How to Become an Influencer

When I came across this Instagram post from litquidity, I couldn’t resist talking about some nonsense. To be fair, I don’t often talk about anything other than nonsense, but whatever. I do me, you do you.

Anyway, it seems like everyone wants to make themselves into a brand these days. It’s not enough to just go about your life, doing whatever it is you do and finding your own way in the world anymore – you need to develop a personal brand and become an influencer along the way. Because we’re all just Cheetos in Hasbro’s Coca-Cola edition of Disney’s Game of Life or something. I dunno, pick a corporate metaphor.

Become a content creator and market yourself to grow into a really real influencer people look up to and aspire to become. Get lots of likes and shares and followers – validate your existence through social metrics and all of your wildest dreams will come true.

Or something like that anyway. Except it’s all bullshit.

While it’s true that some people become influential through merit and hard work, it’s a whole lot easier to just buy your way to the illusion of success. It’s becoming increasingly common, especially for the fake-it-till-you-make-it crowd. An entire industry has grown around the idea of helping nobodies become internet-somebodies, and companies that specialize in creating influencers generally do a pretty good job at it.

As long as you have the money.

How to Become an Influencer

  • Have money
  • Pay someone to create your content for you
  • Pay to get that content published in pay-to-play media
  • Pay more to get it featured/boosted/highlighted
  • Pay to buy fake followers and fake likes/shares/comments
  • Pay other influencers to plug your personal brand
  • Pay to finance as much additional media coverage as possible
  • Repeat until you either fool everyone or run out of money, whichever comes first

See? There’s nothing to it. You don’t actually need to be experienced or talented in any way, as long as you can afford to pay enough to get someone else to make it seem like you are. You don’t have to stop there, though. Depending on your budget, you can do all sorts of things to make your fake success seem legit.

Pay a ghostwriter to write a book for you – it doesn’t even have to be anything special. Your average, run-of-the-mill self-help book is a great start. You can fill it with bog standard advice and meaningless platitudes you’ve cribbed from a lifetime spent imitating other people, and as long as you can afford to buy up enough copies to make it onto a few best-seller lists, it won’t even matter that you’re not actually providing anything of value to anyone. People will just assume you’re saying something worth listening to if you’re on a best-seller list, and the success will just snowball from there.

You can also buy your way onto the talk show circuit, if you’ve got the cash. Pay to get on as many shows as you can, plug the book you paid to have written, and the show will plug your social media for you. It’s like compounding interest, but with clicks and shares.

If you have serious money, you can even finance your own reality show and get it distributed somewhere. Streaming services are hungry for content and have no qualms about pay-to-play when it comes to adding your content to their roster, especially if it doesn’t really cost them anything.

You could also try finding a TEDx event in your area or somewhere nearby and get yourself on the list of presenters. It’s not hard. TEDx isn’t at all exclusive, you don’t need to be an actual expert at anything, and the list of qualifications is exactly zero requirements long. The fun part is most people don’t distinguish between TEDx events and actual TED Talks, so you’ll seem perfectly legitimate to a wide audience. Pay someone to write your presentation and design your PowerPoint slides, then all you have to do is show up and read from the teleprompter. Instant legitimacy!

This dude is a pretty good example of what I’m talking about. You might’ve seen him on TikTok recently, singing about how he feels no holes because he’s a rectangle or something. I dunno, your guess is as good as mine.

Now what makes him special? Well, he’s also the CEO of a company called Treefrog, where his bio is something to behold. At roughly 2,000 self-infatuated words long, it’s giving Pick Me Girl and Michael Scott energy at the same time. But he doesn’t stop there. Remember what I said about TEDx a minute ago?

Well, there you go. Now you know what an entrepreneur is, so you’ve got that going for you.

This man oozes desperation, but he’s got money that someone out there was perfectly happy to take to help transform him into what I’m sure he considers a media sensation. And that’s really all there is to the scam.

Have money. Pay people to make things, then pay to have those things “published” and boosted all over the place. With enough exposure, you’ll be able to convince plenty of people that you know what you’re talking about.

Remember this guy?

Yeah, he’s still at it. He also has a TEDx talk because of course he does.

