Being a Writer in the Age of the Influencer

Human beings are high-fidelity imitators.

For most of human history, our ancestors looked around and copied whoever seemed to be doing something effectively. If a hunter or fisherman brought home huge catches, others took note. They imitated his methods. They imitated his tools. But just in case, they would also imitate his clothes. They imitated the little song he hummed while cleaning the spear he used. The logic was straightforward. If you can’t neatly separate what works from what doesn’t, you copy everything.

As belief systems developed, people came to see skill and good fortune as signs of divine favor. If a fisherman was successful, maybe the gods had blessed him. So people treated anything connected to the successful person as a possible source of power. A tool, a piece of clothing, a personal habit. Any of it might hold some of the magic that led to his success.

For humans, prestige serves as a binding force. A respected figure becomes a symbol of the group. Anything tied to that person becomes a small badge of belonging. Owning a possession of a high status member raised your own standing. It signaled loyalty and gave you a small share of the prestigious person’s standing.

Move forward to the present and the pattern has not disappeared. People have paid huge sums of money for JFK’s golf clubs or Scarlett Johansson’s used tissues.

This is also why advertising works as it does. Drinking the same protein smoothie or popping the same vitamins as your favorite entrepreneur or podcaster probably isn’t going to do a lot for your own success, but the human impulse to over-imitate the successful still wonders.

Shortly after Troubled was published, two common messages I received were “Too much self promotion. It’s annoying” and “I didn’t know you had a book out.”

The second stung more than the first. It reveals something important. Even if people follow your work, many of them will still miss the thing you want them to see. Repetition is the only way to break through. Repetition means that some of your long-time readers will get annoyed, but it is the only way to reach people who are unfamiliar with your work.

Writers are