Under the Influence- How to Fake Your Way Into Getting Rich on Instagram

by Trey Ratcliff

  It’s much harder to stop a habit than it is to replace the bad habit with something different. A better way to approach taking yourself out of the social media equation is to reframe the situation and choose to try new things that bring more peace and meaning to your life. And you know, intellectually at least, that Instagram is not a thing that is bringing peace and meaning into your life. In fact, it’s the opposite.

  So, choose something you’d rather be doing than Instagram. Then, when you find yourself opening the app, do this other thing instead. Maybe you want to read more books, or hike, or listen to podcasts. One of my friends moved a news app to the square on her phone where Instagram used to be, and now, instead of opening Instagram, she opens the news app and reads a few news articles, instead of reading a few posts on social media.

  Go experience life. Don’t even worry about sharing it on Instagram.

  Social Media Nihilism

  There are a growing number of people who are completely removing themselves from social media.

  Some people, including Jaron Lanier, who wrote Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now, think we should all quit social media completely. Lanier suggests a number of reasons. One reason he suggested is that these platforms are creating algorithms to hack us and control our lives. Another one is that social media turns all of us into assholes. He makes some good points!

  Sivers has also left social media and he recently sent me an email that said, “The louder the world gets, the more I feel JOMO: Joy of Missing Out. How nice to have missed this week’s drama!”

  My friend Om Malik recently quit Facebook because he doesn’t really trust those guys. He’s also annoyed by the egotistic “fronting,” which he felt was affecting his own behavior. He wrote on his blog:

  I took a Facebook vacation about a year ago. It became a long break. And now it is a permanent vacation. Why? Because I don’t need it and don’t miss it. I left, not because of the company’s dodgy approach to privacy, data accumulation or its continued denial of its impact on shaping modern society. I left because it was making me someone I am not —someone who lives life through the eyes of others. There is a hard edge in Facebook life. People are always fronting—putting their best life forward.88

  Some people just don’t like the negativity and quit altogether.

  In an article for CNBC, journalist Christina Farr decided to try and stay off social media for a few weeks as an experiment. She started at a tech detox camp called “Camp Grounded,” where all guests had to check-in their tech-guns at the door in a “Robot Decontamination Area.”

  She wrote that the entire experience and the subsequent weeks without social media were transformative:

  But if I’m honest with myself, I was sucked in [to social media] a lot more than that, especially once I started following personal stylists, entrepreneurs and other glamorous Influencers on Instagram who served as a kind of benchmark about success in my own life.

  I tended to post carefully constructed photos on Instagram about once a week, which seemed like a reasonable cadence, with a focus on my relationship, career and travels (I’d alternate them to give off the impression that I’m a balanced person). Like most users, I’d pay close attention to the number of likes and views I received, but I wouldn’t go as far as to check who liked it and reciprocate via their posts. By about the fourth week into my social media detox, I started thinking about my life differently.

  While on Facebook and Instagram, I would see a lot of affirmation for people’s milestones: Their engagements and weddings, their world travels, pregnancies and births, their new jobs. I unwittingly started to think about my life in that way, relegating the in-between periods between these major milestones as mere filler.

  Without social media, that pressure melted away. I started to enjoy life’s more mundane moments and take stock of what I have today—a great job, a wonderful community, supportive friends, and so on. I could take my time and enjoy it rather than rushing to the finish line.

  In short, I started to feel happier and lighter.89

  So, there’s all these really smart people getting off social networks, including Instagram, because they are losing faith in the systems and the people running these networks, and these really smart people feel better when they aren’t using social media.

  Chiefs, Priests, and Thieves

  One of my favorite authors, Matt Ridley, has written a great analysis of the evolution of civilizations over the span of centuries and epochs. What I took from his work is the following framework: there are three grand forces at work in every civilization, and as long as these are in relative balance, steady progress is made. If one force gets too big and goes unchecked, the civilization falls apart. Ridley terms these three primary forces “Chiefs, Priests, and Thieves.”90

  The Chiefs (Innovators) are the ones who make useful stuff and contribute for the sake of others as well as for their own sake.

  The Priests (Government) do not create anything, but they help with property protection, redistributing wealth, maintaining a justice system, and various bureaucratic activities.

  The Thieves (Bad Guys) do not create anything themselves. They survive by stealing from the other two forces.

  If we think about the rise and fall of Instagram, or any Internet platform, as a type of civilization, we can see these same forces at work trying to find a tenable balance. On Instagram, the Chiefs are the folks who create new, original content for others to appreciate. The Priests are Instagram employees, monitoring and facilitating the ecosystem. The Thieves are the ones who steal others’ work or scam their way to success.

