What do you call it when online content creators become effective “slaves to the algorithm.” The answer is: Audience Capture. After they begin to build a successful online presence, social media influencers often feel pressured to give their audience what they want and expect. Tristan Harris, creator of the documentary The Social Dilemma, believes that audience capture goes much deeper than just trying to build online engagement. He says:
”It involves the gradual and unwitting replacement of a person’s identity with one custom-made for the audience.“
Tristan Harris believes that the distortion of self-concept that is generated by audience capture occurs because we are all constantly self-refining as we engage the world. The feedback we acknowledge from others is the key, and for successful online content creators, audience feedback is never-ending. However, Harris maintains that we are primarily influenced by what we believe the audience is seeing and saying. And this is an issue which transcends the world of social media influencers. For we are all like this, to some degree. As Tristan Harris puts it, we develop our personalities as we imagine ourselves through the eyes of others.
So, each of us shapes himself or herself according to internal criticism that we frame as coming from outside of us, as much as by actual criticism. And even then, it is primarily when the criticism of others aligns with our critique of ourselves that we take note of it. The critic is mostly within. This is how we often give our power away to “the critic,” often betraying our Deep Selves in the process. Yet the good news is that our power is actually within us still. We just have to learn to develop the right relationship with that inner voice.
Several years ago I received a torrent of personal abuse on my website, mind-futures.com, after I wrote an article about the late online influencer and bodybuilder Zyzz. Tragically, Zyzz died at the age of just twenty-two from heart-related issues while holidaying in Thailand. My article was somewhat critical of the lifestyle of young gym goers like Zyzz, and in particular their use of performance enhancing drugs. I was not meaning to be disrespectful to Zyzz, but coming so soon after his death, I can see how my take may have been perceived as such. Abusive comments started to pour in, mostly from hefty gym bros, including threats that “We will come round to your place and ass rape you.” And that’s not really something I am into. Honest!
When I read the first few comments I felt a wave of fear come over me, followed by great guilt. What had I done? But rather than respond to their posts or begin deleting abusive ones, I got up from my computer and went away to a secluded place to meditate and contemplate the matter. As an advocate of shadow work, I allowed the dark side of my mind full expression, including any judgments and anger I had towards Zyzz’ fans. I also allowed my guilt a voice, and became present with it. I’ve been practicing this alignment process for decades, and at that time it allowed me to acknowledge that my blog post was not intentionally abusive. So, after thirty minutes or so of stillness, I felt at peace. I just let it go. A few hours later I returned to the computer and my website. My fear had mostly ceased, and so I was able to interact respectfully with some of the commenters on my web site, including some of the more aggressive ones. I apologized for my part in the drama, and said I could understand their anger. That wasn’t meant to placate them. It was simply the honest truth. And after a couple of days, the outraged Zyzz fans stopped posting, and the drama evaporated, like rain from an angry summer storm. That blog page and most of the comments are still on my site to this day. I only removed one or two of the very worst comments. I simply allowed the energy to play out without any further dramatic engagement from me.
Content creators could benefit from adopting this kind of approach to at least some criticism from their fans. Before engaging critics, I recommend that we reflect deeply on our part in the situation. We can also express empathy for our critics – if it’s genuine – and look for common ground. We can acknowledge any criticisms that we feel are warranted, but without self-flagellation.
I would also recommend to content creators that you respectfully but firmly state that you will not accept abuse, particularly if you feel there is any projection at unacceptable levels. Most of all, I suggest you do not betray your core values, nor your Deep Self by changing your content simply to please your fans, or critics from opposing tribes. It’s okay if people are angry at you, or if they choose to unfollow you. You may lose users in the short run, but in the long run you will retain your dignity and your integrity.
The Very Strange Case of Nikocado – and Several Others
The story of Nicholas Perry is a shocking reminder of the potential dangers of audience capture. Perry began his venture into online blogging in 2016 as a very skinny 24-year-old vegan, who would try various vegan snacks and meals on his YouTube channel, while also occasionally playing the violin. He gained a few followers, who would give him recommendations on what vegan foods to try next. But about a year later he abandoned his vegan diet for health reasons, and so his range of potential online edibles expanded – along with his waistline. Soon some fans began to goad him into downing increasingly large volumes of food, which he summarily did, and to great fanfare. He soon found himself with a total of six million followers on YouTube alone. Perry got a bigger following, a bigger body, and a bigger name: Nikocado Avocado.
Nikocado’s shtick became eating whatever his multitude of fans dared him to eat. His weight began to balloon along with his subscribers’ list, even as he aired videos of himself eating more and more outrageous types and volumes of food. This even included an entire MacDonald’s menu. His weight went from 150 pounds, to around 350. A gay man, Perry’s videos began to tell of his pain and anguish and his personal struggles with acceptance and depression. In one video he’s seen slumped in a bed in a brand new million-dollar apartment he had bought from his considerable YouTube earnings. But now he was obese, cynical, visibly unhappy with his life and the world. In some of his videos he weeps, clearly depressed, seemingly despising himself. Yet he also appears to be unable to change the caricature he has become – because the money and attention is simply too good.
