Recommendations
I’ve recently updated my list of recommendations for books, TV, movies and the like. Check them out here. 🙂
Final Call
Before my new book embarks on its journey down the Amazon, I’m in search of a few more readers to join its rafting adventure! This work diverges markedly from my previous publications, weaving together decades of rigorous scientific inquiry with profound spiritual explorations to delve into the nature of reality. This narrative will resonate deeply if you’re navigating your own awakening, ever felt out of place on this Earth, struggled with forming meaningful heart-connections, or if the very fabric of reality leaves you pondering. Indeed, it’s packed with revelations… including the tale of my temporary departure from this planet!
Just drop an email to [email protected] We’ll make some random selections!
Fancy a Read?
Hey all… looking for some “Test Readers” for my new book! It’s basically all ready to go, but it would be great to get some more eyes on it for feedback or just silly mistakes! Now this isn’t a book about photography, although I do talk a bit about art and creativity and finding yourself and that sort of thing. I’d say it’s more about spirituality fused with a lifetime of science. The adventure began in Scotland where something rather unbelievable happened and I left the Earth for a while. Yes, you read that right.
There’s also all kinds of personal stuff in here, all sorts of struggles, TONS of inappropriate humor, and a lot of pretty awesome stuff I’ve figured out along the way. It’s like the craziest adventure of my life (which is saying a lot, as I’ve had some real crazy ones!) and I think you’ll love it. And, yes, it will speak to you more if you maybe feel like reality is a bit strange… or perhaps you are in some sort of awakening state of your own! 🤓🥰
We’ll pick some random people! Just email [email protected] if interested!
Rick’s New Book
My friend, Rick Sammon, who you may be aware of through his exceptional photography is just finishing up his latest (44th!) book. Be sure to check it out on Amazon in January!
You can read more about the book in Rick’s tweet over here,
How do you reduce your own internal suffering?
People suffer for all sorts of reasons. And now, there is a new reason, and, often, it’s the principle cause: Online Social Media Anxiety.
I really explored this topic in depth in the new book, but here are some more quick thoughts for you on the subject matter.
Early on, I developed a Very Thick skin on social media because I had so much negativity and hate about the nature of my photos. I learned to develop this amazing skill: I’m AMAZING at ignoring people. Especially idiots.
Now, this combined with all my studying of mindfulness and consciousness has given me a perfect set of tools to still engage in social media and not be affected by any negativity.
Here’s a little tip for you. A mind vitamin. Notice the next time something bothers you on Social Media. The mere act of noticing you are bothered is a good step. Who is the one noticing? Is it the one that is bothered or the one that is noticing the one be bothered? A thought-shift, you see? Step 2 is to understand that things that bother you are things that do not agree with the egoic-story you are telling yourself. It’s an assault on your constructed identity. If you fight back, it’s not really you, it’s just your ego reinforcing its own story in defense mode. Your story may not be true at all! In fact, it’s possible for you to exist as a human being without having a complex set of stories that have to constantly defend. These constant battles. This endless war of defending your stories. This is what causes suffering and anxiety.
Social media amplifies this anxiety because they WANT you to be engaged in the public defense of your ideas or the attacking of others (this is really the same thing). Never before have you been able to engage in a nonstop constant public defense of your egoic stories. Your ego secretly loves it and feeds off it, starving you of mindfulness.
So, just notice, that before social media came along, you didn’t have this particular type of suffering in your life. It’s manufactured, amplified, and presented to you on a glass screen all day long. Take tiny steps… aim low… and try to engage a little less every day in the public defense of yourself.
Real Instagram handles and names are used throughout as examples. I provide my personal opinion on what may constitute fraudulent behavior on social media, based on the evidence and data available to me. The reader is welcome to draw their own conclusions.
Facebook Group
If you want to join the discussion about my new book, we have a Facebook Group active with interesting tidbits and updates.
Interview about How to Stay Zen on Social Media at Google
The new book is still doing great on Amazon so thanks for that! If you don’t have your copy yet, now is a great time to grab it! Or even get one for a friend!
When I was out in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I was invited to do an interview about the topics in the book with Bradley Horowitz. It was a really fun conversation, and I bring it to you thusly!
Behind the Scenes of my New Book – Part 2
Here’s a behind-the-scenes video about the making of the book. As with most projects, they are way more involved than I can anticipate. I always KNOW this going into a project… that it will be a lot more work than I think, but it never ceases to surprise me when I think I am 90% done, but I’m only 50% done!
Exclusive content for Passport members
How Many of the Most Popular Influencers Are Faking It?
That’s the big question.
A lot.
