• This is something I was just talking to Taylor from the Atlantic about, it is baffling and frustrating how much shit influencers get as a whole. Like influencer culture, people being like, "Influencer culture is going to ruin this world. It's the end of us." It's like influencers as a group get a huge amount of shit online in print publications. Just in general.

    Why? I think one thing is-- I think it's a mixture of misunderstanding and jealousy. I think that everyone at this point has probably taken and posted in Instagram in their life and to think that there are people out there who make $ 10,000 for doing the thing that takes you ten seconds is infuriating. It's frustrating to work your entire life, work your way up the ladder, $75,000 after 10 or 15 years of work and to have a 20-year-old to publishes photos of themselves on the internet, make that in two weeks is always going to be difficult for people to understand.

    I think that it's different than being a musician or being an actor because, people look at musicians and they say, Billie Eilish. She's 17 and she's killing it right now but, I can't write a song. I'm not talented musically, so it makes sense that she makes all that money. The Rock is printing money right now and just always like literally, he's probably at the Federal Reserve right now printing money for himself, but people look at what he does and they say, "I can't do that, so it makes sense that he would make all that money." But they look at someone posting an Instagram photo and they say, "I do that every fucking day and I don't make that money."

    As influencer posts have become more authentic and in the moment and less editorial, even more so it's like I could do that. It's the same reason modern art gets all the shit. It's like, "Are you kidding me?" Like Rothko threw up some red and some yellow and sold the painting for 20 million dollars. I don't understand it. Jackson Pollock dribbles paint on the floor and he calls it art. What?

    It's why modern art gets so much more shit than a fairly unimportant, uninteresting piece of Renaissance art because people look at Renaissance art and they say, "Well, I couldn't paint that. I could work my whole life and I couldn't paint that but I could paint a red square on a canvas. That I could do." So, I think it is difficult for people to accept that other people are making money off something that they feel like they could do. I think that is the core of what frustrates people about the influencer space is that they wish they did it.

    The famous thing about Modern Art is, "I could do that but you didn't. It's true, you could paint what Rothko painted. I mean probably not exactly, honestly but there is certainly modern art that anyone with a ruler and a paintbrush could replicate but you didn't. The whole point of modern art is that, in the context of what art was at the time, it was incredibly revolutionary and to put a black stripe on a canvas and call it art was just completely out there. While now it seems really simple and easily replica and it's been in any IKEA canvas that you could buy, it was revolutionary at the time. Yes, what some influencers do isn't that hard as far as like a day-to-day thing. It doesn't take an unbelievable amount of talent.

    I mean, there are some influencers out there that are freakishly talented, one being the person that asked this question. Hi, Jamie. But they were there first. Like they saw it before you did. That takes foresight and that takes courage and that takes something and that is being rewarded a lot of times. It's like, they were there and you weren't. When you were turning your nose up at Instagram, they were publishing on it every day or they were running a blog when all their friends were just going out.

    I think influencers don't get the credit for how much they're changing both media and advertising, and I think we're going to look back on the people who are really successful. The cream of the influencer crop now as revolutionaries in 15 or 20 or years because it's never going back. We're not going to go back to magazines, we're not going to go back to watching TV, honestly. It's all changing so much and it is touching every piece of pop culture and every piece of media and I think that people who are you know crushing it today are absolutely not getting their due as far their impact on society and the history of, certainly, advertising. Let's talk about this in 10 years and see where we're at.
    Episode #144
    - Anger Towards Influencers, Effective Organic Posts, Brand Meetings