Nikocado is far from being the only YouTube or social media star to experience audience capture, and to pay a heavy price for it. The stories are many. I have already mentioned Australian bodybuilder and YouTube icon Zyzz, who died at twenty-two from heart problems. Would he still be alive if not for the tens of thousands of followers whose devoted attention helped transform him from a skinny teenager to a muscular young man with an alleged penchant for steroids, recreational drugs and heavy partying? Zyzz became his own brand. Until… he didn’t…
Then there is the case of another older YouTuber, giant bodybuilder Rich Piana. A few years ago, Piana had a big hit with his YouTube series “Bigger By the Day,” in which he openly shared with his millions of fans the massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs he was taking, at the age of forty-six, in order to add muscle, to reach his goal of weighing 300 pounds. “You can become anything you want!” he extolled in one episode. Piana also injected various synthetic substances into his body to make his muscles look bigger, including synthol and probably silicone. His huge arms and shoulders were also almost completely covered in tattoos. The overall effect was that Rich Piana took on the appearance of a real-life cartoon character.
Just a few months later, Piana fell in his bathroom after suffering a heart attack, hitting his head and falling into a coma out of which he never regained consciousness. On Rich Piana’s headstone are written the words: “He never allowed someone else’s opinion of him determine his worth or purpose in life.” Piana’s headstone also pays tribute to his determination and business achievements, and these are undoubtedly valid points. Yet my perception is that Piana was playing out a drama at the level of mind. For the mind typically likes to set up situations and observers to help concretize the story it believes about itself. And that story often emerges from childhood trauma and the sense that we are unloved and inadequate. Telling is a video where Piana had revealed an incident, when as a young man, he had told his father that he had failed to achieve a placing in his first bodybuilding show. The anguish in Piana’s voice is clear as he tells the tale. Failing to win his father’s approval was devastating to him. Could Piana’s later excesses be attributed, in part, to seeking approval from his father? Beyond that, as we shift from childhood to adulthood, our internal critic tends to mirror the voice of our parents, repeating their judgments and beliefs about us. In this sense, as an adult, Rich Piana’s need of his father’s approval simply mirrored his own need to approve of himself.
MemeWorld Captures its Creators
Content creators battling the culture wars of MemeWorld, including media companies, are particularly prone to audience capture. Because the culture wars terrain is so polarized, it’s difficult for them to be even-handed in their opinions about events and problems. Ultimately, many develop toxic profit models. Here, it is sometimes unclear if it is the dog wagging the tail, or the tail wagging the dog.
But tribalist echo chambers extend far beyond the domain of wokesters and Trumpsters cyber-battling across the internet. It’s become a problem right around the world, and across multiple discourses, and within many arenas you’ve probably never even heard of. I live in China, and YouTube bloggers from abroad who reside in China tend to be either heavy Sinophiles or bitterly anti-China. Pro-China channels like The China Report, Cyrus Janssen or Nathan Rich almost always depict China as a radiant and dazzling oriental beauty. It’s all delicious Chinese cuisine, high speed trains and shiny towering skyscrapers. And the economy is always good, even if it isn’t. Admittedly, all those things are very much a part of modern China. Videos from these content creators often feature super-friendly Chinese people greeting our foreign bloggers on the street. The influencers are keen to show off their Chinese language skills for their approving audience, many of whom appear to be Chinese nationals or Chinese expats abroad. China is a cuddly giant Panda that doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But like all tribes, they need their common enemies, and that’s where the awful Americans, woeful westerners and misinformation-peddling foreign media enter, stage left.
On the other hand, bloggers like Serpentza, Laowhy86 and China Uncensored present to their mostly western audience the China narrative those viewers want to hear: human rights abuses, Communist Party oppression, and minorities in concentration camps. Typically, they throw in stock images of Xi Jinping standing in a military vehicle greeting flag-waving crowds at a Beijing military parade, flanked by soldiers, tanks and nuclear weapons in big, khaki trucks. The tank man of Tiananmen Square makes a special guest appearance every second episode or so (or rather, his video image), forever clenching an angry fist from the year 1989, before that endless line of menacing tanks. Alas, the tank man, like many historical figures, has become a meme on MemeWorld, ironically weaponized in a future he could never have dreamed of over three decades ago.
So, who’s telling the truth? The Sinophiles or the anti-China brigade? The truth of China is somewhere in between these two extremes. From my personal perspective, and for the average Chinese person (and I), it’s closer to the Sinophile version. But I don’t buy into the anti-western narrative of the Sinophiles. To be honest, I find it rather nauseating.
As with a gladiator’s fight at the Colosseum in ancient Rome, a YouTuber’s audience may demand blood, with clicks and likes their preferred weapons. The channel host is instructed as to whom they should spare and whom they should destroy.
Perhaps we may cringe or even recoil in horror at certain content creators we see online. Some of them appear to be little more than cartoon characters, barely real. Yet beyond their screen images, beyond their tattoos, metamorphosed body parts and loud voices, they are just as human as you and I. And when they fall, they fall hard.
The truth is that we are all just a little bit like Nikocado, Zyzz and Rich Piana. Or even Serpentza. We often shape our personas to meet the approval of others. We may seek to influence them such that we can win their approval – or just to garner a little cash.
The dull ache of pain carried within the heart may be a factor also. In fermenting the approval of others, we might convince ourselves that we are desirable. That we are worthy of love. Yet the spiritual traditions teach us that we are already worthy of love. Indeed, we are love. In that realization we may find our greatest power.
Marcus
