunt and uncle. Humble beginnings. And he was kind of like a normal guy. He actually had an accident to be able to become a superhero. You know, whereas Superman came from another planet.

He wasn't of this planet, literally. He was extremely good looking. Batman, Bruce Wayne was a billionaire. Also extremely good looking. Muscular, thene was a billionaire also extremely good looking muscular the whole bit and he said that that's really interesting spider-man's a lot more relatable to a common person so he started to think on this and he said okay what is the most popular religion in the world by following so he googled that and found out it was Christianity, which has, I don't know, maybe like a billion followers, two billion followers, something like that around the world. He said, okay, Christianity. Who's the central figure in that religion?

Obviously, Jesus Christ. So he starts thinking about Jesus. He goes, okay, what do we know about this guy? He was a carpenter. He goes, okay, what do we know about this guy? He was a carpenter. He didn't wear fine clothes. He hung out with poor people regularly. He had scraggly long hair and a beard. And in life, he really only had 12 major followers, like the 12 apostles or, yeah, that's what they called them, apostles or disciples, something like that.

And he thought to himself, you know, if Jesus had lived his life, which armor and coming in on a beautiful horse and riding around like a king or like the son of god maybe he would have had a lot of followers in life but he didn't do that and in death he's become the most immortal figure probably in the history of religion that's really really, really interesting. Because it was very relatable to a lot of normal people. So what about sports? Who's the most popular athlete I've ever known in my lifetime? And he said it's not even close.

It's Michael Jordan. even close it's michael jordan michael jordan was the first self-made billionaire to basically get that out of his brand to use that word again as an athlete he was the first one to do that and he's widely regarded as the greatest player to ever play and so guys that came after him were always chasing his ghost guys like Kobe rest in peace and especially LeBron who before he came into the league was anointed the chosen one the king gonna be the greatest whatever and LeBron has never been able to get over the hill of Michael Michael is still I think LeBron's actually use this word he's still the ghost that LeBron chases and I don't know that

he'll ever eclipse him in people's heads regardless of what lebron accomplishes and what charlie realized is that it's not lebron's fault but there are just some clear differences with jordan minus the six rings and minus the things he accomplished on the court and minus the brand that he created with the shoes and the entire offshoot within the major company itself, Nike, minus all the stuff he did. Jordan had an incredibly, incredibly relatable background and story. Jordan was not the chosen one. He was not the king. He didn't come into the league the number one overall pick. Jordan was the scrawny kid who got cut from his high school basketball team. He's the guy who had to constantly prove himself mantle of the NBA in the context of the history of the game. He was the guy who then stopped his career at the peak of it at one point because he had a personal tragedy in his life.

Which, you know, is obviously something he can't control. But the point is, everything that he did, every part of his story had that struggle and then had that normal life thing that other people could say, hey, I see myself in that. And again, to Charlie's point, a lot of that is not LeBron's fault, but LeBron was the king. He was the chosen one. He's been that since he was 14. He's been the guy with all that attention and that expectation. He's not like you. He's been that since he was 14. He's been the guy with all that attention and that expectation. He's not like you. He's somebody else. When Michael Jordan was playing, it could be a Tuesday night in the second quarter of a February game in the regular season. If he was past the ball, 25,000 camera flashes around the stadium went off. Nobody has ever had that kind of attention, including LeBron, before or since then. Michael Jordan was very much like everyone else,

even when he became something where he wasn't. So now Charlie really felt like he was on to something. And he said, okay, if it's true with all these guys and all these examples, the one thing that might actually put this over the top is if it could be true with a corporation who are widely always easy to rag on and hate. So he said, okay, who is the biggest company in the history of the world? He said, it's Apple. He said, okay, who's the face of Apple?

Who's the person that made Apple what it is today? Steve Jobs. That guy right there, pointing to the guy on my wall. And he realized Steve Jobs was the first public company CEO to lose the suit. He didn't wear a suit. He wore his own outfit. He wasn't shaven or shaved, however you say it.

And as Charlie put it, he looked like my dad. So that when Steve Jobs died, for all the imperfections he had as a person, and he had plenty, he was human like everyone else. When he died, people were weeping.

