Success looks different when it doesn't change your core values.
Are we living in a Black Mirror Episode already??
Yes, that euphoric state when something is successful; and for the next few projects, it may seem like we’re floating in a completely different universe. Practically no limits and nothing is off the table. It happens to all of us.
In those moments, the lights are strong enough to blind us, and somewhere in that brightness, we can lose sight of the ingredients that defined our vision in the first place. Our values. The same ones we spent years building and refining.
In today’s social media landscape, we witness these moments constantly. The glamour of modern status-climbing found its perfect arena here, and the rules were already decided for us in the form of followers, likes, views, shares, and comments that can shake your emotional balance as intensely as that snow globe your parents got you when you were a kid.
Within that system, people are often incentivized to trade their values for metrics. And to each their own of course, but when someone looks back and considers their work a success story, was it worth it if the core values got diluted along the way?
“Gained the whole world for the price of your soul” - Lauryn Hill, ‘Lost Ones’ (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill)
That tournament has no winners. When the core values are gone, so is everything that made the work worth doing in the first place.
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The craziest part is that those diluted values don’t stay contained to that landscape; because there’s a whole world outside the 16:9 pixelated screen in the palm of your hand. What about that one? The real one?
When values get diluted inside the platform, it doesn't stop there beacuse the identity gets diluted too. The person who once knew exactly who they were now sees everything through a distorted point of view, and that bleeds into real life. The effects run way deeper than anyone initially conceived.
At this point it starts feeling like a Black Mirror episode. And maybe that’s exactly what it is - the Social Rating lifestyle, playing out in real time. The only silver lining in this case is that it’s still mostly in their head and for everyone else watching, that’s somewhat of a cold comfort.
But it doesn’t have to be like that, to be honest. As long as you play the long game and understand what success truly means to you before the lights blind you - you’re immune to the mind games and the back and forth that goes on within those landscapes.
Think of it as a bird’s eye view. You see everything from a mile high, you understand the game, and you see what’s really going on. Unbiased. Now you are free to cruise your way to the final destination (success is the journey, not the final destination - but that’s for a different conversation).
Besides, there’s no traffic in the sky. The road is clear up there. Your sanity will thank you later.
I keep on coming back to Daytona by Pusha T. Specifically one line on Come Back Baby that catches me every single time -
“They say don’t let money change you, that’s how we know, money ain’t you” - Pusha T | ‘Come Back Baby’ (Daytona)
Classic Pusha of course; be it the lyricism or the wordplay. But he’s not lying.
It's easy to read that line from a purely materialistic angle, but it goes deeper than that. Push is essentially saying that once something changes you, that's how you know it was never really you to begin with. So if social media fame is changing you; we already know the answer to that.
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