And this is all before even touching the complete shitshow that is LinkedIn. People like to give social media like Instagram a bad rap for being fake, but that’s only because they’ve probably never been on LinkedIn. Nothing there is real in the slightest.

There’s an entire subreddit devoted to r/linkedinlunatics because the content to keep it going never stops flowing. LinkedIn is a place where phonies go to inspire other phonies and talentless hacks motivate their employees to click like and share on anything they post. There’s a constant barrage of techbro and influencer newsletters that are always announced as “HOT OFF THE PRESS!” for some reason, and they cover everything from AI hype to how to get followers and seem cool at parties. Then there are carousels and slideshows and videos, and the list of copycat gimmicks just keeps on growing.

Of course, they’re all posted by super influential people you’ve never actually heard of before because their influence is entirely fake. They just run the same scam as everyone else – have money, buy followers, pay for content and pay to publish it – and since LinkedIn is a giant C-suite circlejerk, they interpret the inevitable likes and shares as validation, despite everyone only interacting with other people’s content in the hopes that they’ll reciprocate and interact with theirs. It’s just how LinkedIn works. Don’t believe me? There are tons of LinkedIn influencers who will be happy to sell you a zillion-dollar course that’ll tell you the same thing. Just ask them! (Money up front, though.)

Speaking of LinkedIn, have you ever looked at someone’s profile and noticed that they’ve listed themselves as a “contributor” or “columnist” for a bunch of influential magazines that seem entirely legit? People stick them in their Experience section so it looks like they’ve actually worked for or sold articles to wherever. Yeah, that’s a scam too. Chances are, none of those publications have ever paid them to write a single word. It’s usually the other way around.

Most of the major publications most popular in the business world have programs that people can apply for and pay a membership fee to join – after which, they’re free to write articles that will be “published” by the magazine. To the average reader, it’ll look like they write for the publication, that their thoughts and opinions are valuable enough to Important Sounding Magazine that the publisher has sought them out specifically, and now they’re a featured columnist/contributor. How exciting!

The foundational rule of being a professional writer is called Yog’s Law, and all it says is that money always flows toward the writer. If you write something that someone is willing to pay you for, you’re a writer. But if you have to pay anyone to publish anything, you’re just playing make-believe. And paying for the privilege.

The publications themselves aren’t really scamming anyone, though. Not technically. They tend to indicate when an article is written for one of their fee-based programs (usually branded as some kind of expert council or forum), but readers don’t often pay very close attention to the fine print – which is what the people calling themselves “columnists” and “contributors” bank on.

Now, with the rise of Generative AI like ChatGPT, it’s easier than ever to become a “writer” despite having no knowledge, experience, or talent at writing. You don’t even need to pay a ghostwriter anymore. Sure, Artificial Intelligence Doesn’t Exist, Actually and all the robots are capable of producing are basic, flat, lifeless articles that often contain made-up “facts” with hallucinated “sources” – but hey, it’s cheap. So there’s that.

All of this is not to say that you can’t find the occasional worthwhile needle amongst the haystack of nonsense, but there’s just so much of it out there that sifting through it all to distinguish the real from the fake can be exhausting.

My advice would be to just not bother. The dirty little secret of the publishing world is that no one really pays attention to bylines anyway. Nobody who finds your article through a search is going to care about who wrote it. Which is, I guess, where social media comes in because at least people will have an idea that your self-promotion is promoting yourself, but I’ve always found that the least appealing part of creating anything.

Then again, I’m probably just an outlier. I don’t want to be recognized, I feel all kinds of awkward on the rare occasion that I am, and I’d much rather just stay fairly anonymous behind my pixel avatar and whatever name I’m using to publish under. If I’m writing for myself, it’ll always be my actual name – but I write a lot of other stuff too, and I don’t want to draw attention to anything that isn’t 100% me.

I don’t think most people want to be genuine, though. Not really. They may think they do, and they’ll probably get a bunch of articles ghostwritten that talk about how important it is to be your authentic self or whatever, but if social media has taught us anything, it’s that people are only ever as authentic as they need to be to get the clicks. Everything is curated, sanitized, and romanticized until it meets presentable standards, and only when it’s ready does it ever go online and out into the world.

Which is especially true for LinkedIn, where everything is fake and nothing is ever real.