  Despite some of the more negative things I’ve said and recommendations I’ve made, I do have long-term faith in these social networks because, on average, living organisms tend to convert entropy into order. Ants and bees and trees go on about the business of organizing the natural world around them and keeping it in balance. Humans do it as well. We take unorganized messes and get them a little more organized. We’re getting better at curing diseases, making more efficient transport, creating quality media and having fewer wars. The list of good news goes on and on. This is why I ultimately have faith in Silicon Valley and the platforms that increasingly form the scaffolding of our lives.

  Chapter 9

  Concluding Thoughts

  “On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.”

  — Eckhart Tolle

  How to Flourish in Our Tantalizing Future

  Instagram will, most likely, not be the “hot” thing forever. More stimulating interfaces will supplant it.

  Personally, as an artist, I try to explore with all of my senses as much as possible. We don’t have long on Earth and my personal approach is to maximize meaning and pleasure by stimulating as many senses as possible, including the esoteric wanderings of consciousness, all while taking care of and loving the people in my life. I alternate the stimulation with quiet periods of meditation in an attempt to keep all forces in balance.

  Not to get overly clinical about it, but that’s what being human is all about. We each walk around this planet as a ponderous DNA replicator that mostly experiences the world via our five (well, five currently identifiable and categorizable) senses. Hopefully, we have a lot of fun along the way. I think it’s pretty awesome. As individual consciousnesses, we grow more by placing ourselves in situations that maximize inputs to our sensorium. Think of a raging chaotic river that carves out a beautiful cavern. The more stuff that flows through your sensory pattern-matcher, the more beautiful you become.

  Okay, that’s all flowery and great, but what the heck does it have to do with Instagram?

  Instagram seduces only one sense: vision. Sometimes we get sound, too, but not that often. But, soon, I think, we will interface with technologies that are much more stimulating and immersive. Two prime examples are virtual reality and augmented reality. In ten ye
ars, most people will not be flicking their thumb on a black mirror but will have much more immersive experiences mounted on their head or integrated right into their brain with a neural link.

  Even though the interface will be different, we will soon have even more choices about what to consume and how. Who will you want to “follow?” What does the platform recommend? Is it more like surfing through categories on Netflix, or is it more like following people on Instagram? I think we will continue to have individual “tastemakers” who create or curate interesting content.

  There will always be the temptation of the less talented to fake their influence.

  Even though Instagram may not be around forever, the Thieves will be—on whatever platform does become most popular. Although we just talked about Instagram in this book, Thieves exist in almost every domain. It’s up to all of us to make sure we’re on the lookout.

  Fake influencers will still exist. If you want to fake your own influence on any platform, here’s what you’ll probably do:

  10 Ways to Fake Influence

  1) Use online services to buy engagement to impress other people and brands. Buy followers, video plays, likes, or comments to make it appear that you are popular and influencing actual humans, rather than non-human bots and scripts.

  2) Put together a media kit that shows your big numbers, along with an attractive pitch document that you can send to brands or agencies. This can, in turn, get you free products and cash deals.

  3) Create well-crafted content about brands that illustrate how wonderful those brands are. This will help you get better offers from other brands in the future.

  4) Get yourself mentioned by legitimate accounts. When legitimate accounts make a reference to you, it will make you look more legitimate, even if you are not.

  5) Get yourself mentioned by legitimate websites and include these references in your media kit.

  6) Start with small brands that are unlikely to investigate your numbers to see if they are real or not. After you do a few small gigs, start to approach the bigger brands, using the smaller scams as a foundation, proving your success.

  7) Send the brand some detailed statistics about how effective your posts were after you’ve made those posts. Of course, most of the numbers will be fake, based on purchased non-human activity, but the brand will probably not notice, especially if they just want big numbers.

  8) Find one of the hundreds of Influencer agencies out there that will take you on. Chances are high that those agencies have a few legitimate Influencers, which will make you look more legitimate. In many cases, this approach is the easiest to do, because you don’t have to spend all day sending out pitches to brands to see which brands will bite. Let the agencies do the work for you, and they get a cut of all the money you make.

  9) Make sure you post a good amount of non-promotional content. This way you look more balanced. Brands like to see this because it means you don’t appear to be the money-grabber you actually are.

  10) Above all else, maintain your persona of having an aspirational life. You want to portray a fantastically wonderful person who is having a dream-like life bolstered by all the products and services that have made this life possible.

  Those are a bunch of ways you can make it look like you have influence. But what if you actually want to be influential?

  11 Ways to Have Real Influence

  1) Commit to the adage “know thyself.” If you are a bit clueless as to who you really are, then commit to discovering yourself. You can discover yourself while sharing parts of your life that you find interesting or elusive. The point of this is that you appear to be as authentic as you are.

  2) Develop an emotional intelligence that allows you to be vulnerable and try new things. An audience likes to see you as you fully experience life, so don’t be afraid to put in the bad and awkward stuff too. We all know there’s plenty of that in life.

  3) Try not to develop a one-dimensional “theme.” You, as an individual, are not one-dimensional. You probably have many interests, so make reference to all the aspects of your life.

