"Content creator" today means success.

Social accolades, recognition, money, and everything else that comes along with this.

Attention — day trading attention, as Gary V is much like it used to be, betting your life's savings in the financial market.

Today in 2025, it's not much different.

People are still diving in for quick wins, quick returns.

There are long term players, short term winners, and there is a bulls and bears feels to the entire game.

Except for one thing: If you help someone, feel seen, go beyond it, and change the trajectory of their life, this "game" becomes real, and changes lives. Yours on every level, and the path for someone else.

There is a method to this "game". There are tutorials, there are hackers — because guess what? It's a multiplayer game. So there are bound to be bots, hackers, cheats, and genuinely skilled players who make it seem as if they're hackers.

Being complimented on your skills to be seen as a "hacker" is probably the best thing you can get today.

But you're here to learn about content and how to play this game without diving into endless tutorials, corporate-level complexity, or inhumanity that is being automated and stripped of all emotion and chaos.

You're not here because you want to be free of the 9 to 5 horror that is depicted in "Severance".

You may have experienced it, escaped it like me. Found a better way of living, only to end up in another 9 to 5 online today, by choice or not.

Multiplayer vs single player: Social + Media

Usually, when you start something new — anything, really — you do it alone.

You begin as the protagonist of your own story.

There’s no instruction manual, no cheats available, just you and a vision.

Your vision. Your rules. Your unique lens on reality.

Take gaming as an analogy, because there’s no better way to illustrate the depth of this madness.

When you first pick up your phone for a mobile game, what are you really after?

Maybe you’re bored out of your mind waiting in a line, staring blankly at life’s little in-between moments. Maybe it’s pure escapism, an instant hit of dopamine to silence your racing mind. Maybe there’s simply nothing better to do, or maybe it’s all of these bundled together.

But this casual, mindless, momentary escape—this quick rush—is fleeting. It’s shallow. It fills a tiny gap, but doesn’t create lasting meaning or satisfaction. You might feel briefly happy, briefly fulfilled, but seconds later it’s gone, leaving you emptier than before.

Compare this now to diving into a deep, story-driven single-player experience on a console or PC.

This isn’t casual scrolling or mindless tapping—this is deep immersion. It’s like being pulled into a beautifully crafted novella or a stunning, cinematic movie. You invest yourself fully, emotionally and intellectually, in the characters, stories, and the ups and downs. This isn’t a 5-minute dopamine snack—this is a 50-hour emotional banquet. Sometimes even 150+ hours.

In single-player, you don’t just skim surfaces — you plunge into worlds rich with nuance, depth, and humanity. You spend hours and days captivated by something meticulously designed to be meaningful. This journey leaves you transformed, changed, or at least deeply affected. It’s why single-player games resonate profoundly — long after you put down the controller, the stories live on inside you. This is how you become creative. Going through life, letting yourself think and feel how it is to be in someone else's shoes.

But then there’s multiplayer gaming.

Here’s where everything changes.

Multiplayer games exist solely to emulate our fundamental human need for competition, for victory over others, for social validation, and for connection with friends or strangers.

Now let’s take this very human psychology—this mix of single-player depth and multiplayer competition—and overlay it onto social media in 2025.

Social media began, perhaps innocently, as a single-player game. Remember the early days of blogging or sharing a photo purely because it spoke to you deeply? You weren’t worried about trending hashtags, engagement metrics, or follower counts. It was just you- your thoughts, your art, your experiences — shared because sharing mattered.

But now, social media has evolved entirely into multiplayer.

It’s competitive. Ruthless. Crowded.

And absolutely addictive.

When you step into this multiplayer content arena, you see all sorts of players — different levels, skills, and mentalities.

Just like gaming, there are those who’ve been playing far longer than you, who’ve leveled up way beyond your current skill, making you feel a strange mix of awe, inspiration, envy, and even deep-seated insecurity.

You scroll past their meticulously curated lives—vacations, sold-out offers, packed client calendars—and feel that pang deep inside. That quiet whisper:

“Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Will I ever catch up?”

And here’s another fact.

There are cheaters too.

Some buy their way into influence:

1. They purchase followers in bulk, chasing that “swipe-up” authority, building a facade of perceived success because followers equal credibility, right? Wrong—but the appearance often feels more powerful than the truth.
2. They pay for engagement, artificially inflating likes, comments, and shares, creating an illusion of genuine interest and real community.
3. They join engagement pods, those quiet, artificial alliances of creators boosting each other’s content, not because it’s good, but simply because it’s transactional. “Business is business,” they justify—and honestly, who can blame them?

Then some deliberately weaponize envy and jealousy:

Every post is designed to trigger inadequacy in their audience, making you believe that what they have is exactly what you lack. Their carefully curated lives are sold like commodities — hope bottled and envy marketed. That's why they rent airplanes and expensive Mercs — because it wins business. There is a demand for it, and they fulfill it.

But here’s the reality for most business owners, freelancers, creators, and influencers today:

Marketing is non-negotiable.