I don’t treat my LinkedIn any differently than other social media because it’s not worth faking my life for. I don’t treat it as an extension of my resume, I don’t use it for networking, and I’m far from whatever “being professional” is supposed to mean. I post silly jokes and goofy rants and sometimes recipes, and I’m fine with that. LinkedIn is so far removed from any kind of reality that I can only laugh at anyone who takes any of it seriously. Nobody is ever going to look at my LinkedIn profile and be like, omg the insights! I must hire this person immediately! (And the kind of employer that would isn’t the type of company I’d want to work for.)

@pasha

you wouldn’t believe who interviewed me 😭🙌 #linkedin #comedy creds: @milligram96 ❤️

♬ original sound – Pasha Grozdov

If you want to provide anyone with anything of actual value, you need to be real and be yourself. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with enlisting the aid of a ghostwriter, you’d be better off working with a seasoned editor who could take something you’ve written and actually help you develop your own voice to produce content people genuinely want to read and articles that publishers will happily pay you to write.

As long as you’re paying other people to do the work and then paying someone else to publish it, you’ll never have a true voice, and you’ll never say anything worth listening to. Your voice needs to be your voice, and it can take years to develop one that’s genuine and not some sanitized version an agency would create or that your PR department would approve of. Being authentic to your audience means being authentic to yourself first, but that’s not something most people are very comfortable doing.

Authenticity requires true self-reflection, unflinching self-analysis, and harsh self-criticism, along with the courage to show all your jagged edges to the world – and I’m here to tell you, kids, that ain’t always an easy thing to do.

But you know what is easy? Money.

Well, money makes things easier, anyway. With enough money, you never actually have to become whatever it is you’re pretending to be. Just keep faking it and you’ll eventually look like you’ve made it.

As long as the money doesn’t run out.

That Time Popeye Met a Cowboy: A Steak and Spinach Romance

I’ve been making this particular combination for years now, although my wife says I haven’t made it since we were dating and I was still trying to impress her, so I dunno. She’s probably right.

The secret to the steak is its simplicity and the roasted peanut oil, which is impossible to find where we live so I have to order it off the internet dot com like some kind of ’90s wayfarer. You could make it with standard peanut oil or any other high smoke point oil if you really want to, but it won’t be nearly as good and you’ll want to blame me for your failure – but I ain’t got time for that kind of negativity in my life so take ownership of your mistakes for once, willya?

Oh yeah, about the smoke. If you live in an apartment or if your stove isn’t vented very well, you’ll probably want to cover your smoke detectors and open a window or two. Fair warning.

Anyway, that’s the steak. It’s amazing if you do it right, so try to do it right. It’s not rocket science. I believe in you!

The spinach is a whole other thing. I wouldn’t eat it on its own, to be honest. It’s good but it really only exists here as a flavor enhancer for the steak. Take a bite of steak, then a little bite of the spinach and you’ll understand. The two just create some kind of culinary magic when they meet. It’d probably be good with other things too, but I wouldn’t know about any of that because I’m just here for the meat meet.

Just don’t skimp on the nutmeg.

The Steak

Reagents

  • Steak (I go for ribeye, myself)
  • Roasted Peanut Oil (order it online if you have to)
  • Kosher Salt
  • Freshly Coarse-Ground Black Pepper
  • Coarse-Ground Garlic Powder

The Destructions

  • Grab your steak out of the fridge so it can get up to room temperature
  • Grab one of the racks in your oven and set it directly on the oven floor if you can, or the lowest position possible
  • Toss an iron skillet on that rack
  • Crank up your oven as high as it will go, whatever that is (mine tops out at 500°)
  • Let that skillet sit and heat up for 30 minutes to an hour
  • When your skillet is ready, grab your steak and pat it as dry as you can with a paper towel, then season it on both sides (and the edges) with way more kosher salt than you think you need (trust me), then do the same with the black pepper and garlic powder and make sure to smoosh it all in
  • Turn one of your stovetop burners as high as it will go
  • Grab your iron skillet from the oven and toss it on the burner, then pour in a good glug of the roasted peanut oil
  • Plop your steak in one side of the skillet and let it sear for about a minute
  • Grab it with some tongs, flip it over, and set it on the other side of the skillet for another minute
  • If you did it right, it shouldn’t stick at all and you’ll be left with an excellent crust on both sides
  • You can also sear around the sides at this point, if you’re extra
  • Flip it again and toss it in the oven for two or three minutes for medium, a little less for medium rare, a little more for medium well (the thickness of your steak will affect this; I’m using a pretty standard thick cut ribeye)
  • Take it out of the skillet and let it rest on a wire rack for a little bit
  • Slice into thin strips, then serve with a drizzle of the skillet oil on top

The Spinach

Reagents

  • Three 10oz. bags of fresh spinach (or around two pounds)
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/4 cup finely minced shallot
  • 1/2 cup finely minced onion
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic (or a tablespoon of jarlic)
  • 2 cups of whipping cream (maybe more, if you need it)
  • 1 teaspoon of nutmeg (you’ll probably add more to taste, but start with a teaspoon)
  • Salt
  • Pepper

The Destructions

  • Rinse all the spinach really well
  • Grab the rinsed spinach by the handful and drop it in a big pot, cover and wilt it down over medium heat until it’s, well, wilted down. Feel free to add a little extra water if you need to.
  • Strain the wilted spinach under cold water while you mix it around and squeeze it
  • Once it’s cooled down, smoosh all the water you can out of it, then divide it into two halves
  • Throw one half in a blender with a cup or so of whipping cream (you can use more if it’s having trouble blending) and puree it all
  • Finely chop up the other half (for texture, dontchaknow)
  • In a large pot/saucepan melt the butter over medium heat
  • Toss in the shallot and onion and saute until they’re however you like them (I do mine for a bit past translucent). When they’re just about ready, throw the garlic in and give it a minute
  • Add in the pureed spinach along with another cup of whipping cream (more if you need it) and the rest of the spinach
  • Stir it all around, then add in the nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste while it simmers

You’re welcome.

How I Make Texas Chili In Lousiana

Once upon a time, when I was but a wee lad, my grandpappy sat me down and told me the long and winding tale of his world-famous chili, which I will now regale you with for the next 20,000 words before ever giving you the recipe.

I mean, that’s how these things are supposed to go, right? I did kinda do it with my gumbo recipe, I guess. Same with my chocolate pie, too. But at least I included jump links right at the top that take you straight to the recipe. So there’s that.

Also, I don’t do recipes very well. Most of these measurements are approximations based on what I think “some of this” looks like in tablespoons or however many cups “a handful or so” is. Should do you fine, though. Adjust as needed. I accept no responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

The Reagents

Meat
2 pounds of 80/20 ground beef

Roux (I said what I said; consider this the Louisiana part)
1 cup oil
1 cup flour

Spice blend
Chilis
If you’re fancy:
Dried ancho/chipotle/whatever chilis you like, de-seeded and ground in a spice grinder to equal around 5 tablespoons of chili powder
If you’re a normal person (honestly, just use the chili powder; we’re going to bloom all the spices anyway so it’ll be fine)
2.5 tablespoons light chili powder
2.5 tablespoons dark chili powder
The rest of the stuff
1.5-2 tablespoons cumin (depending on how much you like cumin, obvi)
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon (depending on how much you like cinnamon, obvi)
1-2 teaspoons coarse ground garlic powder (do I have to keep saying this?)
1-2 teaspoons onion powder (you get the idea)
However much cayenne pepper you want (or just throw a couple teaspoons of Slap Ya Mama in there and call it done)
Anything else you like, there are no rules

Veggies
Finely minced garlic
If you’re fancy:
1 Large Onion
3 Celery Stalks
2 Bell Peppers
If you’re a normal person:
Skip all the chopping and just buy a 24oz bag of Pictosweet’s Seasoning Blend from the freezer section

Other Stuff
32-64oz Beef stock (32 should be fine but you might want to have more on hand if you need to thin things out, but water would work fine too)
1 bottle of stout (Guinness or whatever)
4.5-6oz Tomato paste
40 grams or so of 70%ish Dark chocolate (or however much you want, but I’d start with 40ish grams then add more if you like it – you can also go for an even darker chocolate if you prefer, I won’t tell The Authorities or anything)

Optional

1 teaspoon (or so) of MSG

Extremely Optional
1 tablespoon ground coffee (use at your own risk; it’s already a dish with a pretty complex flavor profile, so you might want to leave it out the first time or every time, whatever. I don’t normally add it, but if I’m feeling frisky…)

If You Absolutely Must
A couple of cans of kidney beans, but listen. If you insist on adding beans, you are no longer legally allowed to call this Texas chili. Also, beans are gross. But whatever, live how you wanna live, I guess.