  4) Seek to make the world and the Internet a more positive place where people want to hang out. Don’t complain all the time.

  5) Find a handful of Instagrammers you really respect and leave long, thoughtful comments. That sort of engagement is more valuable than a hundred “nice pic” comments.

  6) Don’t worry about negative comments and don’t worry about positioning your content so as to avoid negativity. A real Influencer is able to take constructive criticism and think about it the next time they post. Also, a real Influencer knows the difference between a constructive negative comment and a negative comment from a moron.

  7) If you have a deal with a brand, talk about it like a regular person. Don’t be showy and use hollow language. There is a subtlety to talking about a brand that doesn’t make other people envious of the situation.

  8) Learn to develop deep, trusted relationships with brands by constantly over-delivering. Share 100% of the stats of the posts and constantly be coming up with new ideas, iterating on a long-term campaign with the brand.

  9) Create conversations that are interesting for your community. Don’t ask empty questions you don’t care about just to rack up the comment count. If you have some breakthroughs, share them and get feedback. Create an environment for people to discuss ideas. Remember the adage that small people talk about other people. Big people talk about ideas.

  10) Be loving. If the overall flow of your posts is positive and full of good and interesting ideas, you will bring more love into the world. People can detect this, and you’ll start to have more of the right people show up in your life rather than energy vampires.

  11) Don’t take yourself too seriously.

  Why Does Trey Stay on Instagram (and Other Social Media)?

  This is a good question. And it’s one I revisit regularly.

  I actually believe that artists are a positive, loving force on these platforms. The photos I post, and share, are all pretty (well, I think so, anyway) and I am always positive. I try to say funny things or inspirational things to help people out. I actually think the world is a beautiful, awesome place, and there are so many incredible people on this planet. I think it’s up to artists and creatives to showcase that beauty and help bring more of it into people’s lives.

  That idea, of helping people become more creative and mindful, is one of my driving forces. It’s a good idea. We’re in a world where there is a battle of ideas and there are a lot of bad ones out there, so I feel a bit like an idea warrior (without the self-righteousness). When I see friends bail on social media, like Hugh Howey, Om Malik, and Leo Laporte, I admit it makes me a little sad. They were positive, inspirational forces on social media, and now those little blips of light have decided to extinguish themselves.

  Some of us have to stay and fight back against all the negative, entropic forces in the world. And this is why I stay on social media, and I stay positive.

  A Final Photo

  I will leave you now, my new friend, with yet another positive note in the form of a profile photo of our fake account @genttravel. May his hauntingly delicious stare keep you warm at night.

  Appendix A

  My Improbable Road to Internet Fame

  “I think that those who would try to make you feel less than who you are… I think that is the greatest evil.”

  — Mr. Rogers

  For Those of You That Cravy Some More Travy

  Okay, that title was a really dumb title. I’m just setting low expectations.

  Using my career as a case study will provide some good context for the entire book, I believe.

  My name is Trey Ratcliff. I grew up in Texas and went to an all-boy Jesuit high school in Dallas that taught me critical thinking. I emerged un-brainwashed as an atheist and continued this unpopular tradition in college at Southern Methodist University, majoring in Computer Science and Math. I got my
first job at Andersen Consulting (Accenture) and worked for a handful of years at CNN. I got married, had three kids, and moved around—we now live in New Zealand. I jumped around to different jobs and (sorta) figured out the way the world works. In my 30s, I got tired of the corporate slog, so I left and did some entrepreneurial endeavors, including building an online gaming company. That company, like many things in my life, was relatively unsuccessful. However, an accidental side-benefit of it was that it required me to travel to far-flung places for gaming conventions, and to our studios in Kuala Lumpur and Ukraine.

  Discovering Travel and Photography

  While visiting these studios, I discovered that I loved traveling. I found the world to be a beautiful place full of interesting people. I thought, “Hey, I should get a camera!”

  I fell in love with travel photography right away but was frustrated that what I was capturing with my camera wasn’t matching what I was seeing in person. I decided to teach myself photography and, unknowingly, I broke most of the rules along the way. Whether it was on a mobile phone or a camera, did you ever have a time when you were in a tricky lighting situation, like a beautiful sunset, and the final result of the photo you took came out quite dull in comparison? I was sick of telling people, “Hey, well you should have seen it in person. It was so beautiful!” I was determined to figure out a way to make the final photo feel the same way it did when I experienced it.

  So, I put my Computer Science hat back on and started to think of the digital photo as a cube of data that could be manipulated with computer code. I found some unusual algorithms that NASA was using for processing photos of Mars in order to bring out more details that weren’t visible in the original photo. They were using HDR—High Dynamic Range—algorithms, and I decided to try them on my sunset photos. The results were amazing! It was a little rough, yes, but I could see I was on to something.