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

by Trey Ratcliff

  There is a documentary on Netflix, The American Meme, which profiles about half a dozen Influencers. It outlines some of the outlandish (and possibly morally bankrupt) behavior of some of these icons.44

  Case Study: Paris Hilton with a Faux Messiah Complex

  “A lot of the Little Hiltons [my fans] were comparing me to Jesus,” Paris Hilton said in The American Meme, without a hint of irony. “It’s a huge compliment, and it makes me feel really special.”45

  The show would not have been complete without Paris, who many consider to be the original “It Girl” who cast the mould of “famous for being famous.” She preens and purrs on camera for her 50+ million fans all day long, on all the social networks. She is unapologetically, 100% obsessed with sharing her flawless, glamorous life with the rest of us, in an endless stream of idyllic selfies.

  I think that is a Bible quote. I’ll need to look it up. But I am not sure Matthew the Apostle used emojis.

  Towards the end of the show, we see Paris in a Virtual Reality lab, where she is being immortalized as a 3D-model, so we can experience her uber-perfection in the next wave of virtual worlds. “I can really control the way people see me,” says Hilton about the experience. “A lot of people don’t understand that you have to be sustainable forever.”46

  The show is full of many more of these daft, hollow comments that illustrate how poisonous these platforms can become, and the poison runs deep with this one. Paris is basically saying that someone as incredible as her should live forever and she can always be in control of her flawless form.

  @parishilton is at 10 million followers on Instagram and growing at the rate of about 150K per month. Please note that I am not suggesting she buys followers.

  Case Study: The @slutwhisperer

  The show also features a photographer named Kirill, who goes by the charming Instagram name of @slutwhisperer. He has over 1 million followers. He’s known for going into clubs, pouring champagne on those curazy club gals and putting stickers on their butt cheeks. Kirill says, “My real life isn’t that interesting that would want people to really want to follow me, so I have to put on an exaggerated truth.”47

  Of all the sad characters in that show American Meme, he is perhaps the most broken of them all, and he admits it. He said that his normal life is just that—normal—and he spends significant energy trying to make it look even better than it is.

  @slutwhisperer is a good example of the many people on Instagram who put forward the perfect life, but once you dig into it, have a life that isn’t nearly as glamorous as it’s made out to be on social media. This posturing puts pressure on everyone else to keep up, showing others how amazing their own lives are, which causes a network effect of increased anxiety all around.

  Be sure to invite Kirill, (a.k.a. @slutwhisperer) to your next neighborhood BBQ. He seems to really bring the partay.

  The Comparison Game: How We Measure Up

  While I was writing this book, I was having lunch with my friend David Maxwell (@davidewtmaxwell), who is a perfectly average Instagram user and, by his own admission, very average in pretty much all aspects of his dismal life (I kid—we’re friends). He asked me, “Hey, well, you know, sometimes I get bored, and I check Instagram, and I get kind of excited to see I get 50 likes. Is there something wrong with me?”

  Now, I found this to be a very interesting question! And I told him so, along with my diagnosis. I’m a bit “softer” on this particular example, not because he’s my friend, but because it isn’t one of the more extreme cases that I have already analyzed. As I see it, there are a few things going on here with my friend David and many other casual Instagram users.

  The first thing he’s noticed is that he likes seeing those likes on Instagram. To get one level deeper, what he really likes is when Instagram triggers that small reaction of dopamine—a natural chemical in your body that gives you pleasure. Humans get squirts of dopamine all day, from many things: eating some ice cream, holding a puppy, smelling a flower, watching a comedy, and more. There’s nothing really wrong with seeking a dopamine rush, as long as it doesn’t become an addiction, as we’ve discussed.

  Secondly, there is definitely a feeding-of-the-ego aspect to looking for likes. However, someone like Dave does not tie up his entire identity in getting those likes, as many people do. If he were to start checking Instagram compulsively every 15 minutes, well, then that’s another thing altogether.

  The third aspect is more interesting and it relates to a game we have been programmed to play: The Comparison Game.

  In school, after we’ve learned the basic stuff, like the alphabet and coloring, we are introduced to The Comparison Game. This happens around the age of eight. So, there you are, in third or fourth grade, in a classroom with, let’s say, about 20 other children. You all start to get academic grades, and, naturally, only two students can be in the top 10%. You’re either one of those two students or, like 90% of the class, you aren’t.

  The Comparison Game starts out pretty tame. No one really worries about grades so much in third or fourth grade. However, they do start to matter more over the next few years.

  Fast forward to eighth grade. Now, you are still in a class of about 20 people, but the competition is getting fiercer. You are really quite concerned about your place among those 20 people academically—maybe even more so than learning itself—because the ranking seems to be more important than the content. Even the kids who aren’t so “into” school; those kids are still well aware of their position in the academic pecking order.