There were memorials everywhere across the country. He had changed the face of humanity. And Steve Jobs came from Silicon Valley, the Technorati capital, the place where everything is a bubble because the great genius goes there and it's the genius that gives us all the products we use and come to rely on. But the people who create it, we just can't understand as the common man. And yet Steve Jobs spent his entire career trying to live outside that bubble. By speaking directly to the people who he was creating the products for. Us. to the people who he was creating the products for us so as charlie pointed out steve jobs did not name his products in spiron 6000 or whatever 56 7z he named his products things like lisa

or ipod iphone ipad he wanted us to see ourselves in the products. You've heard me talk about Steve in episode six. Charlie just hit the nail on the head with how personal he made it. I thought it was beautiful. And so Charlie realized all these people, when you look at the highest rungs of life, they all follow the code of having something that makes them human. So when they become these people or these corporations, whatever, with all the attention and all the hoopla and all the riches and all the fame and all the things that most of us will never know and will never experience, the background that gets them there and that in many cases they stick with as a part of their story and who they are and what their identity is are things that we can all inherently understand now at the time that i'm recording this the video of this on youtube i think has about 2 000 views on charlie's ig tv i think it's got maybe less than that. Not many people have taken the time to watch this.

So maybe the people who listened to that full episode of Ed Milet have heard it. But the fact that this did not go viral blows my fucking mind. Because Charlie also has 150,000 followers or 170,000 followers on Instagram. Like he's not a nobody and he does motivational speaking i don't know why he doesn't talk about this more so if it's if it's up to me this is the kind of thing that will be re-unearthed or unearthed however you say it and we'll all start paying attention because what i did is i took it a step further. And I told you I was closing with this for all of us, but obviously I'm closing this as the third part of our series on influencers. And the reason is

because influencers have lost complete sight of this. The reason Charlie gave this theory is because he said the paradigm that's been created on social media by the influencers and by the culture that we've all enabled that comparison culture that i pointed to in episode one that paradigm is you have to show that i'm perfect i'm better than you i'm up here i'm not like you that's why you follow me you look up to me because i am i am above you and he said in reality the people who have had the most attention in the history of the world in the most important things and who have made the most difference on humanity as a result across culture and pop culture or whatever you want to say

are the people who are actually the closest to being just fucking like you and so i dug deeper on it i went beyond just what charlie said and i started to look across even some of the realms that he already looked across to see if there were more people i could actually find that fit this narrative i'm gonna start going through them right now whipping them off because i had the biggest smile on my face while I was doing it because it is applicable to everything. And I want to say, by the way, it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who don't follow this at all and yet have enormous brands and enormous followings and make a fuck ton of money and are very famous. That's not what this means. What it means is that very often, more often than not, far more often than not, the most beloved people, meaning they have all those same things, the fame, the attention,

the hanging on their every word, but the most beloved people who even are beloved long after their time, long after their death in many cases, whose legacies live on beyond just what they do in life, are the people who adhere to this. And so I started with actors. And I asked myself, I said, okay, just think really fast, who's a really big actor? And I actually thought of someone that I had just seen a quick interview with the other day, who I love, Robert Downey jr and i said that's perfect robert downey jr is huge he's one of the biggest stars in the world so i googled it real quick and what do you know robert downey jr is the second highest box office grossing actor of all time

fitting right into charlie's theory so i'll explain about robert downey jr i'll get to the first the guy who's first by the way in a in a second too. But Robert Downey Jr. was a star when he was like 25 years old. He had the world by the balls and was an incredible actor. And then Robert Downey Jr. faced his own demons.

He became a drug addict. And time and time again, he fucked up and he fucked up his career. He went to jail, I think for two years at one point. He embarrassed himself in public. And in many cases, people said, he's throwing it all away. And they pitied him. But Robert Downey Jr. came back after he got out of prison. He cleaned up his life. This is years

ago now. And at the very beginning, he couldn't even get a job in Hollywood because none of the production studios would pay the insurance on him because when you have an actor, you have to pay insurance if something happens to them. And the insurance premiums on a guy

who had a history of being in jail and a drug addict were astronomical. No one would pay. I think it was actually, I could be wrong on this, I think it was Mel Gibson who actually be wrong on this, I think it was Mel Gibson who actually agreed to pay for his first major role. And Robert Downey Jr. even had to take roles at the beginning of his comeback, like on shit TV shows, which at the time was

