Being Online Gets Weird

The internet is a weird place. You know that — you're on it. But most of you aren't really on it. Only a few of you will have created things, put them into the cyber ether, and built one of the most God-awful things possible — a "personality brand". It's a nonsense misnomer.

I've been impersonated, maliciously linked to AI slop, had my reputation hijacked by scammers and spammers, and been wilfully misinterpreted to suit other people's hideous agendas. Granted, the success of these articles happened quickly, so I wasn't familiar with the range of defences other writers use against the worst stuff. But that last part — the misinterpretation — is impossible to completely avoid.

You only really have two options if you want your work to remain public. One is to write simpler, common-denominator content in an effort to dodge controversy. The other is to lean into, and court, controversy in an effort to increase reach. Neither counts as a personality. "Personality brands" soon degrade into rubbish, semi-human entities that aren’t worth a reader’s time.

When you think about it, though, semi-human entities are kind of normal.

We have a wonderful media tradition in Britain. Unlike many societies who view TV news as partisan trash, and newspapers as bastions of journalism, it's the other way around here. Our newspapers are infamously derided, by us as much as anyone, but TV news is almost sacrosanct. So much so that attempts to broadcast Fox-like "news" shows always end in a whimper. The current attempt, GB News, for instance, is yet to reach single-figure audience shares, and the Murdoch-owned Talk TV recently gave up and quietly rebranded as "Talk". In Britain, television is for real news.

This has had a peculiar effect that ought to have primed us for online content creators — we are used to our reporters and commentariat being celebrities. We know those trustworthy faces and soothingly authoritative voices are facades. We know this because: a) every so often, one of them is revealed to be a cocaine-addled, bullying, sex-pest, and b) nobody, not even the purest of heart, is their professional persona at the breakfast table.

The fact that I don't know who Emily Maitlis or Katya Adler really are doesn't matter because it's their content that counts. And I don't need a parasocial relationship with Stephen Fry to value everything he says.

Yet, had Stephen Fry lacked a television profile before he built his online reach, I would need to believe that his personality brand was at least somewhat him. I would need to build a connection with that online Stephen to trust it/him enough to bother paying attention. This is a really weird thing, but TV is social-proof.

The basic fact that producers, co-presenters, co-stars, directors, show runners, etc. are willing to work with a person, proves that person is at least worth a chance. When you start publishing things online, however, you start with no social-proof at all. Instead, you have to communicate with an authenticity that media-backed creators don't. In fact, most media outlets wouldn't allow them to. But you can't maintain it.

Authenticity is fun when you have an audience of a few dozen, it's less fun when you have thousands. At that scale (which isn't a lot), the 0.1% of crazy, messed-up, troglodytes out there start getting hold of your words, and twisting them. New creators dream of going viral, established creators learn to fear it. Being the nexus of a social media rage-fest is about as enjoyable as dysentery.

I've decided to start pay-walling more of my content.