We Don’t Need More Influencers

[00:00:00] Kate: I saw something recently that I could not stop thinking about. Someone was filming a story about their hangover while mixing a cocktail and promoting a beauty product, of course. And it was all packaged as authenticity. And what unsettled me was not even the content itself. It's how familiar it all felt. This circulates now so much and it gets rewarded. And this is what we're trained to recognize as influence now, and at some point I had to ask, are we actually being influenced, or are we just being interrupted?

[00:00:32] Today I want to talk about why we don't need more influencers. We need people who are still in contact with what is real.

[00:00:47] I was sitting with a double espresso, trying to think through something that had been bothering me for a while. The way it's become so easy to lose our center without even realizing it. And later that day, I watched someone film a story about their hangover while mixing another cocktail and promoting a beauty product. And this was all framed as authenticity. What unsettled me wasn't just the content itself, but how familiar it felt. This is what circulates widely now, and what gets rewarded. And over time, it really has reshaped what we recognize as influence.

[00:01:21] I'm not anti-influencer. And someone could even say I'm an influencer because I write things. I'm influencing thought, like case in point here. So I'm not anti-influencer, and I always want to be careful because we see plenty of that out there. All the hot takes that are icy cold and like hating on people. That's not what this is. This is more of just like, hey, this is what I'm feeling, and talking about it. And then, yeah, like, what are we doing about it? We're getting more in touch with what's real in us, and we're making sure that we don't sell out, whatever that means to us. We're making sure that we're in contact with the truth and creating from that place, writing about it, speaking about it, talking about it, creating art from that place.

[00:02:02] So I think it really is a call to action for all of us to be more real, whether we like it or not. I think with things that bother us, let it bother you, ask why it bothers you, and then what are you going to do to combat being bothered by it and create that instead?

[00:02:17] At a certain point, many creators stop asking whether something is meaningful and begin paying attention only to what performs. And once that shift happens, the work starts to resemble replication more than expression. It begins to feel mechanical, like an assembly line, rather than a person thinking in real time.

[00:02:36] You know, we've built an entire ecosystem around this dynamic. Influence is now measured in reach, not resonance. Visibility and shock value begin to stand in for credibility, and eventually the performance of insight becomes easier to recognize than the real thing.

[00:02:53] What I experience, where it becomes numbing, is that they're finding a formula that works, and they repeat and repeat and repeat. What I said: an assembly line. It's like a machine, because so many people, they just do the same thing every time, regardless. Challenge yourself where you're dialing it in, where you're doing the assembly line of your job or your art, if you will, because it works and you're getting compensated. How can you switch it up?

[00:03:20] And you see a lot of musical artists. Just came to mind: a country star, that's her lane, making all that money, switched over to pop, and she went on to become a billionaire. Taylor Swift. So, it could have been the end of her career. People do want depth. They really do. But depth requires something of them. It asks for undivided attention. It's going to make you uncomfortable, and you have to be willing to sit with something longer than a seven-second scroll. Sorry.

[00:03:49] Much of what we consume asks so very little of us. I have scrolled for hours and felt almost nothing, because the content asked nothing of me. But that's the whole point. Going through all these videos of influencer after influencer, we're numbing ourselves out. And I am guilty more than anyone of spending hours scrolling and scrolling. And that's the pattern I interrupted myself with: what are you doing here? And I'm like, I don't drink or do drugs, but I'm like, yeah, but you just numbed out on TikTok for three hours. You didn't learn anything. You feel numb and your head's going to explode, and you're not feeling anything except for, what the heck is this?

[00:04:28] What it did make me do is question if our culture has confused hollow, optimized self-expression for influence.

[00:04:38] Influence itself isn't the problem. It's simply the ability to direct attention and shape perception. But there is a difference between someone who knows how to capture attention and someone who has stayed in contact with what's real long enough to see something that's actually true. One is a skill, the other is a responsibility. And more and more, those two things are being mistaken for each other, but you can feel the difference immediately.

[00:05:07] So don't abandon your own perception to belong. Don't say something only because you think it will perform. Create from what is true, not only what is marketable. Stay with your own interior life long enough to let something real come through. We want to hear that.

[00:05:23] Staying in contact with what's real means you don't let the algorithm become your conscience. There's a subtle dissonance between what's being said and what's actually being lived. There's a sense now that something is being presented to us rather than revealed. It becomes obvious that you're watching a performance of insight, not the result of it. That feeling matters because it means you haven't gone numb to it.