unheard of in the early 2000s. So he had to humble himself. And then when he got his opportunity, he took advantage. And for the last two decades, he's been sober. He's been a voice of reason in Hollywood. He's been someone that people look up to. And if anything, his career culminated and reached its new plateau, its new beautiful place of success in 2008 when he took on the role that he will now forever be most known for of iron man and if there is not a little bit of iron irony in that and the fact that a guy who had been through the ringer who had experienced struggle publicly and embarrassed the fuck out of himself when life got to him and shit happened and lost everything in the public eye. When this guy got the role where he was literally Iron Man,

something that can weather the worst storms, iron, something that represents toughness and resilience, whatever you want to say, when he got that role, the symbolism isn't lost on me. It shouldn't be lost on any of you. And so instead of being this perfect life, big mansion, Hollywood star who's not like you and wants to remind you that he's not, he's the star, you're not, he walks the red carpet, you don't. Robert Downey Jr. has been a guy who, if anything, has shied away from publicity outside of his roles. He's a guy who came back from the bottom and rose up to the top and did it in a humble way and in a way that other people can draw inspiration from.

And it's not to say we're all going to be drug addicts or whatever, but what do we all do as humans? We all have struggles. We all have our moments of doubt. We all have our most trying moments. That's the way life is. You have bad moments and you have good ones. And the bad ones are the ones that end up defining you because it's how you respond to them. And Robert Downey Jr. had one of the ultimate responses to a very, very difficult bad moment.

The lowest of the low in many cases as people would say. And I told you there was a guy who was first on that list. And I smiled at that one because the guy on that list who was first was Samuel L. Jackson and for very different reasons Samuel L. Jackson fits the same pattern of struggle and relatability and the idea of humans having to go through hard work to accomplish the things they want to do and realize their dreams Samuel L. Jackson did not make it as an

actor until age 41 or 42 when he did Pulp Fiction in 1993 with Quentin Tarantino. Before that, Samuel L. Jackson was hustling around for bit roles and no one knew who he was. And he was barely paying his bills. He was in goodfellas for like two seconds he was in juice with tupac and queen latifah who also was lesser known at the time i think although she was a rapper he did all these little things and had no recognition and had to work for years and years and years and then finally when he got his chance he took advantage and now he's one of the most legendary actors to ever live and the number one box office earner there is this isn't a guy who was like incredibly good looking and

had it all when he was 23 this is a guy who had to grind like a motherfucker for years and not know if he was ever going to make it and then did come on what about sports Did. Come on. What about sports? Maybe the greatest tennis player of all time, regardless of gender, Serena Williams. Serena Williams is somebody whose career has unfolded before our eyes since I think she was 14 years old. In a sport that now prides itself on diversity, Serena Williams came in at a time where that wasn't really the case. It was a very upper-class, white society kind of sport. It didn't have diversity, regardless of what class you were from.

And Serena didn't just come in alone. She came in with her sister, Venus, who also in her own right is one of the better players to ever play the game. And so they had this kind of sibling rivalry and people watch that play out on the stage and they watch them play together in doubles and play against each other on the highest stages, including Wimbledon, coming of age as sibling rivals. So serena and venus to bring venus into the equation as well people saw their own childhoods with their own siblings in that scenario and yes serena won a lot and she's the best female player definitely to ever play the game and as i said maybe the best player period to ever play the game but along the way she's also shown

her humanity. She's someone who in a sport. Where they all are supposed to be tight lipped. And not show emotion. She shows a lot of emotion. And sometimes she gets in trouble for it. Which I think is bullshit. She wears it on her sleeve.

She's somebody who went. And literally got pregnant. Had a baby. And then came back six months later. I think after having the kid, and then made it to the finals of the U.S. Open. Her entire career for vastly different reasons, playing out on a public stage, had so many aspects to it that made her so relatable. And then you look over. At even the fight game. And you look at McGregor.

Who I have on the wall here. Conor McGregor was. The first Irishman to ever really go into the UFC. There have been Irish boxers before. But he was an underdog. He was somebody that had no expectations. And he was somebody who went and. Got a trade when he finished high school. He was a plumber and he said fuck this i'm not going to be a plumber i want to go fight

his dad used to try to drag him out of bed and say you're an idiot there is no such thing as fighting and connor said no this is what i'm going to do and then in a sport where there was this kind of set way to do things a set way to fight, a set way to actually have your technique in the arena or in the octagon, I should say. Conor said, you know, no, I think there's different ways we can cut the cake here. And he invented his own way with it. And he gets a lot of shit because he talks a big game. But the thing about Conor McGregor, that a guy like Floyd Mayweather in boxing, who he ended up fighting very famously in that exhibition. Well, it wasn't. It was a professional fight. But in that boxing fight where he decided to become a boxer and fight Floyd.