In the book, I’ve given you some publicly available tools to check and the methods to see if their apparent influence stacks up. I believe that at least 99% of real humans that use Instagram are not buying followers, comments, and likes. But then again, only the top 1% of the most followed people on Instagram (the last stat I saw was people with over 150,000 followers), are the ones that have any monetary incentive to fake it. Some people in bottom 99% may want to get to the top 1% so they can get cash and free stuff by representing brands, and the surest way to do that is to buy your way in by purchasing non-human bots that appear to be real.
And the answer can be in the grey zone. Some people buy close to 100% of their followers, likes, and comments. Some around 70%, some less than 10%. Also, some purchase services that use the follow/unfollow method of gaining random followers that is similarly against Instagram’s T&C’s. And maybe that follow/unfollow has helped them get most or just a few of their followers. It’s a sliding scale. Others use small pods or mega pods to pad their numbers. I think most people can agree that almost any percentage easily passes the Rubicon into the unethical.
On a side note, it may seem as though I am crying foul because this entire enterprise is financially damaging to me. I do indeed make money from some Influencer deals, but it accounts for less than 5% of my small art company’s overall income. The vast majority is from fine art sales. I simply ended up figuring all this stuff out because I ended up on some gigs with some fraudsters, and I realized what a mess the whole industry has become. Very few people seem to be talking about it openly, and I think mine is the first book that does a deep dive on the subject matter and its overall societal impact both economically and sociologically.
As far as how many users are real, I doubt Instagram will ever officially say because I honestly don’t think even they can figure it out. Or, if they actually can figure it out and are letting them continue to create a counterfeit economy, well then that speaks to a larger corporate issue about inflating numbers. However, I believe the former is true: the bots and scripts (and burgeoning AI) out there are too clever for Instagram to discern what is fake and what is real.
For example, you’d think an account that looks real and posts stories every day must be real, right? Well, I’ve found several bots that post tons of daily stories, all of which are fake (scraped from other accounts so as to appear real). It takes a while for a human to figure out if an account is real or not, via methods described in the book, and it is not clear Instagram has mastered an automated way to do this.
Personally, I believe they are undermining the online economy in which too many people trust. If people don’t trust in an economy (ala Venezuela), it can cause extreme unrest amongst its citizens. Yuval Noah Harari has a great concept in his books illustrating that humans are the only animal on Earth that can cooperate with strangers because we all can believe in fictions. For example, the meter, hour, and dollar don’t physically exist, but we all agree on the story of these, so we can make agreements with strangers. New constructs have now emerged as the follower, like, and comment. If these fundamentals cannot be trusted, the entire framework can fall apart. I believe this is why it’s in Instagram’s best interest to clean it up.
Real Instagram handles and names are used throughout as examples. I provide my personal opinion on what may constitute fraudulent behavior on social media, based on the evidence and data available to me. The reader is welcome to draw their own conclusions.
Maybe I Should Not Have Published This Book?
This is one of many stream-of-consciousness polemics about the new book. I know the book is controversial; I don’t expect these posts to be less so.
Many people warned me not to publish this book including my COO, my wife, my accountant, and @miss.everywhere. In a rather exaggerated state of solipsism, I decided to publish it anyway.
One person you will not see in the enumerated list above is my attorney. In a phone call before we published, she affirmatively acquiesced, “It’s not libel if it’s true.” That provided me a bit of vim to my vigor and I doubled down with the data analysis. Under her direction, as she parried my social pariah predilection, prefaced the book with the proper wording to ensure that the public could make up their own minds based on the data.
I must admit that I did awaken some mornings, between that dream state of sleep and wake, in worry. Maybe I shouldn’t pull back the curtain to show the wizard? Maybe everyone knows it’s a silly game? The literati certainly know we’re in a simulation, but perhaps the others are willingly playing the game, too dull to rise above it. That one seemed a bit nihilistic. Thoughts of this nature danced around with no end.
As with many things in life, it boils down to living a life without fear. The crux of the book, for those of you that have made it to the later chapters, know the book is more about how to stay zen on the Internet, live life without fear and without ego. The book certainly airstrikes egoistic fraudsters with unapologetic napalm. But let that act as a counterpoint, an alternative, to living your life in a way to uncover and share your true self. When you see people “acting out” on social media, understand this is their fear-instinct acting to protect its own egoic construct. If it repels you, recoil into your true self. You may not know that true self, but be open to letting it develop without any need to share it online.
If you want to give the book a read and decide for yourself go buy a Kindle or physical copy on Amazon.
I started a conversation (please share your thoughts) about this artificial world into which we’ve been thrust here on Facebook. Yes, I see the irony of that link.
-T-
Real Instagram handles and names are used throughout as examples. I provide my personal opinion on what may constitute fraudulent behavior on social media, based on the evidence and data available to me. The reader is welcome to draw their own conclusions.
