Ya Ana, Ya Ana.

Shameless self-promotion artists are not only tied to Hollywood celebrities, aspiring pop stars, and self employed Youtubers. That's not to say they have only ever existed there.

Our social lives, workplaces, church/religious networks, neighborhoods are full of this too.

Over the last decade, self-promotion artistry has quickly evolved through a fairly easy to conquer and deceive internet medium. Our natural "spidey senses" have not quite been able to evolve in parallel. (Note: I'll be sure to write what I think the lasting effect that our lack of understanding of these phenomena at a later time.)

The appearance of wealth begets wealth.

CEOs, entrepreneurs, and wealthy individuals are another mainstay exalted celebrity type. Legitimate billionaires used to be the focus of the newspapers and media pre-2000. Think of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or go back more to Rockefeller, or more to Carnegie and many other names synonymous with a wealthy legacy. Today these types are represented by the heroes of Silicon Valley. The reason someone in the billionaire realm downplays wealth would be to avoid Uncle Sam's monocle. While ostentatious overstatement of wealth may make Uncle Sam curious, it's not illegal. After all, it's only a byproduct of capitalism.

By any means I don't mean to write that I relish in the self-promotion artistry game. I'm mostly wallflower who admires any form of self-promotion artistry. More than anything, I've learned to appreciate many of these artistic exhibitions in my own field of business, competitive realm, and the many succubistic grifters who try to use that art against me or my few close friends.

I wish it were another way, just as I hope for world peace and that we could create mass from endless sources of non fossil fuel energy. It's just not possible right now. I've learned through time, my own dealings, and unique insights (and drunken bar talks) with others that self-promotion is they underbelly of success.

Hard work and dedication can still get you pretty close to the Joneses. The Joneses may be playing their own best Strategic Defense Initiative. Believing that this is easy or natural for them – not contrived or projected – can drive you into depression, failure, bankruptcy – or becoming an Unmitigated Malcontent. (Unmitigated is key here. Admittedly, I'd classify as a Mitigated Malcontent.)

This intro can move into any number of directions. Rather than go on a sprawling treatise yet, I'll go back to the purpose of what I'm writing about: self-promotion artistry.

4 Points of Self-Promotion Artistry

Playing the game requires a balance that changes as time/technology progresses, objectives met, and social networks change.

1. Obscure substance
2. Bandwagon popularity
3. Apparently unique contributions
4. A base network

Obscure substance.

You have to have some level of substance, experience, or fact to get in anywhere. I can't call Facebook HQ reception and demand to speak to my old friend Mark from Harvard. I wonder how many people have actually tried that?

Though, one can probably call into Facebook HQ and connect with someone a few layers below Sheryl. Then, can spout off a few Wikipedia facts about her and mix in a seemingly legitimate backstory with random details about "when my eldest sister worked with Sheryl, you know, on a trip to Asia back when they worked at McKinsey in the 90s?" That could be enough to get one's company in for a medium-level meeting that could fast track another meeting for that data deal that will level you up. That's because, you know, that Facebook employee wouldn't want to bother Sheryl about some old person she used to work with 25 years ago. Likewise that same employee wouldn't want one to call several layers up and possibly piss off Sheryl by wasting her time about a low level meeting that should have moved forward anyway.

Now that's not a true story. Or is it? Well, I'm sure it's happened before.

Have Full Command of the core facts. Double down when pressed and throw out a few other specific details that could be options too.

Bandwagon popularity.

I wrote about that "the appearance of wealth begets wealth." Sure, I'm quoting myself. The same is true with fame, knowhow, and popularity. This was a part of self promotion until Google increasing incorporated "likes" and "sharing" as legitimacy. (Before then, it was solely about the wide level of "noise" one could conjure through repetition and junk websites.)

How many conversations I've had with dolts where they use a figure's number of followers or likes on Instagram/Facebook/whatever as an argument for their legitimacy? That failed argument fallback used to be about more difficult to obtain credentials. "Well she has her PhD in psychology from Stanford. What credentials do you have?" or "She has 4.1 million daily viewers. So if she was really that wrong, as you say, the world would be in an uproar!"

Followers and likes on easy-to-manipulate platforms are a signifier of credibility. Conversely, if one doesn't play the "Game of Self-Promotion Artistry", the lack of followers or likes – or a voided social media presence altogether – can indicate a lack of credibility.

Yet, it's quite easy to pay for followers, likes, comments, sharing. And while you may think it's easy to see when 1/3 of an American Instagram celebrity's followers are from Central Asia, you are behind the curve. I've talked to many people who have delved into these websites. The laws of supply and demand would mean that social actions described above can be produced at higher quality.

If a teenager with a minimum wage job can buy 10 "random" comments from people in Uzbekistan for his photograph of a sunset, a low rate debutante can do much better. These same websites that sell the likes of Mechanical Turks can sell higher end products, "Grade A, North American 'likes' -- from real people with real lives" to those who can afford it. In fact, many have told me that the more quantity of fake likes you buy, you'll be opened up to "unmarketed programs" offering "higher quality likes." If you're going to spend $1000/month for 1000 social actions, why would you not pay an extra $200/month for people who who seem more like you to not comment using gauchely awkward english?

