12 PsyOps Targeting Creators

Holy shit I'm excited to write this post.

For the uninformed, PsyOps means a "Psychological Operation" and refers to a war tactic that militaries use to persuade or influence other countries.

The US Special Operations Forces does PsyOps on other countries so you bet your ass other countries are doing PsyOps on us. I have a list of political PsyOps I could rattle off, but we're gonna keep this focused as non-political as possible.

I want to focus on 12 PsyOps that are screwing with creators' heads.

1. You need to be good-looking for TikTok or Instagram. Nope, my friend Adam has a friend named Kyle Gordon with 3M followers on TikTok. He's an ugly dude. But he's confident and funny. Like very funny. As I've always said, it's better to be confidently mid than hot and insecure. Don't listen to your brain.

2. You need a degree to look fancy and build a profile on LinkedIn or Twitter. I'm a dropout and I write for startups and venture capital firms. I legit ghostwrite for founders with degrees from Harvard. On Twitter and LinkedIn, you need to be able to write. On TikTok and Instagram, you need to be able to act. They both come down to storytelling. That's literally it. PsyOps #2 proven wrong.

3. You need to be an expert. Nope. Start by curating other people's work. I started out on Twitter by curating quotes and threads from people like Morning Brew founder Alex Lieberman. You can do this with anything from startups to your favorite types of hamburgers. Within a year, you'll become a thought leader in the space and have relationships with the brands you tag and write about.

4. You can't make money on [INSERT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM HERE]. Lol, people told me you can't make money on Twitter. Wrong. If somebody is saying "you can't make money on X", it just means they don't know how. You can make money on any social media platform from Twitter to Reddit and even Facebook.

5. You can't make money in [INSERT NICHE]. The best at any niche will get paid well. There are niche creators making millions for topics that 99% of the world doesn't give a shit about. If you can build an audience, it doesn't matter if you're talking about farm-to-fresh food or venture capital. You can make money.

6. There's already enough [INSERT TYPE OF CONTENT HERE]. Again, this is a PsyOps from NPCs who don't want you to succeed because they can't do it themselves. Are there "already enough books"? Should we stop publishing books because there's millions already? Fuck no. Everyone has their own viewpoint. Once your brand becomes big enough, people will read or listen to your work just because you're you. That's why I invested in a podcast and am putting out edited videos.

7. You need to be funny on Twitter. Nope, Packy McCormick is the least funny person on Twitter and he's up to 175,000 followers! People love him. If you provide value to your audience, it doesn't matter if you're funny.

8. Grammar and spelling is a PsyOps from English professors. If you know the rules of the English language, then you can break them however the fuck you want. In fact, it can be part of your style. I write incomplete sentences all the time. Especially on Twitter. My friend Tyler writes his whole newsletter in lower-case. Venkatesh Rao and I both love making up words and phrases. Fuck the English professors.

9. "Don't talk to strangers" is great if you're a kid, but extremely limiting as an adult. I spend a lot of my day talking to strangers on the internet. 30-50% of these strangers have become decentralized friends, work colleagues, or readers of Cyber Patterns. Then 30-50% of these online friends become friends I actually hang out with on the regular. My birthday party was largely made up of internet friends. Venture capitalist Julie Fredrickson told me Monday that 80% of her friend group is now internet friends. To paraphrase Spongebob, every "stranger" is a potential friend.

10. "You need to pay to grow an audience" is bs. Quite the opposite. I grew to 10k on Twitter without paying a dime for advertising. Running ads on Twitter for your own account is cringeworthy in my circle Just write some bangers. That being said, I do run ads now to grow Cyber Patterns as a business. Maybe I need to take my own advice and write some more bangers!

11. AI will replace artists and writers. Nope, I've done a lot of thinking about this. AI will make the best creatives better and only screw over the bottom-feeders. AI writing apps can't write with style or flare. They can write SEO-friendly articles better than any human can though. AI art apps can't paint physical pictures or make sculptures. But they can do a better job than a $20 Fiverr designer. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch.

12. Drugs are not essential to the creative process. I went down the weed and LSD rabbithole for 5 years thinking and every artist and creative needed drugs to make their best work. Left me making shitty art, broke, and depressed. I hit 3 years sober this August and am making the best work of my life. I've tried a shitload of drugs and clarity beats all of them.

Ok, I've got a list of many more politically charged PsyOps, but I'm saving those for the Signal chats. If you want to chat political PsyOps, reply to this email with your Signal phone number and I'll send you a message.

That being said... I do have 1 very important techno-political question for you: