The Perils of Being “On-Brand”
The other day I got a very nice email from someone I met on Reddit about how I could change my image online to sell more books. His advice was very sensible. The short of it was that I needed to craft my online persona to be the expert on the world of breathing, the mind body connection and human performance. I should provide a constant drip of analysis, encourage my customers to think, interview other experts, post regular informative blog posts, retweet more, and most of all keep my political and personal opinions as far away from social media as possible. This, he predicted, would make brand Scott Carney skyrocket with more followers, subscribers to my email list, and most importantly, lots and lots of book sales. It’s an appealing promise. What author wouldn’t want those things?
I thanked him for the advice. Then I told him that I most likely wouldn't be following it.
Here’s the thing: I’m not a brand. Neither are you. And while we all craft our images online to some degree with filters, cool selfies and whitty rapporte, who we are online shouldn’t eclipse who we are as real flesh-and-blood humans.
COVID has done a lot of damage to the world, but one thing it has revealed is how shallow our online lives had been. Just 8 weeks ago my newsfeed overflowed with vacation selfies, bro-science, super positive people, bio hacks, yoga poses and a non-stop churn of impenetrable positivity. Everyone was building their personal brand and monetizing the hell out of it. Or, at least trying to monetize it. But then, a stint in quarantine, and 80,000 deaths later, the backlogs of awesome photos has run out. Online advertising declined and at least a few professional influencers are actual people again. And it’s a little refreshing.
Strange things happen when a person becomes a brand. Yes, they might make a little more money. But over time the constant pressure to always be the smartest person in a discussion, show the awesomest yoga pose, six pack or fashion sense, can get isolating. It’s the same problem that I wrote about in The Enlightenment Trap where spiritual gurus at first start amassing a following with their honest insights, and eventually wind up on a pedestal. Once the guru presents a perfect image of themselves to the world (or even declares that they are some form of enlightened) they lose the ability to show weakness in any form. They’re isolated. And they often even start to believe that anything they think or feel is, by definition, the truth simply because so many people have faith in their proclamations.
This is the trap that Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally wound up in Arizona that prompted me to spend a few years documenting their descent into madness. In their case it ended with the entirely preventable death of Ian Thorson on a mountain side. But, to a lesser extent, it’s the trap that anyone can fall into once they present themselves as an authority for too long. It’s the same sort of hubris is also killing people during the COVID pandemic where armchair experts who might be accomplished in a particular field, proclaim solutions to the illness that stretch beyond their actual knowledge. Actual expert Rohin Francis nicely showed how dangerous it could be in this recent youtube video.
But it’s not only the danger of spreading false knowledge. At least for me, it’s the danger of becoming a less real person in general. If being a brand means altering every aspect of your public life to generate an image of success then I don’t want any part of it. I want to be able to fail. I want to be able to post my thoughts and not worry if it might alienate a few readers because it doesn’t live up to an image crafter by marketers. Those aren’t the metrics that I want to live my life by. After all, how many people do I know who have extensive online followings who express privately to me that they’re sort of miserable? Tim Ferris has talked about it (before resuming the image of being awesome). It also affects people who are much, much less famous when they compare themselves to others.
I guess my purpose of writing this screed is to say that don’t expect me to be On Brand in any particular platform. Sure, you’ll see me write about the Wedge here, and post a few shirtless selfies now and again on Instagram. But there is going to be a time when you get nothing but cat photos, and idle musings that may, or may not lead to any new and interesting thoughts. This policy isn’t going to win me an enormous following. I’ll sell fewer books. But I’ll be a happier person. And that’s enough for me.