  As you prepare to enter high school, you’re not just comparing grades. You are competing based on how much money you have, how attractive you are, and where you rank socially amongst the opposite sex. You are continually comparing every aspect of your person with those other 20 people.

  And you have to do well. Otherwise, you won’t make a smooth entrance into the next set of schooling. The Comparison Game gets more and more intense every year. You’re still in a class with about 20 people, but your comparison pool could expand to hundreds if you’re competing with your whole year group. Now, you’re worried about comparing yourself with even more people academically and across a variety of other variables as well. The traditional “school system” is built on, and depends on, this comparison game to motivate students.

  There are many systems in place that are continually comparing you to other people. Once you leave high school, this stack-ranking and comparison is continued by colleges and then other organizations—including corporations you work for. Even though it can be very difficult to rank people within a business unit that may have tremendously different but important skills, businesses still try to do it, and it can be very stressful for employees.

  At work, your performance is always being evaluated against your co-workers and this establishes how much money you make as well as your position within the company. There are even companies that will stack rank their employees, then systematically fire the lowest 10% of performers. Talk about anxiety.

  So, your brain is stuck in a system where you are always fighting for the number one position. This constant desire to be “first” can bleed from your work into your personal life.

  Danielle Leigh Wagstaff, a psychology professor at Federation University Australia, believes that Instagram “confuses our social radar.” It does this by prompting us to try and figure out “if we’re more or less attractive, smart, and accomplished than everyone else” within this unnatural environment.48

  However, on Instagram, we aren’t just comparing ourselves to our 19 classmates, or our 5-10 immediate co-workers, or even the rest of the employees at our company. We’re comparing ourselves to everyone in the world. And, as we’ve established earlier, what we’re comparing ourselves to may not even be real.

  On top of that, it is important to recognize this salient truth: there is no need for any human to compare themselves to any other human. How we stack rank against our peers has nothing t
o do with being a valuable human being. Every human is equally valuable no matter how much money they make or how many likes their photos get. We live in a system that tells us otherwise. Don’t fall for it.

  Now, here’s a real character named @theposhpt. We’ll use some of his sumptuous photos over and over again, so get ready. This is a good example of a very public scoreboard, where you can constantly see how many likes and comments others are getting. It makes one want to compare oneself.

  Cosmo on Steroids

  The media and advertising worlds have a reputation for setting unrealistic beauty standards for both men and women to meet. While this is as true as ever, it’s turned into even more of a pressure cooker due to social media.

  Think back to the ‘90s. Sure, you might pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan, see beautiful women inside who have been styled and airbrushed to perfection, get kinda down on yourself for a while, then toss the magazine aside half an hour later. You’d repeat the cycle, but not until the new issue arrives in your mailbox the following month.

  But now, we never get a break from this cycle. As opposed to occasionally flipping through a magazine in a waiting room or in bed on a Sunday morning, we check Instagram hundreds and hundreds of times each day, week after week. Our Instagram feed is a constant torrent of “aspirational” photos, all getting a ton of likes. Some of us might be painfully aware that our own photos go relatively unnoticed. It’s no wonder this is demoralizing and raises anxiety levels.

  Your Instagram feed is like Cosmo set on endless repeat.

  The social pressure to look good and be popular is particularly pronounced for young women. Imagine what this sort of cycle is doing to the psyches of millions of young girls, who are growing up with the constant influx of unattainable beauty and popularity standards. Not only are they continually bombarded by unrealistic images and taking in their toxic messages passively, they now have obvious metrics—likes, follows, and comments—to remind them of how much they are falling short. Constantly comparing one’s own feedback on Instagram versus others’—often unaware that some may be cheating, is a true poison to the mind, and will inevitably tear away at self-confidence and important feelings of self-worth.

  If we want the next generation of women to grow up confident, clever, and knowing they are worth much more than how they score in appearances, these unhealthy feedback loops, warped by unethical Influencers, are making that difficult task nearly impossible.

  The same can be said for men, of course. Instagram is full of the sort of hunky men you might see in a calendar of attractive firemen. Many men might feel negatively about their own bodies as well because they don’t think they could ever measure up. They’re in a tricky situation because there’s significantly less social discourse about body image when it comes to men.

  Here’s our posh friend again. Hey, whutchya got hidin’ behind that towel there, you tall drink of water, you?

  I talked to famous YouTuber Jared Polin (@jaredpolin) about this topic and he agreed that what we see on social media seems to be unrealistic lives. “When your life is to pretend you have an extraordinary life,” he said, “it’s really messed up. Hopefully, the damned tweens that follow these people will figure out that it’s fake and they’re full of shit.”

  Cocaine and Tapas

  Hey, I’m not saying all Instagram models blast through dunes of coke and entertain an occasional bite of tapas to stay thin, but, by her own admission, this one below sure did.

  I think my new favorite word for cocaine is “Mexican Leftovers.”

