In some ways, the internet personalities that have sprung up over the years, especially the younger ones with their rich lifestyles and immense, unverified claims of wealth, all have this peculiar trait of accelerating ego growth that causes a huge disconnect between public brand and private reality.
Of course, when you're out there and presumably on the top, targets will be set on your back. It comes with the territory.
So according to the interwebs, Luke Belmar may turn out to be a completely different person than the persona he displays online. This bit is not surprising, since there's always a gap of sorts between both online and offline for most people interacting on both spaces.
What's surprising here is the gap is more like a chasm, and particularly coming from someone who preaches "escaping the Matrix" while allegedly operating under a fabricated identity.
At a glance, this guy is a modern version of the renaissance man with a charismatic personality employing mastery of public speaking for the sharp articulation of ideas.
My own encounter with the content of Luke happened just after he blew up on the Internet, it was a podcast if I remember correctly, and many of the aspects he talked about like the different aspects of wealth and rejecting traditional employment structures were familiar to me, but he could articulate them in a way that I'd not seen before.
For example, money is stored energy, in that every dollar represents time, effort, and value that's been condensed into a transferable medium.
Or how he loves to apply Newton's third law, for every action, there's an opposite equal reaction, to the context of how you show up in the world, say the energy you put into your health, relationships, and business will return to you in equal measure, in one shape or form.
If we remove the message from the messenger, then the latter was quite an uncanny case study in modern digital entrepreneurship.
I mean, how someone with allegedly fabricated credentials, a changed surname, and unverifiable business claims could amass hundreds of thousands of real followers by packaging timeless principles with contemporary aesthetics and hustle culture rhetoric is a testament to the power of a highly effective and well-crafted personal brand.
For me, this is the first time, with sufficient level of awareness to have this aha moment that an online performance can be so convincing real that it blinds even the most experienced professionals.
A man who built his brand on "seeing through the illusion" may have been creating one himself, albeit an expensive and emotionally draining one for those in his immediate circle.
What a humbling reminder that integrity is the only sustainable asset.
Playing status games is hard. The reward for internet fame pretty much doesn't justify the cost.
It's just not worth it.
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