this after skool presentation was written and recorded by Gurwinder.
in 2016, 24 year old nicholas perry wanted to be big online he started uploading videos
to his youtube channel in which he pursued his passion playing the violin and extolled
the virtues of veganism he went largely unnoticed a year later he abandoned veganism
citing health concerns now free to eat whatever he wanted he began uploading mukbang videos of
himself consuming various dishes while talking to the camera as if having dinner with a friend
these new videos quickly found a sizable audience but as the audience grew so did their demands the
comment sections of the video soon became filled with people challenging perry to eat as much as he
physically could eager to please he began to set himself torturous eating challenges each bigger
than the last his audience applauded but always demanded more soon he was filming himself eating
entire menus of fast food restaurants in one city in some respects all his eating paid off
nikocado avocado as perry is now better known has amassed over six million subscribers across six
channels on youtube by satisfying the escalating demands of his audience he got his wish of blowing
up and being big online but the cost was that he blew up and became big in ways he hadn't
anticipated nikocado moulded by his audience's desires into a cartoonish extreme is now a wholly
different character from nicholas perry the vegan violinist who first started making videos
where perry was mild-mannered and health-conscious nikocado is loud abrasive and spectacularly
grotesque where perry was a picky eater nikocado devoured everything he could including finally
perry himself the rampant appetite for attention caused the person to be subsumed by the persona
we often talk of captive audiences regarding the performer as hypnotizing the viewers
but just as often it's the viewers hypnotizing the performer this disease of which perry is but
one victim of many is known as audience capture and it is essential to understanding influences
in particular and the online ecosystem in general audience capture is an irresistible force in the
world of influencing because it's not just a conscious process but also an unconscious one
while it may ostensibly appear to be a simple case of influencers making a business decision
to create more of the content they believe audiences want and then being incentivized by
engagement numbers to remain in this niche forever it's actually deeper than that it involves the
gradual and unwitting replacement of a person's identity with one custom made for the audience
to understand how we must consider how people come to define themselves
a person's identity is being constantly refined so it needs constant feedback
that feedback typically comes from other people not so much by what they say they see
as by what we think they see we develop our personalities by imagining ourselves through
others eyes using their borrowed gazes like mirrors to dress ourselves just as lacking a
mirror to dress ourselves leaves us disheveled so lacking other people's eyes to refine our
personalities leaves us uncouth this is why those raised in isolation become feral humans adopting
the character of beasts put simply in order to be someone we need someone to be someone for
our personalities develop as a role we perform for other people fulfilling the
expectations we think they have of us the american sociologist charles cooley dubbed this phenomenon
the looking glass self evidence for it is diverse and includes the everyday experience
of seeing ourselves through merchandise in social situations otherwise known as the spotlight effect
the tendency for people to alter their behavior when in the presence of pictures of eyes otherwise
known as the watching eye effect and the tendency for people in virtual spaces to adopt the traits
of their avatars in an attempt to fulfill the expectations otherwise known as the proteus effect
when we lived in small tight-knit communities the looking glass self helped us to become the people
our loved ones wanted us to be the problem is we no longer live solely among those we know well
we can only gauge who they are by what some of them post online
and what people post online is not indicative of who they really are
as such the people we're increasingly becoming someone for are an abstract illusion
when influencers are analyzing audience feedback they often find that their more
outlandish behavior receives the most attention and approval which leads them to recalibrate their
personalities according to far more extreme social cues than those they'd receive in real life in
doing this they exaggerate the more idiosyncratic facets of their personalities becoming crude
caricatures of themselves the caricature quickly becomes the influence distinct brand
and all subsequent attempts by the influencer to remain on brand and fulfill audience expectations
require them to act like the caricature as the caricature becomes more familiar than the person
both to the audience and to the influencer it comes to be regarded by both as the only
honest expression of the influencer so that any deviation from it soon looks and feels inauthentic
at that point the persona has eclipsed the person and the audience has captured the influencer
the old greek legends tell of narcissus a youth so handsome he became besotted by his own reflection
unable to look away from his image in the surface of the waters he fell still forever
and was transformed by the gods into a flower similarly as influencers glimpse their idealized
online personas reflected back at them on screens they too are in danger of becoming
eternally besotted by how they appear and in so doing forgetting who they were or could be
this is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame to become a prisoner of one's own persona
the desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers
wishes to be and with personal development so arduous and lonely there is ease and comfort
in crowdsourcing your identity but amid such temptations it's worth remembering
that when you become who your audience expects at the expense of who you are the
affection you receive is not intended for you but for the character you're playing
a character you'll eventually tire off and so be warned being someone often means being fake
and if you chase the approval of others you may in the end lose the approval of yourself