How to deal with the after-effects of being a public person?

[Applegarden8]

I am making this post since I couldn't find a good source of advice and I have literally nobody to ask, so I became back to this place.

I have decided to become a public person. That means I will share pretty vulnerable stuff, mostly musicianship/"how and why to be an artist" related, in a format of video essays that I have contemplated and fermented over a period of time and can be a subject to anybody self-reflection, meaning anything I share has weight to impact somebody listening. And I feel I have something to say, but I am always quiet about it.

That means becoming vulnerable to anybody I know personally and on the internet.

What is your advice on being a public person, who has some audience who trusts you, how do you deal with attachment to fame and haters and so on? Do you have any good sources on it?

I feel that this decision will ultimately benefit me as I see there are people around me that want to enter my life and hear what I have to say. People recognize me in where I live that I live differently and that I do music and they start singing for some reason when they see me. I have received hate for being truly who I am when I show it. I feel I already have that polarizing effect that some people with orders of magnitude larger audience and recognition have, so why not just to open up and really expand. I feel responsibility to share rather to criticize somebody else. I feel the values I hold and my way of explaining or even merely sharing my empirical experience will greatly benefit a handful of people at least.

Thank you.

Edited Saturday at 06:57 PM by Applegarden8

[puporing]

You have to be honest with what your goal is with doing this in the first place. Most people who post relentlessly on youtube or attachment to "having an audience", have some kind of NPD. Rarely do you find someone who does not have NPD and sharing for the sake of the information, and there are varying degrees of this of course. That may sound like a "tall order" right now but that is what things look like from a high state of consciousness. 

If your goal is not about the numbers but rather to find people who can benefit from your content the most, I recommend having some kind of "traffic redirection" in place where to access more content they have some "hurdles" to go through.

[Leo Gura]

I recommend you don't reveal too much. Keep private things private. Focus on sharing what offers value to others. No one needs to see your dirty undies. What they really need from you is value and utility. Make yourself a genuinely useful person for others and they will flock to you. And the private stuff you keep to yourself.

You don't want to peer inside your car mechanic's butthole. You just want him to fix your car.

Edited Sunday at 02:28 AM by Leo Gura

[Yimpa]

Speak the Truth, always.

[Emerald]

6 hours ago, Applegarden8 said:

I am making this post since I couldn't find a good source of advice and I have literally nobody to ask, so I became back to this place.

I have decided to become a public person. That means I will share pretty vulnerable stuff, mostly musicianship/"how and why to be an artist" related, in a format of video essays that I have contemplated and fermented over a period of time and can be a subject to anybody self-reflection, meaning anything I share has weight to impact somebody listening. And I feel I have something to say, but I am always quiet about it.

That means becoming vulnerable to anybody I know personally and on the internet.

What is your advice on being a public person, who has some audience who trusts you, how do you deal with attachment to fame and haters and so on? Do you have any good sources on it?

I feel that this decision will ultimately benefit me as I see there are people around me that want to enter my life and hear what I have to say. People recognize me in where I live that I live differently and that I do music and they start singing for some reason when they see me. I have received hate for being truly who I am when I show it. I feel I already have that polarizing effect that some people with orders of magnitude larger audience and recognition have, so why not just to open up and really expand. I feel responsibility to share rather to criticize somebody else. I feel the values I hold and my way of explaining or even merely sharing my empirical experience will greatly benefit a handful of people at least.

Thank you.

I've had my YouTube channel for 9 years and I have nearly 70k subscribers and 3+million views.

And what I would say is that I've met so many amazing people and close friends through my channel over the years. So, it really attracts "your people" to you.

With vulnerability, my advice is to get really clear on your own personal boundaries as it comes to what you want to share. Attune deeply to yourself and don't adopt a policy of 100% transparency because that is probably over your boundaries even if you value vulnerability and transparency. Get really honest with yourself about what you're comfortable with and what you're not comfortable with.

My biggest advice is to recognize that having an audience gives you a lot of power over that audience. And you have to grow your level of responsibility to match that level of power. And so many people are incredibly vulnerable. So, you want to keep the best interests of your audience in mind as you share because your words have power.

Haters have never been a big problem. About 90%+ of my comments are positive. I'll get the occasional person nerdsplaining to me in my audience who goes "Actually, you're wrong about blah, blah, blah." But that's about it.

That said, back when I had 29 subscribers, this weird guy got really obsessed with me and started doing weird satantic rituals with my image and sending me the links to the videos on YouTube. And I was like "Holy shit! Is this what YouTube is going to be like?!?!" But he got bored of that in a couple weeks.

And I haven't had another situation like that since the very beginning of my YouTube journey. 

As for attachment to fame, I don't have much of that. Being well-known in my niche has come with a lot of great expression, community, and business-related benefits.

So, I want to continue to have "fame" as a resource. But I find that having some degree of fame really illuminates the illusions of fame. Fame doesn't really mean anything about you other than that a group of people are interested in what you have going on. But even awful people can have people interested in what they have going on.

It really takes the authority out of public opinion in a way.

But there are still concerns of audience capture if you care deeply for and have developed friendships with many of the members of your audience. So, there can be a fear of sharing perspectives that you haven't shared from the get go.

[Leo Gura]

@Emerald Well said.

[Emerald]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Emerald Well said.

Thank you

[gengar]

@Emerald do you ever get recognized irl?

