How to Build an Audience by Rejecting Influence Culture

I’ve spent enough time around performative phonies to be able to call one out from 10 blocks away. The instinct dates back to when I was in Grade 2, and I came home from my first week at school to inform my parents that unfortunately, my new teacher was undoubtedly “a Phony Suit™”. The classroom dynamics were completely fucked, and it became a formative moment in learning to question authority and develop a critical eye for uncanny valley perfection. Mrs. Wright, I was convinced, was an alien who got up each morning, pulled her human-face-mask from a hanger in the closet, fluffed her permed wig, slipped into her rigid skirt and blazer, then trotted off to the elementary school to be a fake and insufferable cunt to seven-year-olds.

In today’s Meta-Tok universe this woman would have been one of those christian family influencers. All gleaming teeth and aspirational anecdotes, the kind that child protective services eventually has to take into custody for keeping her malnourished kids in cages.

I’m over it, I’ve been over it. Now with social media the class of frauds peddling lifestyle porn to people who can barely afford their rent is more visible than ever. These are the modern day snake oil salesmen who will tell you about their morning routines involving $200 supplements while conveniently forgetting to mention their trust fund or pharmaceutical-grade anxiety medication.

I do not like these people.

It might be the thing I bitch about the most with my colleagues. Not in a reasonable, measured, constructive way that corporate might approve of, but with the white-hot intensity of someone who's spent too many years watching genuine artists and contributors get drowned out by fakes.

So naturally, I too find myself in the content game, just blogging it up! Let’s fucking go. I too have answered the call to enter the arena, alongside these psychos. And here's the thing about stepping into this particular circle of hell – suddenly every moral certainty you had starts looking a little fuzzy. You want to be real, but you also want to eat. You want to tell the truth, but you don't want to alienate the nice people who might actually benefit from what you're selling. You want to be YOU, but you also want to be liked (and you want to keep your day job - hi MRG! Love you!).

This is an incredibly intentional first post on my little substack, a proclamation to do my best to anti-influence on this new journey, and if you’re following along with the mission and work of The Creator Code, the anti-influence agenda is one that will likely resonate with you.

What Anti-Influence Looks Like

Here's what I've gathered on how to not be a fraudulent piece of shit in the influence economy:

Highlight your failures. Not the humble-brag kind where you "failed" by being too sexy and too fun and too rich. Reveal real, uncomfortable, vulnerable failures. The kind that keep you up at night questioning your life choices. The kind that make you cringe when you replay a conversation. Personally, I’ve made terrible booking decisions that have lost a quarter of my salary in one catastrophic evening, more than once. I’ve said the wrong weird-things on too many important calls. I spent my 20s, and then 30s, “shitting where I eat” by dating in the industry. I’m messy, I fuck-up, and I figure it out. Join me.

Going against the grain. When everyone in your industry is going one way, find your own route. Oh everyone’s uploading crowd work heckler videos now? Don’t. Bring something new to the table, bring something you to the table. The pretty boy with a new Netflix series is the hot new act to book? Sure, fine, it pays the bills. But I’m hyper-fixated on a one-armed juggler from Florida today, let’s get that man a stage!

Prioritizing truth over profit. Listen, it’s not uncommon that I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing, and it doesn’t matter because finding the confidence to own that is a super power. Admit defeat when you don’t know something instead of bullshitting your way through. Grow a pair and ask for help.

In a similar fashion, trust that you’ll have new business and clients when it’s best to surrender an opportunity or ask not suited to you. Tell a client when you don’t have the best solution, opt-out of an invite you’re not sure of, be transparent about who you are and what you do.

Bringing others up. The best tours, the best campaigns, the best podcasts don’t come from creators going it alone - it’s no fun sitting solo and superior at the top of the pile, hoarding all the shine. Real art comes from the fun weirdos you’re collaborating with, the memorable and maniacal stories behind the scenes, the life lessons you learn along the way. Support your peers, mentor emerging talent, share the wealth, and be generous with praise. It feels good, and that karma always comes back to you.

Here's the thing about authenticity - you can't fake it. Not forever at least. Performance is exhausting. People burn out trying to maintain personas that have nothing to do with who they actually are. Worse, I’ve seen the biggest personalities crumble into mental illness when they hit the periphery of their shallow persona and fall off the edge into an identity abyss. Authenticity frauds also tend to generate a following they resent, people they’d never want to be alone in a room with. They wake up one day, a method actor in a role they hate, surrounded by gremlins and trolls.

When you show up as yourself messy, opinionated, occasionally wrong, but genuinely interested in the work, sincerely curious about yourself and others, something magical happens. You stop trying to appeal to everyone and start connecting with the people who actually matter. Your people. The ones who get it. You feel seen, you feel heard.

Beyond the warm-fuzzies, the data is tangible and positive. The conversion rates are better, your brand sentiment is healthy. Funny how that works. When people trust you, they're more likely to buy from you. When they feel like they know the real you, they're more invested in your journey, they’re rooting for your success.

Authenticity isn’t your brand. That's just a performance-dance with extra tippy-taps. Don't trauma dump for engagement. That's exploitation, it’s vomit, it’s pollution. And for the love of god, don't get so precious about your "anti-influence" stance that you forget you're still trying to run a business, still trying to connect - don’t become some hostile counter-culture “tell it like it is” d-bag.

And don’t swear off all marketing strategies as useless gimmicks. Some influence tactics exist because they solve real problems for real people, they’re formulaic, and they work. The trick is learning to tell the difference between what serves your audience and what only serves your ego.

The anti-influence approach isn't about moral purity, or being a “Cool Guy” or a “Real Artist”, it's about meaningful sustainability. It's about building something that won't make you hate yourself in five years. It's about creating work that matters to the people who matter to you.

And if you're lucky, if you're really genuinely lucky, you might just build something you believe in. Something that doesn't require you to hide. Something that lets you look in the mirror with deep admiration for your story.