Since my last post was kind of just taking a shit on the blockchain, let me explain my thoughts on branding a little better and share a little bit about my past.
You may be a freelance artist, but if you talk about branding yourself, you are more influenced by corporate culture than you think. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but if corporate culture is something you want to stray away from, you may have some reassessment to do.
Do you ever ask yourself “Would I be acting this way if there wasn’t some potential benefit or gain?”. If so, keep reading.
Being Cool
I grew up learning to care what people thought of me. I wanted to be liked. And then one day I was liked. I was liked because I had tried hard to be liked. I tried to be what others wanted me to be, so far as I could stomach it. I had no objection with being good at sports so I tried out a few until I found one where I wouldn’t stumble over myself. I had no objection to being attractive, so I combed my hair. I like talking to people so i talked to whoever was willing (as long as they weren’t a nerd because nerds weren’t cool). I wasn’t liked because of who I was, unless who I was was simply combed hair, ok at sports and not a nerd.
I liked Die Hard. I had no idea why I liked Die Hard, just as most people had no idea why they liked Titanic. I realize now that I probably picked up on how other people responded to me when I made a reference to the movie, or when I emulated that John McClain attitude, yippie kay yay motherfucker. So that’s why I liked Die Hard, I guess.
Still in the back of my mind were thoughts like “what are we doing here?”, “what if life is just a dream?”, “How can we be sure that rocks and trees don’t have consciousness?” I kept these thoughts inside, but they didn’t go away, so sometimes I tried to share them with friends...
...the response was never as favorable as when I quoted lines from the Simpsons or South Park. This hurt a bit. I tried to keep up the image of a “cool kid” but it became more and more of a struggle, because i started to realize that it didn’t reflect who I really was. I still didn’t totally understand who I was, but I knew I didn’t really care much about combing my hair, sports and reciting quotes from tv shows.
It was around this time that I discovered my love of punk rock. I had always loved music but I just listened to whatever I came across that didn’t sound too “uncool”. My tastes quickly gravitated towards the 2 or 3 punk bands I knew. I have to admit that a lot of it was pop punk by many standards (nothing as cool as the Dead Kennedies or whatever), but I felt liberated when I first heard the Offspirng sing “Don’t give a fuck if it’s good enough for you!” You can probably sense the same sentiments in my post yesterday.
Call it juvenile, I call it real.
So from then on being understood became a goal that I felt much more passionately about then being liked. I was quickly dispelled from the cool kids and went back to being ridiculed by my peers but I didn’t care much.
I connected with the punk/emo/ska scene throughout my state. I made friends all over the place, most of which my parents needed to drive me to go visit, but with these friends I could talk how I truly felt. I wore band shirts, and adopted a bit to “punk fashion” not really to be cool but in honor of these bands that I loved and in hopes of finding others who felt the same. It worked. The people I met were generally open to you, so long as they felt that you were real.
But as time went by, lots more punk bands made their way into the mainstream. Suddenly punk was the new “cool”. The “cool kids” wanted me again, this time not because my combed hair and being ok at sports but because my honest expression and free spirit....except not really. I quickly realized that the mainstream culture was acting the way it always had. It was all about what’s hot this week. As the “cool kids” infested the scene, I found more and more people in the being judgemental about which bands you listened to, how you dressed....are you a REAL punk?
thats what I call a punk, hah..image link
To some this meant dressing like a punk, to some it meant embodying the culture, but either way, it was no longer about just being yourself. It became a status symbol, a status symbol in the mainstream because you were up to date with what was “cool”, and a status symbol in the underground because you were the “REAL DEAL” (make sure to grease up your Mohawk). It had all lost its authenticity, along with most of the bands who had jumped into the mainstream.
“Not giving a fuck” (and dressing like everyone else to prove it) became the new cool. It got you attention and praise.
Can you see how this relates with branding?
Branding is a method of selling a product. We do it to get what we want, in most cases, money or attention. That’s all fine and dandy, but the when the product is YOU, you no longer have the freedom to be who you actually are. The product is a “cool” and socially acceptable version of who you are. You may try to convince yourself that it’s exactly who you are, you might even make part of your image that “you don’t give a fuck”, that you are “just being real” but it’s all a part of the image that you are selling.
Being real and being “presentable” are often at odds with each other. Most of us hide it when you fart in public. We don’t say everything you want to say, especially when we are trying to “market” ourselves as this or that. That’s ok. But it’s not real.
To a certain extent it’s always been this way but in the age of social media it’s become harder and harder to know what’s real. Our image is more important to us than its ever been although we have gained more flexibility to have Mohawk students and tattoos if we want. We think that our financial success depends on creating a presentable image and so we box in the raw human spirit. Grown adults aren’t any different from high school kids.
“Real” has become the new “punk rock”. A hollow shell of its former self, part of the image.
If you want to package yourself into a product to be sold, so people like you and buy you, that’s fine, but maybe you belong in the marketing department off large corporation rather than out creating “art” or offering “help”...
...Or maybe you do belong out in the wild as an independent artist and you just need to take off the chains slowly as you realize that it’s ok, that you can find a path to your dreams, just being you.
It’s ok to test the waters.
I can totally empathize with those who make a decent living “being their own brand” and are afraid to lose that security and everything they have built. But you may be just as well off just being yourself. Take it one step at a time.
I, for one, will support the fuck out of you and there are many others who will as well. We may not all be in a place to help you financial, but that is changing thanks to new innovations on the internet, crypto and steemit included, and we can find other ways to help.
Do you want to be your own brand? Or do you want to be yourself?