[00:05:46] I have spent so much time scrolling and scrolling and amused by strangers' lifestyles and their tarot card readings and all of it. But then at some point, I think when things were getting more and more disrupted in the world and you couldn't look away, or at least I couldn't look away from atrocities happening all over the world, I started to really get the ick with some of that, because it's deeper than just read the room. And I know people have jobs and platforms and whatnot, but this ick that my body was recognizing was language coming from people, but they weren't really there. It's hard to explain, but I think everyone knows what I mean. Where it's like people are saying all these words and I'm like, what? What are you even talking about?

[00:06:34] I think we all need to ask ourselves if we're still in contact with what's real, and first define what's real to you, not what will perform well or translate easily or be widely accepted. But are we creating from a place that's actually true? Are we creating true art?

[00:06:53] And sitting with that question is going to have consequences, because you're not always going to be agreeable with the masses. You will not be easily digestible or understood. You may make less money at first, and you won't always be rewarded in the ways the system is designed to reward. So it's going to require this internal steadiness and the ability to really tolerate a lot of friction, both within yourself and the world around you, and the willingness to resist smoothing everything over for the sake of approval. For me, it means forgoing niceness in the name of truth.

[00:07:30] It also means we don't get to fully detach when we say something true enough to provoke distortion. It means our work is cutting through. Some will expand with it, others will defend against it. And that's because truth triggers defensiveness. And that is the point where many people begin to opt out, through small moments where it feels easier to soften what you really think, simplify what you actually feel, and keep things moving to prevent pushback.

[00:07:57] I know as I become more direct and honest in my own work, I receive more people in my comments arguing with points I didn't even make so they can feel superior to it. The fastest way to avoid being challenged by a real idea is to turn it into a simpler one and argue with that instead. It's easier to argue with a distortion than sit with something that challenges how you've been living.

[00:08:20] Numbness isn't always a decision. Often it's an adaptation. Which is why the alternative isn't something you can manufacture. You can't shortcut your way into depth. You cannot perform your way into integrity and expect it to hold. The kind of presence that actually cuts through is built slowly, often in ways that don't translate neatly into content. And yet it's exactly what people recognize when they encounter it.

[00:08:48] There's a sense the person speaking or writing hasn't abandoned their own perception in order to belong. They're still thinking for themselves and willing to say something that hasn't been approved, optimized, or softened into something more acceptable. That kind of presence doesn't chase viewership. It simply lands.

[00:09:07] This really hit a nerve with people. Jeremy said: "I yearn to meet a higher percentage of people who are awake and not mindless. Everyone says they want to be original, but they show up as performers who are already bored of not my words. Authenticity is rare these days. Brilliant post, Kate." That was nice.

[00:09:27] 3am Coffee says: "The undertone running through all of this is instant gratification. We've trained ourselves to reach for what performs instead of what's true, because truth takes longer and doesn't always get the click. I started writing again at 3 a.m. because I couldn't sleep. No strategy, no content calendar, just something that needed to be said. Turns out that's the only thing worth reading anyway." That's so good.

[00:09:56] Whispers of Goodness said: "What a beautiful piece. I found myself feeling quite emotional reading it because of how true it is. Truth is such a difficult, slow and uncomfortable thing, and yet it is the most human thing we can give to people. I don't think there's anything quite as special as when we read something that feels uncomfortable, difficult, but true, that requires us to be patient and slow down. I think we all need to consciously get back to that. Thank you so much for sharing this and writing this."

[00:10:30] This is why I do it. This is why I do it. You know what it is? I said publicly what so many people are thinking and feeling and didn't have the language for, or hadn't articulated themselves yet, and so it just resonates. And they're like, finally somebody said it, finally somebody said it. That's the, like, ah.

[00:10:51] Real authority does not sound like someone trying to win the room. It sounds like someone who has stopped abandoning herself in order to be accepted by it. That is why this isn't really a conversation about needing fewer influencers. It's about needing more people who are still awake. People who are still alive to original ideas and haven't confused visibility with substance.

[00:11:13] It's important to remember what it feels like to be moved, unsettled, or changed by something real. Maybe the work is to stay with a thought just a little bit longer. May this be an invitation to feel a little more, and an encouragement to hold complexity, instead of immediately reducing it into something clean and shareable.

[00:11:35] That kind of presence is rarer than it should be, but it's also what people are yearning for now more than ever. We can see it in what lingers well after we've moved on from it. The truth that opens something in us. This is what happens when someone hasn't gone numb. And this is the kind of person who actually influences.