  In an article on Yahoo, the Australian model Ruby Tuesday Matthews (@rubytuesdaymatthews at over 19,000 followers) opened up about how she maintained such a skinny figure. “I did a lot of cocaine, like a lot,” Ruby said. “So basically I just smoked cigarettes, had long blacks and did coke. And in between, had the tapas. Like my life was tapas and cocaine.”49

  The article goes on to say, “Her lifestyle wasn’t at all far from the norm. Instead, she admitted that the influencer industry pushes a lot of women to depend on the same extreme means of dieting.”50

  Here’s Ruby in peak coke mode. Actually, this is kind of a good advertisement for cocaine.

  The article also quotes Marissa Meshulam, a dietitian and nutritionist, who describes the social deleterious effects these sorts of photos can have on young women. “The role Influencers play in affecting their followers’ diet and lifestyle decisions is really scary,” Meshulam said. “People look at influencers as ‘goals’ in so many ways. Followers then try everything to replicate their influencers’ lifestyles, thinking that they too can achieve these goals.”51

  Ruby says she has stopped ripping through mirrored-rails of Charlie since the birth of her two children. However, that has not stopped her from a steady stream of photos, describing the trials and tribulations of her postpartum abdominal rebound.

  The struggle is real.

  The Social Media Scoreboard

  Let’s talk for a minute about the very public social media scoreboard, which amps up the competitiveness. Everyone can see how many followers you have and how many likes and comments a photo gets. With your score on every post and every profile, people can’t help but equate it with a scoring system in the Olympics or a Miss America Pageant. This very public scoring system is perhaps one of the biggest flaws in Instagram and most of the other social platforms.

  It is conceivable that many people may purchase likes and comments from bots just to make sure everyone else is impressed by the volume of positive feedback they receive. The ego can rationalize all sorts of scenarios that will justify these bizarre behaviors.

  What would happen if the scoreboard was turned off so when someone liked or commented on your photo, you were the only one who could see it?

  I proferred this idea to Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, during a recent sit down with him at Google X. These are the sorts of questions I like to ask clever people who are nice enough to be friendly with me. As a thought experiment, we explored the idea together. I shared my thoughts that most YouTube comments were rather toxic and maybe not good for the mental well-being of the more than a billion people who use the platform and he tended to agree. He said that it’s a known problem and they are working on a few different ideas around this.

  What if we stopped attaching numbers and feedback to online activity? No visible YouTube comments. No follower counts. No like counts. No thumbs up or thumbs down counts. Yes, perhaps the system records them, and the creator could see them, but the public scoreboard remains dark to take some of the pressure off. We could play the game for fun again.

  I am not saying I have the right answer to the question, but a case can certainly be made that a public scoreboard doesn’t add functionality, yet greatly increases the amount of user anxiety. If a worthy goal is to reduce the amount of anxiety and suffering of all creatures, perhaps we can make platform decisions that are aligned with the greater good.

  Life Is Not a Zero-sum Game

  So, let’s get back to The Comparison Game. Basically, starting from the age of 8, you’ve been in a system that’s been promoting this Comparison Game as the most important of structures, because it indicates your place in the pecking order. And then you leave school and your brain continues playing this game forever.

  And it gets better. You don’t even need to compare yourself to anyone else to play the game because you can play the game against yourself. When you compare the like count from one of your own photos with that of your last post, how did you do? You have been programmed to play the game this way and you can’t stop.

  It’s important to point out that some competitions are great, and they can bring out the best in human nature. But these competitions always involve a bit of cooperation—people follow a set of rules, so they are invited back to play again. Great examples are football, science fairs, 10K running races, baking contests, etc. Some of the greatest innovations in technology have been due to competition, whether fo
rmal or informal. Examples of this include the X Prize Foundation, the Netflix Prize, and the Space Race.

  Some variants of The Comparison Game fall into a game category called the Zero-Sum Game. What’s a Zero-Sum Game? Basically, if one player “wins,” then the other player “loses.” Both players can’t win. Poker is a good example of a Zero-Sum Game, because if one person wins $20, the other player, by definition, loses $20.

  The Comparison Game has similar elements. For example, the school system’s grading and graduation process is just like this—only one person can be the valedictorian, and the rest lose. The education system crams the zero-sum notion into your brain at every opportunity.

  Case Study: Atlanta Mom

  There was a ridiculous story on The Today Show recently about an Atlanta Mommy Blogger (@bowerpowerblog) who was lamenting the lack of “likes” she was getting on Instagram for her 6-year-old son. She took to Instagram to express her dissatisfaction with her account’s performance in her own Comparison Game.

  Her post read as follows:

  Guys I am gonna be perfectly honest ... Instagram never liked my Munchkin and it killed me inside. His photos never got as many likes. Never got comments. From a statistical point of view, he wasn’t as popular with everyone out there … I say all that because I want to believe that it wasn’t him—that it was on me … because I truly KNOW that my Munch deserves alllllll the likes … whether or not a stranger gives it to them.52