The Destructions

Mix the spice blend together and set aside

In your Dutch oven (you’ll need one of those because this is all going in the actual oven eventually), add the oil and flour over medium heat if you don’t know what you’re doing, or crank it up hotter if you do. Stir constantly until you have a nice, dark roux. (It should look like melted chocolate.)

While making sure to keep stirring your roux, go ahead and get your ground beef browning.

Put a little oil or bacon grease in a separate pan and toss in about 1/3 of the veggies and saute them for a few minutes before tossing in a heaping teaspoon or so of minced garlic, then mix that around for a minute before adding the ground beef – which you’re going to remember to season, right? Right. Just put whatever you like on it, or just salt and pepper. You do you. (I like Trager’s Beef Rub, myself.) Cook until browned.

The roux you’ve been remembering to keep stirring this whole time should be the dark chocolate color we’re looking for around the time your ground beef is done browning. (If the meat is done sooner, don’t panic. Just take it off the heat and let it sit there to think about what it’s done.) Add the rest of your veggies to the roux, stir them around, and let them cook for a bit in that before adding in the spice blend. Stir all that together for a minute (this is the blooming part I mentioned), then toss in another heaping teaspoon or so of minced garlic and dump everything from your other pan (the one with the ground beef and the rest of the veggies) straight into the Dutch oven where the party’s getting started.

Dump in a bottle of stout, I use Guinness Extra Stout, and stir it around a little, then add 32oz of beef stock and the tomato paste, then do the stir-stir thing until everything’s nice and mixed in and the roux is fully dissolved. If you aren’t susceptible to racist media scare tactics and really want to kick up the flavor, you can also add in around a teaspoon or so of MSG (easy to find branded as Ac’cent Flavor Enhancer). If you are susceptible to racist media scare tactics, you could just toss in a bouillon cube since it’s basically just MSG in disguise for white people who are scared of MSG because they’re susceptible to racist media scare tactics. (You’d also add the beans here, if you’re the kind of philistine that considers nothing upon this good earth sacred at all.) Bring the whole thing to a boil while stirring occasionally, then slap the lid on and toss it in a 300° oven for somewhere around an hour, hour-and-a-half.

Grab the Dutch oven out of the, well, oven oven and skim off some of the excess fat that’ll have risen to the top while you’re here. If you even want to, that is. Fat is flavor, so feel free to leave it. Up to you. I’m not telling anyone how to live.

Anyway, give it a good stir and taste it. Add whatever you may think it’s missing but keep in mind that the flavors will continue to intensify over time (especially the next day). Then, just toss it back in the oven – uncovered this time – for another 30-45 minutes or however long it takes to thicken to your desired consistency. Check on it and just keep cooking it uncovered until it looks right to you. Helping to get just the right consistency is one of the reasons for the roux – it’ll make adjusting things a bit easier. (If it gets too thick, just add more beef stock or water. If you add too much and it gets too thin, then just leave it in the oven longer until it’s back to where you wanted it before you messed up and went dumping more beef stock in there with reckless abandon.)

Once it’s how you want it, taste everything and make sure it’s all on point, then toss in the dark chocolate. Yep, trust me. Just toss it in there and stir everything up. Let it sit for, I dunno, 15 minutes or so, then give it another quick stir and you should be good to go.

It’s ready to serve at this point, which you should absolutely do because it’s taken a while and everyone’s hungry, but it’ll be even better tomorrow and the next day or however long it takes you to gobble it up like the gluttonous wretch you are.

If you need me to tell you what to top it with once you have it in a bowl, then you’ve never eaten chili before and I can’t help you. Personally, I just put a little cheese on top while the wife prefers sour cream. Do whatever you want, though. Or don’t do anything. Everything is fake and nothing is real, anyway. Go crazy.