Sizzle & Steak: Hustling the Hustlers

Hustlers and the Hustled

Today’s Hustle Economy is measured in market shares of ‘influence‘. How many Followers do you
have? How many subs (subscribers)? Comments? Likes? Views? What’s your engagement like? In
an age when anyone can have a free digital soapbox to prosthelytize from our egos become
our brand. So, when you attack an idea you also attack the brand; and when you attack the brand
you also attack the ego whose identity is the brand.

Our livelihoods, our wellbeing, are vitally connected to with a Brand of Me which in turn is
intimately connected to the self. The separation between man and brand becomes more difficult
when his revenue stream(s) is dependent upon man and brand being synonymous. That brand’s
value is also quantified and qualified by the platforms (soapbox) it’s based on. Lose followers, lose
viewers, lose money and lose self. As a result you get pathological hustlers grifting on other
pathological hustlers by selling them access to exposure, influence and and insurance for their very
precarious-but-lucrative brand of me. In turn, this “insurance” is a buffer against losing an equally
precarious sense of self.

From 2000 to about 2015 organizing live events and conventions was a fairly lucrative proposition
in the burgeoning Hustle Economy. Being a speaker at a TED talk held a certain gravitas for
the Brand of Me who was invited to relate his very important, self-affirming ideas to a rapt
audience. Today, not so much. The TEDx series saw to it that anyone could pay-to-play and thus
debased any legitimacy the original TEDs started with. I remember the pay-to-play grift that
destroyed the late 80s’ metal scene in Hollywood. Show promoters would buy out a classic venue
like Gazzari’s or the Troubadour for a night and then talk “up-and-coming bands” into playing the
gigs. All they had to do was sell enough tickets to cover their portion of whatever the promoter had
paid to reserve the venue. Whether the bands decided to sell their tickets at a profit or a loss was
irrelevant to the promoters – they just had to cover the rent on the club for that night. Most
promoters were making their money on marking up that rent, and a percentage of the alcohol sales
they’d arrange with club owners. It didn’t matter if the bands were great or they sucked, just that
they covered the rent with ticket sales – usually to friends and family to come watch them play on
the same stage that Van Halen and Ratt got their start on. The promoters weren’t selling actual
talent, they were selling the fantasy of playing on historic stages in L.A. to guys who believed they
were good enough to play them. By 1989 pay-to-play was killing what was once a vibrant music
scene that naturally culled the talentless bands from the great ones.

Hustle Economy conventions today are following the same pay-to-play graft. It makes little
difference what the niché is – masterminds, hotseats, summits, etc. – conventions have
become Brand Showcases replete with (gumroad) book signings and the hot girl “Booth Candy” to
prove proof-of-concept (i.e. Receipts). Convention promoters care less about the messages of the
personalities who speak at their events and more about the gravitas it brings to their event (which is
also part of their own Brand of Me). And the loudest most extroverted (pathological) brands of that
year always draw attention.

What you get then is a competition of escalation. Punch the biggest guy in the face as soon as you
arrive in the prison yard or you’ll end up as his bitch. If you want to make a name for yourself as a
niché marketer (especially as a noob in the Manosphere) you have to punch up. Call the biggest
name in that sphere a charlatan or a hack and some of his followers might defect to your cult out of
spite. Grifters sell other grifters programs and templates to ensure their brand’s value, which
increasingly is tied to their own sense of personal worth. Mastermind sessions and “hot seat”
workshops become psychotherapy for the Hustle Economy “Guru“.

Insurance of personal brand value will be big business in this decade. It will be sold using the same
perception marketing that Instagram influencers use. It will be based on the same insecurities the
Hustler sells his products with. Image is all – the Hustler becomes the hustled – but image is
fleeting. Even mediocre minds can figure out how to jump on a current trend. Copy & paste a viral
tag, aligning with something trending; all that is easy to do, but most niché marketeers lack the
talent and insight to understand (much less foresee) a zeitgeist. Good hustlers borrow, great hustlers
steal, but the true “ideas guys” are exceptionally rare in the Hustle Economy. Innovators and New
Thinkers are the carrion that draws the Brand of Me vultures out in the open.
Ideas Guys

Hustle Economy carpet baggers live a very insecure and unpredictable existence. They are not
innovators – they are fast followers. Not only is their sense of self fused to their brand, but their
brand’s success is their metric of self-esteem. Their (often tenuous) mental health is measured
in Followers, subscribers, views, comments, likes, engagement, analytics and clicks-per-minute
(CPM). It’s never quality of ideas that define value; it’s only numbers. Money in the payment
processor or number of email addresses on your list. It’s never ultimate causes / effects, it’s only
proximate causality. It’s the number of trees over the health of the forest. But the numbers don’t lie,
so the new teachers give the Lost Boys cigarettes, candy bars and cheap booze – or their emotionally
proximate equivalents (hope). It’s what they really want, it’s what makes you money and it’s what
your ego-brand’s long term security needs. Besides, if you don’t give the temporary salve for their
miserable lives another Influencer has already copy & pasted your tags to lap you on the Hustle
Economy racetrack.

Insecurity in self, brand, livelihood, sustainable ‘lifestyle creep’, even family relations are what
define the Hustle Economy today. Most personal brands rarely last more than two years – at least in
their initial incarnation. As such, there is a constant need for belief pivots and “brand makeovers”
for influencers. Reinventing one’s “self” becomes a vital part of existence for the career grifter. And
there’s a lot of money waiting the clever guy who figures out how to cater to this pivoting need.
Those unable to adapt, or those who miss the cues of the rapidly changing zeitgeist, will become
extinct. Only true innovators – the Ideas Guys – have any kind of real staying power, and
that’s if they can roll with the social changes; if they can put off the ennui of seeing their ideas
cannibalized and bastardized by the next wave of hustlers who will plagiarize their work with
impunity.

Continued in part III next week,…