30
April 2019 : Tuesday
Apr 2019 : Tuesday
Tribal Boy in Papua New Guinea
The Kevin Rose Show
Hey everyone! Here’s a really fun podcast I did on the Kevin Rose Show. We talk about all sorts of things like fine art, the new book, Japan, Burning Man, psychedelics, and more!
Here’s a list of timestamps:
EPISODE NOTES
00:13 — Kevin talks natural UVB supplementation
00:39 — Who is Trey Ratcliff?
00:53 — Trey’s short film, Life From Above, and Beyond, with words from Alan Watts
00:59 — Who is Alan Watts?
01:30 — Intro to Trey
03:23 — Kevin on Trey’s 360 Podcast
03:27 — Interview begins
04:12 — Trey’s 360 Podcast
04:37 — Insta 360 One X
05:43 — Trey’s podcast topics & release info
06:11 — Walking & talking
06:28 — Nature & calm
07:00 — Forest bathing
07:30 — Japan, wind chime garden
07:51 — Japan, puppet town
08:41 — Japan, fishy ice skating rink
09:22 — Travel in extremes, embracing new experiences, travel & connection
11:07 — Trey’s family move to New Zealand & travel ‘round the world
11:35 — Trey’s family tour of world religions
13:21 — Trey’s professional roots, finding photography as an adult
15:07 — Trey’s “moment” with nature photography & digging in
16:15 — Coding for better photos
17:16 — Retinex
17:28 — Trey’s blog
17:49 — Trey on Creative Commons, free tutorials
19:13 — Trey’s evolution – passion into business
20:13 — Collectors & limited edition prints
21:13 — Book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark
21:38 — “…people want what is rare…”
22:18 — Pricing collectible art, swapping art, & smaller collector prints
26:21 — Trey’s new book, Under the Influence – How To Fake Your Way Into Getting Rich on Instagram: Influencer Fraud, Selfies, Anxiety, Ego and Mass Delusional Behavior
29:27 — Brand-building from a place of authenticity
31:25 — Buying followers, influencer marketing fraud, & fake account anecdotes
35:08 — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari
36:12 — “Maybe this is the year of fake followers…”
37:42 — Kevin Kelly, Wired
39:23 — Legitimate tactics & tools to grow a following
40:20 — Stephen Tobolowsky, EG Conference
40:25 — Storytelling, anxiety, mass delusional behavior, Dunbar’s 150
42:28 — “Podding” on Instagram
46:04 — Instagram security, pod detection, Digg security anecdote
49:22 — Practical jokes, buying followers, custom comments
50:19 — Back to the book, how to differentiate & build a following
51:30 — Trey’s best advice on life – true self, storytelling, honesty
53:58 — Exploring life, finding what’s exciting, childlike mindset
56:12 — Psychedelics & sense of self, creativity
57:35 — Alcohol & drugs, Trey’s family
59:17 — Burning Man, mushrooms, removing filters & intellectual stimulation
1:00:55 — Trey on what psychedelics & hallucinogens do for him, meditation practice
1:05:11 — Sharing consciousness with others
1:06:12 — “I think it’s up to artists & creatives to save the world.”
1:06:23 — Clinical trials, benefits, & uses of mushrooms; childlike wonder
1:10:46 — Michael Pollan on The Kevin Rose Show, How To Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
1:11:52 — Institutional anxiety about psychedelics & resurgence in intellectual community
1:13:39 — Opioid, benzo addiction & natural compound psychedelic treatments
1:15:14 — Psychedelic work with reputable counselor, family anecdote
1:16:20 — Closing & Trey’s hope for his work going forward
Daily Photo – Tribal Boy in Papua New Guinea
Check out this little badass! I think he probably could have killed me with his bow and arrow if he wanted to. However, he seemed to like me. After I took the photo I showed it to him and he gave me some sign like a thumbs up. It also could have been a fuck you, but I didn’t get that vibe.
27
April 2019 : Saturday
Apr 2019 : Saturday
Awesome Tokyo
Interview on USA Today about the New Book!
I was just interviewed by USA Today about the new book. Here it is for ya! This was a fun interview and I hope it helps to ease some of the undue anxiety out there on social media! You can find the audio below and here’s a link to the book.
Daily Photo – Awesome Tokyo
I feel like I jump on here every week and talk about how awesome Japan is. It reminds me a little bit of Austin in a strange way… in that, in Austin, everyone sits around coffee shops and talks about how awesome Austin is. It’s sort of a strange thing, and quite the existential self-compliment. But, I do the same thing in Japan when I meet another English speaker. It’s always the same conversation: “Can you believe how awesome Japan is?” then they say, “Yes, how about the Japanese people?!?” then I say, “Yeah, like totes.”
