Social Media Bloatware

When I am going down a rabbit hole on just about anything, I consume a lot of content. More than I would ever care to admit. 

While some of it is inevitably for entertainment, a lot of what I consume is for education. 

When it comes to educational content there are two types of people that I am typically willing to listen to. There are those that have done whatever it is I am trying to learn and there are those that are actively trying to do what I am trying to learn while simultaneously sharing their learnings with others. 

These are the people that I am most willing to listen to as they are putting out content that is unique to their experience. 

YouTube is full of content bloatware where people are trying to get attention by sharing the same ideas that have been shared many times before. While this is fundamentally how we grow our understanding of the world, it is the refining of the ideas that actually makes a difference. 

Many people create redundant content that has been created repeatedly. There is no unique perspective that they have added, they have simply parroted the people that have come before them in the area that they are trying to gain knowledge. 

While there is value in doing this as we each have unique ways of communicating and we can share messages with a broader audience - the value is limited as it doesn’t expand on the existing content. When numerous people do this, it saturates a topic with this bloatware content that fails to add value. 

Contrast this with people that approach this with their take on the same topic but guided by their learning and experiences and you start to get unique approaches that help give a better idea of what the individual is sharing. If the internet was full of this content - content from doers or from learner/duo combos - there may be some redundancies in the content but their unique experience can allow people to form a more complete understanding of the topic through the experience of many people. 

I have been diving deeply into the concept of creating a personal brand through content on the internet and a few months ago stumbled upon some content from Dan Koe. 

Dan is around my age and built his following on Twitter, now X but I will refer to it as Twitter because it was objectively a better platform at that time. 

I have consumed hours and hours of his content - which is super easy due to almost all of his content being long form. While he covers many of his interests and entwines them into all of his content, the brunt of it focuses on building a personal brand. 

He gives a framework for how to do this and even has courses that you can buy to learn his framework. 

Dan is a person that has shared his backstory repeatedly through his content and his journey to where he is now. He has now authored a book and made millions of dollars by adding value through his content to others. One of his biggest selling points is building this through 4 hours of work each day. 

That’s impressive and, having built trust through content consumption, I bought a couple of his courses. 

Through his YouTube and through his course - Dan talks about how he built his platform through X and encourages this as a method to test ideas to see what gains followers and tractions. 

I took his advice to an extreme and, in an effort to not subject my highschool friends to this experiment, unfollowed and forced others to unfollow me. That sounds worse than it is - I just had to spend an hour kicking people out of my followers list. 

I then proceeded to reply to people and post. 

Initially, I was stoked. I finally had found a corner of the internet dedicated to getting better! People like me! 

I replied to and followed a handful of people and was already gaining followers from those with small audiences. Through this, I could see that if I did this daily, I could build a large following relatively quickly. 

But the next day, I hit a roadblock. All of the “new” content was just the same stuff worded differently. Even those that I love the content of on YouTube seemed to follow these frameworks. I should say - my feed was filled with content emulating them. Trying to do the same thing that I was doing. 

The Twitter echo chamber was real.

And valueless. 

We - yes, me and the people in my feed - were posting content authoritatively though we had done nothing to build credibility. Those that had credibility had posted thousands and thousands of tweets (which is great!) and spent hours of their days replying to people.

This is all doable but the nature of the platform bored me. It was nothing like the platform I had loved in high school and college. 

I tried to push through but the valueless bloatware and misogynistic slant of the content generated in my feed just didn’t resonate with me at all. 

I didn’t know these people and it felt like 85% of them were people with similar profile pictures trying to sell Notion templates that people would buy and use as a distraction instead of actually doing the work that they were buying it to organize. 

So - I quit Twitter. The platform didn’t resonate and the users I was connecting with just felt like mini versions of the successful people I was already consuming content from with valueless, authoritative content. 

Trying to respond to these soulless creators that lacked personality and depth just wasn’t it. 

This isn’t an attack on their character, rather on their content. 

If you are trying to grow yourself and establish a brand, be yourself. Don’t try to emulate exactly what you see the people that inspire you are doing, especially because they are at a different stage in their journey. 

Be vulnerable, talk about your experiences, talk about what you have learned from those experiences, tie those experiences into content that helps others, and do this for an extended period of time. 

The longer you do this, the more content you will have. The more content that you have, the more time people can spend with you. The more time that people can spend with you, the more opportunities they have to connect with and get to know you. This gives them the opportunity to decide if they trust you. 

If people trust you and feel like you provide value, they will follow you. They will share in your vision. They will root for you and want you to be successful. 

The irony in me posting this is that I have approximately myself and sometimes my wife if I am super proud of a piece (she would happily read them all if I asked), but this is something that I have observed and subscribed to first hand. 

Those that have shared their experience, I have followed and purchased from. It takes me a long time before I subscribe to someone. If they provide me enough value, I feel the need to give back. I initially do this via a subscription but that subscription is often followed by a purchase. 

For Dan Koe, it was his Digital Economics and One Person Business Courses. For Alex Hormozi it was his books and a subscription to a school community so I could build the website that you are reading this on. For Brandon Balfur - I haven’t bought anything because I don’t fully resonate with him but I respect his style and it has provided me value so I have at least subscribed to his YouTube. 

All of this to say that the best way to increase your following is to produce content of value to others. If you are educating, see how you can reframe what has already been put out in the world. How can you simplify a complex topic? How can you frame your experience to help others get a better understanding of the topic you are discussing? 

When you relentlessly pursue the refinement of existing ideas, you will inevitably create value and find a way to strike a cord that is true to you and not an entirely redundant piece of content.