The thing about McGregor that Floyd can never have, and it's nothing against Floyd. It's actually in some ways a compliment to Floyd in another way. But the thing McGregor has is McGregor's lost. Floyd's never lost. And I say that because it's not like McGregor just lost in his records, whatever it is, 25-4 or something like that. It's how it's happened and what's happened when he has lost and one of the things i will never forget and it's just one of many examples about this guy that makes him such an inspiration and something where people kind of see themselves in the own arc of

their life and how he goes after his dreams and the odds and and background that he came from that guys like him aren't supposed to make it. Besides all these things, when McGregor lost specifically in 2016 to Nate Diaz, as the loudest mouth in the room who talked massive shit going into the fight and then got beat fair and square, McGregor didn't run from it. He didn't talk shit after the fight. He didn't say, oh, it was bullshit. He shouldn't have really lost.

The ref fucked up or, you know, he slipped or he didn't make excuses. He came out and he said he beat me fair and square. He fought a great fight. But I will not shy away from this. And I'm roughly quoting here. I will not shy away from a loss. I'm roughly quoting here, I will not shy away from a loss. I will study it. I will analyze it. I will learn from it. He won tonight, but I will go work hard, and I will rise up again, and that's it. Very simple, and then he did. Six months later,

he beat Nate Diaz, and also in victory, Conor's one of the most gracious winners I've ever seen. I mean, you saw it with Cowboy Cerrone at the beginning of 2020. I mean, he kind of embarrassed Cowboy Cerrone. He beat him badly in like 19 seconds or something, and Cerrone was obviously pretty heartbroken. He worked hard to get to that fight and be able to put on a good show,

and he failed, but McGregor went right up to him and called him a champion and said, anyone who gets in here has my respect. And he had talked all kinds of shit heading into the fight. People see this, and they see somebody who has a beating heart in there. They don't just see an entertainer. They see all these things, whether it be the struggle in the background or the mentality he has and the public image he puts on even the stuff they don't agree with you know he does stupid shit too he gets in pub fights and he the nerd gamidoff or whatever the fuck his name is the russian guy who he hates he actually hates

that guy you know and i think he's literally committed crimes against him too before so like he does stupid shit too but mcgregor is relatable for all the other things that he does, including literally when he loses, which is something that frankly we all lose at some point in life. It's relatable. mention offhand but didn't go into but i have to finish for him is oprah oprah winfrey to this day has one of the most loyal brand followings there i am using that word again brand one of the most loyal followings that any individual in media has ever had i remember growing up my mom you know she was always busy she didn't have a ton of time to watch Oprah. But just in case she had a minute, it was always on in the background. When Oprah said, hey, I like this new product or this new brand, suddenly that became the hottest selling thing in the country. Because Oprah wasn't just a talk show host.

She had the couch and she brought people in and she didn't interview them she talked with them i've literally i think like when she did the lance armstrong thing in 2013 that you could probably call an interview that was a little different but throughout her whole career she had conversations with people she invented the idea of just saying hey the cameras are rolling let's just talk like no one else is here except she would also then turn to her audience and bring them into the conversation even at home she felt like you were becoming a part of the conversation and today with a totally different audience more of a male audience we see the same thing with joe rogan joe rogan doesn't have an agenda when he goes in to speak with people and he speaks with people of all different types and backgrounds

joe rent joe rogan goes in and rolls camera and just bullshits and talks and is interested in what the other person has to say and has a conversation and records it he makes you feel like you're sitting there he makes you feel like you're sitting there. He makes you feel like you're sitting around the table a part of it. Just having a talk. Whether it be with some guy he brings on that you never heard of

or Elon fucking Musk. It just feels very relatable. You look at music. Someone right now who a lot of people would consider maybe the best singer in the world is Adele. Adele is someone who has suffered openly from severe stage fright. She's someone who is open about all her insecurities. She's someone who, actually, she just lost a ton of weight, too, which was really cool. But she was someone who was never a size two or anything like that and was open about her own battles with her body.

And yet she had this incredible talent that then also in her music was always reflected in things that were so relatable to people's relationships. Her music is raw. Her lyrics are raw they're not these edited made for song only kind of deals and I'm not saying other singers do all that but I'm saying hers are special and she combines a talent that really no one that walks this earth has with all these things that other people can understand you saw one of the biggest documentaries on Netflix last year was Travis Scott's Look, Mom, I Can Fly.

That documentary, what I loved about it is it had no narrative. It was just literally cameras following him for like a year. And Travis let anything be fair game, whether it was the birth of his kid with Kylie Jenner, which I can't believe the Kardashians let that be filmed. I guess they don't have a choice because it's his kid too, but still. After he had what many considered the best album of the year. And wanted to win that first Grammy so bad and lost. People saw he showed that pain. He showed that disappointment. He didn't stand there and go oh I'm so happy for Cardi B. Like everyone else says.

And you know he wasn't a sore loser. But he wanted it. And you saw him leave. You saw the disappointment in his eyes. All the scenes where you watched him making the music. I actually wore the shirt in another episode. I designed the shirt because it was so fucking baller. But when you watch that scene in Hawaii where they finish the song No Bystanders.

And once it's all engineered by his producer for the first time as a finished product and you see that get played on the speakers for Travis and his buddies for the very first time if you don't have the hairs on your neck stand up at that feeling that he had when he did something great that he put so much work into I don't know what's going to stand up the hairs on the back of your neck because every time I watch that and I'm not rapper, I'm not a musician like that. I've never created anything even remotely as great as that song. But the victory of work and trying to finish something great, trying to make something new that other people are going to enjoy and all the torture that goes into that process to make sure it's awesome even those of us that never end up doing that we understand that and we understand

the vindication that someone feels on the other side of doing that and so when he gets up on that couch and starts jumping around and bobbing his head and losing his fucking mind we are all losing our minds watching that scene at least i was and one other musician story i had talked in episode five about post malone a lot obviously i'm a huge fan of his but post malone is a guy you look at him he's got all the tattoos you know he's an interesting cat he seems way different he seems kind of out here and and not like you, right? I disagree, though. When you look at his vibe, he's one of the most humble guys you'll ever see. He's somebody who smokes cigarettes and drinks Bud Lights and just likes to play beer pong like your basic college bro.

And he's self-deprecating of himself. Like, actually, I think he's probably very insecure and doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of himself, which is sad, but a lot of people can understand that. We all struggle with that. But what I really, really, really, really love is a story I heard about his come- from his manager dre london it was in some kind of documentary i don't remember what one maybe i'll go find it and put it in the show notes but dre london was talking about before post malone had even made white iverson before he was anybody known had a song out there that was known and Dre was looking at managing

him as a potential up-and-coming act he went over to the house that Post was staying in in LA and where Post was staying was with I forget the kid's name but he was staying with a video game streamer who he grew up with who had already kind of made it, who said to Post, hey, why don't you come out here and see if you can make it? I'll give you a room, rent-free, and you just go for it for a year or two or something. So this kid gave Post a room, and Dre London went over the house, and he walked back to where Post was,

and he found in the closet of the room a cot. It was a bed, a makeshift bed, if you want to call it that. And the room, which was not all that big, had been turned into this homemade makeshift studio. And he very quickly deduced that Post Malone had decided that his bedroom, in order to make it, he wanted it so badly that his bedroom was going to become his studio and he was just going to sleep if he could in the closet on a cot and at that moment Dre London said that's when I knew he was going to do it because he fucking wanted it and yeah we don't all become Post Malone we don't all have that story we don't all have that big come up but that idea of fucking having a dream

and doing crazy shit or just sacrificing our health to go after it even if we don't do it it's something that we can all understand and appreciate it's a part of that struggle that makes us human look at business i got two more i got business and then the last one's a funny one not a funny one but it's it's great you look at business the most famous businessman of all time is warren buffett warren buffett deals with leverage buyouts and capital raises and all this shit that you and i you know our eyes go in the back of our head trying to figure out what it is. But Warren Buffett has lived in the same regular middle class humble home in Omaha fucking Nebraska since the beginning. He wears the same kind of regular suits.

He's never been a guy to have 12 homes. And he talks like your grandpa and likes to eat ice cream on a cone he's just a normal guy he just happens to have 60 billion dollars and the final one that i just alluded to is royalty you look at royalty is kind of like a crazy concept now like the idea that there's still like a queen of england and all this shit like in the modern day world in powerful countries it seems seems dated but you know they also have a lot less power they're just it's like they're a royal family that's kind of paid to be rich and be a symbol for the country which you know i guess is what it is but when you think about royalty these people in the context of history and even today are always viewed up here. Even where they're respected heavily in British society by most, they're still different. They're not like you. They have the crown. They're famous royal family member. At least of the last century. Was Princess Diana.

