How To Be Influential
A field guide to contradiction, performance, and survival.
Note: This article was written 90% without AI assistance for my online writing group, Just Fucking Publish It Fridays.
Epistemic Status: Autofictional Field Notes
1. The Pact (Written in Bad Weather)
Make a bargain with the universe one cloudy morose autumn day while flunking out of nursing school in your mid 20s to live your life as if it were a story that is writing itself. You cannot remember if this was inspired by the work of a psychedelic thinker or an original thought you had because you and your creator seem to be in agreement about this. The universe will smile and nod its head.
2. Mapping the Battleground of Desire
Study the wants and whims of your audience. It’s okay to be a little insectile about this. When you begin by treating men like observable objects, then you can start to get inside their heads. Optimize. Once you have their attention, you can soften this approach depending on individual preferences. Your analysis may deepen your mutual cynicism, but do you really want someone who won’t respect your cunning? Men like girls who are a little bit edgy but the ones you seem to like are all attracted to girls who’ve threatened to kill or cut themselves in order to manipulate them. You like men who are run through. You like men who are not risk-averse. You like men who like women who have BPD, and will assume you are, too. Therefore it’s important to give them a few calculated thrills so when you soften your approach, it comes as a delightfully pleasant surprise.
3. Don’t Resolve
Your approach should be such a mysteriously contradictory and infuriating response to the paradoxical question of womanhood that it should essentially function as a refusal. You should find people fascinating and enrapturing and flakey and superficial. Project being above it all while your knees are dirty and covered with grass stains like you just got back from wiping out on a soccer field. You should have an answer for any situation that simultaneously arouses more questions.
4. Be an Insider/Outsider/Eavesdropper
Admit freely to being a meaning junkie and an addict. Be an insider outsider artist. Be a slice of life blogger and vehemently deny any allegations of being a journalist while snooping for your next scoop crawling under barbed wire fences of the whisper network. You may have to do a little dirty work and put in a little elbow grease to dodge people worse than you. Some of the characters I’ve encountered in this process have subsequently been brought to justice kicking and screaming just by being a barrier their manipulation tactics couldn’t get through. People love to spill their dirty little secrets, but will attempt to get their damage onto you, too, so be wary. But what’s an influencer who’s not covered with a few bloodstains?
5. Know Where Your Part Ends
You can nag a little, but not too much. Nobody wants an influencer with no opinions to the point of being a pushover but you must walk hand-in-hand with the things you don’t know clasped just as firmly as the things you do, always. Fully armour yourself, do your part, then give away the things that are not yours to hold. You will burn out trying to take the high road against all the evils of this world.