42. What I Want To Do vs. What You Want Me To Do

In the whole ‘influencer’ space, there's a term called Audience Capture.

No, I hadn't heard of it either.

It refers to when content creators generate and mould their content based on what gets the most engagement.

Something like the following “Oh nice, that post got a load of likes, comments and new followers. In order to get even more likes, comments and new followers, I’m just going to do more of that”.

The audience is told what they want to hear, and the creator gets the relevant dopamine, recognition, ego, status, and sometimes financial rewards.

To state the obvious, there’s a natural appeal to that. It may even seem like an innocent and logical business decision. A nice little virtuous cycle.

However, there’s a cost.

If something is created purely on the demand and response of other people, it means that the identity and authenticity of the creator can slowly but surely be chipped away at. And instead, be replaced by one that has been shaped by these other people.

As you may be able to analogously resonate with, this is something that isn’t just restricted to the influencer world, and is a principle that I believe can apply to our lives. Our own identities, self-esteem, and generally wellbeing.

Though to depict the point, let’s stay in the influencer world a little while longer…

I recently came across a story on Gurwinder Bhogal’s Substack page about a guy called Nicholas Perry. Nicholas Perry is also known as ‘The Man Who Ate Himself’.

And as you can probably tell from the name, this isn’t the most uplifting of stories.

Regardless, let’s get stuck in.

As many people do, Nicholas wanted to become big online.

And in 2016, he started uploading videos on YouTube about his two passions; playing the violin and veganism. Fairly wholesome stuff.

However, his content went largely unnoticed. Not the objective.

A year or so later, he pied off (oh go on pun!) veganism, and started making videos of himself eating a range of meals whilst talking to the camera.

The audience grew. Success.

Though as it did, so did their demands. Suddenly, the comments were full of people challenging Nicholas to eat more and more.

Captured by his audience and a clear need for attention and to please, Nikocado Avocado (as he was now known) obliged. What he thought was a virtuous cycle, soon became a vicious one.

With each ever-growing meal came more applause, but more demands.

Soon, he was smashing back entire fast-food menus in one go.

The results?

Well, I suppose it depends on what metrics we want to look at.

In terms of meeting his objective of becoming known online, it was mission accomplished.

By satisfying the demands of his audience, he’s now got over 7 million YouTube subscribers and has received around 2 billion views.

Though naturally, it came at some cost.

Shaped by these demands, Perry quite literally transformed.

He went from being a health-conscious, violin-playing vegan - to loud, abrasive, morbidly obese, and willing to eat anything asked of him. The before and after photos are pretty grim (I’ll leave you to Google them...)

When I initially read this story, I felt a few different emotions. Sadness, pity, a slight distaste, and slightly unexpectedly, a wave of introspection.

Although ‘Audience Capture’ is discussed mainly in the context of the content creation world, I do think it’s a principle that can apply to our day-to-day lives.

I say this, because it certainly has in my life.

At its most basic level, Audience Capture is all about that tension between:

1) Doing things that we want to do vs.

2) Doing things that we think other people want us to do

And talk about one of life’s great battles.

• Going to that social event when we don’t really want to.

• Having a few beers at the pub when we said we weren’t drinking this month.

• Feeling obliged to avidly check and respond to WhatsApps even though we're sick of the sight of our phones

Etc etc. You’ll no doubt be able to think of a tonne more. It’s a trade-off in so many of our every day decisions.

It’s understandable. By doing things that we think other people want us to do, we can see it as a way to make other people happy, to be accepted, to be liked, to get attention, to build our reputations, and even get status. All the classic drivers of human behaviour.

The problem is that it can often have the opposite intended effect.

There may be short term benefits, but in the long run, becoming the person we think people expect us to be at the expense of the person we actually are doesn't tend to be a good thing.

Any sort of positive affection is more for the facade or character we’re playing, as opposed to the genuine version of us. And this character is one we’ll probably eventually tire or get bored of. Suddenly, we can find ourselves playing this character that we don’t even like.

We chase the approval of others, but sort of lose the approval of ourselves.

And when that goes, everything else seems to follow. Self-esteem, self-worth, energy for life. The lot. It can be knackering.

In Greg McKeown's book Essentialism, he discusses the story of an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware. She cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, and recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list was "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me".

As many people's reflections are at the end of their lives, it's possibly a point worth reflecting on.

And whilst I do exactly that, feel free to let me know any thoughts on this post.

In fact, probably best that you don't...