Who died way too young. And died a legend. But Princess Diana. Broke every rule. Including the biggest one. She left. She divorced. The royal family. That hadn't been done before at that level

she had the private life that was exposed out in public with the paparazzi like a modern day celebrity who then you know she was uncomfortable with that and had to fight back and had to struggle with that and people felt bad for her she was the royal who hung out with poor people it was like jesus in a way right not to compare her to jesus but you know what i mean like to use charlie's example she was the person who was like the rock star and loved children and traveled the world and went to other countries places of diverse backgrounds and was this was this larger than life figure who got down in the sand and played with the kids just like the rest of them. Who got down into the worst areas, the places ravaged by AIDS even,

and sat at the hospital beds with all these people. Who just wanted to help. Who was someone who was friends with Mother Teresa. Princess Diana was all these things things and she was this icon. She was an icon because people saw her as the modern day woman. They saw her as the modern independent woman who just wanted her freedom and just wanted to do what she wanted to do, including help people who couldn't help themselves or help people who were disadvantaged divorcing the royal family when she was cheated on by charles and leaving that life and rebelling against the standards that supposedly she was supposed to be married into there because she wasn't going to put up with that shit was something that every woman around the world could get behind so much so that when she died that's one of my first memories

i mean it's like i'll never forget that like it's one of the very first things i can remember i was watching the hearse on tv i walked in it was like 6 a.m or whatever and my dad was watching it and said what's going on and he he said, they're driving Princess Diana to heaven. And he explained to me that the car was being driven to heaven. You know, like a dad explains to a young kid just to try to make sense of death. But hundreds of millions of people around the world watched that funeral. Almost 25 years later, she's one of the great legends of our time

and a timeless queen who never became a queen but she's the queen and it's because behind this wall of people who supposedly aren't like you she was like so many other people in society and people really admired that in her so my message to influencers is perfectly parroting what charlie's

already said this isn't me saying this this is him but if you really want to develop your bond with your fans and this is backed up by the polling i did of people and the types of influencers that they said they liked and the reasons they like these influencers if you really want to build that bond you need to show every reason why you're just like the people who follow you not why you are better than them and why your life is so much better. And why they should look up to you. Be on their level. Show your flaws. Celebrate your victories. Do everything.

But stay human. Be relatable. Don't worry about the moments that make you not look that good. It might be really good for your brand. You might be like Rihanna Meyer and make all your flaws the central part of your so-called perfect brand. They call that a paradox.

The IMU theory is something I said we all can relate to, to take this beyond influencers for a second, because we all do feel like we have to put out a certain vibe online we have to show a certain part of us and hide another part i'm not saying you got to show every part of your life and show all your losses though you're welcome to but maybe we should start taking a piece of the playbook that at least part of gen z has which is let's just show what happens. Let's have a good time with it and let's not try too hard.

It's a world where machines are taking over more and more and we're trying to get more and more in touch with the humanity that we seem to be losing at some points in time. So let's keep that hold with humanity and let's show everything that's good and bad about it and not just try to show what's perfect. I'll shut up now because I think I've beat this horse enough, but check out that theory. I will put that link in the show notes. And I hope that some of the good trends and positive trends that I mentioned that we've seen from influencers are

the kinds of things that the influencers who are coming up now are going to get behind. And I hope that it will also help the collective mental health and self-worth of especially kids in society who have to come up and figure out where they fit and what their value is in the world. I certainly hate it when I see so many kids questioning their self-worth because it's not what they see online, and they wonder if they're even worth it being on this planet, which is sadly something that some kids are asking themselves. But what's worse is that people who aren't kids,

people in my generation, even people older than me, are struggling with these same things too because they look online and that's where they live as well. And they have a lot of the same worries about their own insecurities because of the so-called perfection that they see as well. We covered that in those three episodes. So everything that comes up in society has good and has bad. I think there's a lot of good to influencer culture and i think there's a lot of great influencers out there i think that we need to recognize some of the

flaws that we've seen in this system and work to correct them and actually hold the industry accountable and celebrate the influencers who actually do seem to be real and don't seem to just try to create something fake that's it so anyway this is Julian Dory. I'm signing off now. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.