If you matter to one person, it can validate your entire existence. I don't think anyone can say they haven't paid something once in their life to be more liked.

If you suspect your competitor is paying for positive reviews, find out any detailed traces of it, report it anonymously to Google with documentation, send the same reports of this data to anyone who is looking at your competitor. Use that knowledge against them if you have it, any way you can. And then get good reviews. If you have a good product, you don't have to pay for it, but have to work harder to solicit them. If you have a bad product, well, you're probably already out of business or you're already paying for the positive reviews.

Or, if you can get Dr. Oz onboard, you are money.

Apparently unique contributions.

I mentioned the sunset photograph earlier. That photo may be in the 30th percentile of all sunset photos shared online, ever. Sure the iPhone XS camera helped, as did the post-cropping of the aspect ratio, and advertising the #nofilter. (Some have told me that #nofilter applies to the out-of-the-box/provided filters only, and it doesn't apply when someone manually expends the time and energy to add subtle tweaks to lighting/shadow/contrast/saturation/color – that's still a filter in my book. But if Annie Leibovitz can photoshop the Queen, I guess this is okay.)

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. That same photo may get a critical meh by a professional photographer who thinks it to be so amateur or a college student studying modern art. In the eyes of that teenager's friends, they may see that as representative as a budding natural talent, someone they should keep close now in case he becomes the next Annie. They may view his photograph with a derisive slant, and leave a passive aggressive comment while liking it and telling his peers offline that his photo is obviously filtered and that he's a fraud. They may want to just get in his pants or have him invite you to the rave with him on Saturday night. More than likely, they may mindlessly like or comment on it because he does the same on their photos and they want to his continuance of meaningless admirations.

I can attempt to play the Brahms Violin Concerto in front of a group of 4 year olds and they won't know or appreciate the difference between me or Joshua Bell. The kids are only behaving because they know they'll be served cookies after the screechfest.

A base network.

It's easy nowadays with the magic of the internet. We can become part of a network even if we don't try or don't want to join. Each base network has its own inferred hierarchy of varied egos. The hierarchy can be based on whatever capital that network values or trades – it could be money, lifestyle, followers, looks/sex appeal, intellect, charity, storytelling, connections, skillset, talent – that je ne sais quoi.

In the early days of my career, I realized that I could get so many people to work for free because I could check some box on the above. I'd like to think it was my looks and intellect, but it may have been like them buying a penny stock on Robinhood or dropping $10 on a dumb cryptocurrency they overheard at a Wework today. A penance of help or assistance at an early stage can mean a lot more owed later. If anything, it makes for a nice story where you can claim some ownership of another's success or victimhood at not getting what was owed.

The point here is that anyone can be at or near the top of the totem pole for virtually any network. This is because networks can be invented out of thin air. Once you obtain some notoriety/followers and move up, the old network will try to piggy back you to the next stage. If you don't take them with you in some way or let them have some stake in your success, some may try to bring you back down to reality by starting rumors out of obscure substance.

It's the cliche of the nerd getting a foothold with the cool crowd, outcasting her old collective and budding into a new network. If she's smart, she won't cast away her old crowd, but give them nominal nuggets of hope that they can merge into the same cool crowd, in time, or invite them to a party. It may cost her a little capital in her new network, but it mitigates risks from ostracizing her old network. If she's dumb and doesn't give them any nuggets, an adept and resentful old playmate may try to bring her back down, slutshame her, or sit on her face.

Fortunately, these subconscious human games typically fade with time, distance, and the limitations of our memory as we eventually forget the sources of ire. This is changing a bit in the digital age where an old tweet or text message someone said at 13 years old can resurface as a image liability. It may not apply to you as you eventually fade from high school/college networks into professional oblivion -- driving a Porsche with a 7 figure 401k – or if you were promoted over a decade to become a successful middle manager as your peers and enemies slowly petered out or moved away. As an ephemeral network shifts, morphs, fades or reemerges in a new identity, the social expectations, capital attachment and risks of blowback tales fade. The disintegration of ephemeral social networks are similarly aligned with jihadi terrorist networks. For example Sageman's network theory states that a jihadi terrorist network is statistically likely to dismantle at the point where over 50% of the network's individuals are dispersed/separated or eliminated from the network. I think it was Sageman, but don't quote me on that.

But if you want to win a Heisman, host the Oscars, run for president, or become as big Mark or Annie, smokey apparitions of the past mixed with uncertain/unproven Obscure Substance will play a factor in your game.

I'll continue on later when I feel like it. Many antics of life, business, and success can be aptly compared to geopolitics – where there are few red lines and laws, if any. Yet the projection of one's power/hegemony has to be a part of the game to maintain an understanding of order, obtain a desired outcome to gain more in the future, and to not just give out easy capital to a rival enemy faction, and definitely not give any ammunition to an enemy who will use it against you any way they can. Another good source of material examples would be just about any silly move drama plot about high school friends (made before 2015).

-- Hashioki