[Emerald]

Just now, gengar said:

@Emerald do you ever get recognized irl?

It's happened a couple times... but only at spirituality-related contexts. It's never happened in Walmart or something.

I got recognized once at an Ayahuasca ceremony. I went with my friend. And this woman came up to me and was like "You look REALLY familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?" And she kind of looked familiar to me too.

So, I was going through all the options I could think of. Like... "I'm originally from Citrus County... have you been there before?" or "I used to be a teacher in Saint Augustine. Have you ever been there?" And I'm scratching my head and trying to figure out where we might know each other.

And my friend was rolling his eyes a bit and said "Emerald. Your channel."

And I was like "OH YAHHH! DUH!"

And the woman and her partner had been fans of my channel. I even did my journey in the same space as here partner and had already met him upon arriving at the place.

Then, I went to a Teal Swan workshop a couple years back. And the guy sitting directly behind me tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he liked my channel.

Those were the only times.

[gengar]

1 minute ago, Emerald said:

It's happened a couple times... but only at spirituality-related contexts. It's never happened in Walmart or something.

I got recognized once at an Ayahuasca ceremony. I went with my friend. And this woman came up to me and was like "You look REALLY familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?" And she kind of looked familiar to me too.

So, I was going through all the options I could think of. Like... "I'm originally from Citrus County... have you been there before?" or "I used to be a teacher in Saint Augustine. Have you ever been there?" And I'm scratching my head and trying to figure out where we might know each other.

And my friend was rolling his eyes a bit and said "Emerald. Your channel."

And I was like "OH YAHHH! DUH!"

And the woman and her partner had been fans of my channel. I even did my journey in the same space as here partner and had already met him upon arriving at the place.

Then, I went to a Teal Swan workshop a couple years back. And the guy sitting directly behind me tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he liked my channel.

Those were the only times.

Damn, an ayahuasca ceremony and a trauma-release workshop are like the exact 2 places I would not want to be recognized haha. 

[Emerald]

23 minutes ago, gengar said:

Damn, an ayahuasca ceremony and a trauma-release workshop are like the exact 2 places I would not want to be recognized haha. 

It wasn't disruptive at all. The Teal Swan workshop is mostly like a show that you watch (unless you volunteer and get chosen to go up on stage).

And I tend to feel comfortable in group medicine ceremonies because everyone's in a really vulnerable space anyway. 

[Cubbage]

@Emerald I deeply relate to your sentiments here as a fellow content creator. Brilliantly articulated.

[Emerald]

16 minutes ago, Cubbage said:

@Emerald I deeply relate to your sentiments here as a fellow content creator. Brilliantly articulated.

Thank you

 

[Applegarden8]

@Emerald @Leo Gura @Yimpa @puporing  Thank you for giving your valuable ideas and insights. Right now as I am refining the content I am going to share, I have some time to think about these topics.

[The Renaissance Man]

@Applegarden8 The trap is often in seeing famous personalities sharing more with YouTube than with their therapists, and thinking: see where it got them?

What you often don't see is how they regret it after a couple years. Pretty much all of them. From self-help youtubers to streamers.

The fact that those "big channels" know what they're doing is an illusion. Being famous for 95% of them is totally new, and they fuck up in all sorts of ways.

So for every "strategic move" in terms of public communication, think for yourself. I'm saying this because I was falling for all of the traps above myself.

Leo's advice above is super solid.

 

By the way for sources you can find plenty of podcasts interviews and clips of people talking about the "public life". Look at both the pros and cons in these interviews, don't blackpill yourself.

You'll see them talking about haters, comments, the benefits, their mistakes, and everything. Very valuable.

Plus if you follow some people carefully for a long time you'll see them making mistakes in real time. They always need to look confident, so the new viewer doesn't know, but over enough time you can see it all.

Edited Sunday at 08:30 AM by The Renaissance Man

[Applegarden8]

2 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

@Applegarden8 The trap is often in seeing famous personalities sharing more with YouTube than with their therapists, and thinking: see where it got them?

What you often don't see is how they regret it after a couple years. Pretty much all of them. From self-help youtubers to streamers.

The fact that those "big channels" know what they're doing is an illusion. Being famous for 95% of them is totally new, and they fuck up in all sorts of ways.

So for every "strategic move" in terms of public communication, think for yourself. I'm saying this because I was falling for all of the traps above myself.

Leo's advice above is super solid.

 

By the way for sources you can find plenty of podcasts interviews and clips of people talking about the "public life". Look at both the pros and cons in these interviews, don't blackpill yourself.

You'll see them talking about haters, comments, the benefits, their mistakes, and everything. Very valuable.

Plus if you follow some people carefully for a long time you'll see them making mistakes in real time. They always need to look confident, so the new viewer doesn't know, but over enough time you can see it all.

Thank you, I want to be smart about it and set up a good foundation, so I have a lot of work to do even to begin.

[LordFall]

I would read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and just use it as a way to get stronger and make your voice and message stronger and using the antifragile mindset not really worry about any type of mean stuff that you encounter online. 

[gengar]

@Emerald would you recommend the teal swan workshop?

Edited yesterday at 04:09 AM by gengar

[Emerald]

13 minutes ago, gengar said:

@Emerald would you recommend the teal swan workshop?

I've been to a few of them over the years. I go when she's in Florida. And they're pretty good. The biggest highlight is to be around other people who are interested in spirituality. 

[integral]

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