It’s survival. Visibility is oxygen. Without marketing, you’re invisible, drowned out by louder voices. You might experiment, dabble, even reluctantly dip into these questionable tactics—not because you’re a bad person or unethical, but because the pressure is enormous. Not everyone needs to show off, or invite envy, or overthink everything.

Because bills exist. Because the market demands visibility. Because in multiplayer mode, if you’re not seen, you’re forgotten.

Your content, at its core, must be your single-player journey.

Your vision. Your insights. Your mission.

Yet, even as you build this deeply personal, authentic journey, you must realize the environment you’re in is fundamentally multiplayer — competitive, noisy, loud, sometimes toxic.

This is the core challenge of social media today:

How do you balance authenticity (single-player) with visibility (multiplayer)?

This isn’t just about crafting viral hooks or growth hacking — it’s about carefully integrating your real, authentic self into a market saturated with shortcuts, hacks, and surface-level attention.

Your real task isn’t simply to accumulate followers or grow metrics. It’s to stand apart from this relentless competition — not by shouting louder, but by speaking truer, and embodying what you're saying. We've gone through the early days when people sold viral hooks and viral content in a bid to stand out. But this fake "virality" is just that — fake. Everyone can see through it, but the real ones don't buy into it.

Way of life: Healing with content

Sometimes, the way out isn't doing more of what you have already tried, but switching your path a little. Quitting is a luxury not everyone can afford. So what's the way out? You figure out your path.

You figure this out after experimentation, failure, and seeing what works and what doesn't.

But sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. And you come to know this unexplored area through testing.

I've been away from socials for the last 2 years, just occasionally making the half-ass effort to see what one gets out of it.

I've experienced the pain and the benefits of staying away from socials. Here's the thing though I've been a content creator for quite long now. I've tried, become apparently good at posting photography for no reason other than to share across Instagram.

In all this awareness, one thing became clear: I really enjoyed my lifestyle and mindset before, and now that I know the problems I faced for the first time, and seeing others make mistakes in this race these 2 years, I can avoid anything that doesn't feel right to me this time.

But at the same time, I've also found really great people who are present in communities I've joined, made genuine friends, and found a purpose on how and whom I can help.

I've analyzed what people are doing in these 2 years, and seen what their struggles are, what they want, why they're doing anything online.

After multiple interviews, countless casual chats, and frustrations through lived experience, I came to know something much deeper: This is a game as good as a sandbox. You build your rules, and you invite others to play with you, possibly building their castles alongside yours.

This side of being a creator where you share your perspective, your experiences, your life in general, while still building your business (your castle), while empowering others, is the best way I see forward. You do your thing, and invite others into your world.

How? Persuasion and a bit of ethical strategy and marketing that goes into sharing just enough without making every move you make a personal brand moment.

Yes, on the surface, it’s business, money, visibility, and growth. Sure, we all need that. You can’t pay bills with passion alone (unfortunately).

But beneath this surface-level narrative, the real reason—one that nobody truly wants to admit — is more profound, and maybe a little uncomfortable.

We create content because it’s how we understand ourselves.

It’s how we heal. It's how we see things differently, and share our view with others.

Now, don’t roll your eyes just yet…..

Every piece of truly genuine content — every real story you share, every hard-earned insight you put on display, every bit of wisdom you painstakingly craft — is actually you exploring your own wounds, fears, desires, dreams, and insecurities.

Writing (expressive/creative writing) isn’t just marketing — it’s therapy. It’s clarity. It’s personal evolution happening in real-time, publicly.

Think back to the moments you felt compelled to create something deeply meaningful.

What triggered that impulse?

Maybe you had an idea, a breakthrough insight about the way things work, and you had to share it immediately because it changed everything for you. Maybe you faced a dark personal struggle, a battle you weren’t sure you’d win — and you wrote yourself out of it word by word.

Maybe it was simply because, at that moment, life felt overwhelming, and writing brought order to your chaos.

This is the hidden dimension of content creation nobody openly discusses. Yes, we write for others—to inspire, inform, educate, entertain. But at the same time, we write primarily for ourselves. We write to survive. To grow. To heal.

Consider journaling for a second, the timeless tradition of personal writing. Journaling is fundamentally single-player content.

Nobody else sees it. Yet it remains powerful, profound, almost mystical in its ability to calm your mind, solve deep-rooted emotional turmoil, or guide you through uncertainty.

Why? Because writing forces clarity. Writing demands brutal honesty — if only with yourself. You can’t truly write without confronting those hidden truths you’ve been hiding from. The very same thing happens when you're talking to a close friend, except this time, the close friend is you!

Yet today, in 2025, content creation often feels the opposite of healing. It feels stressful, exhausting, and anxiety-ridden. It feels like an obligation, a burden — just another task to tick off your endless to-do list as an entrepreneur and creator.

Social media rule book: business + personal

With authenticity in the mix, where does personal start and business finish?

Especially, when it comes to personal branding, creators, or influencers, in different categories, the line is really thin.

Your traumas, past experiences and history define who you are as a person, but also define how you act.

After all, "business is business", and it is an extension of your individuality.

Personal branding: The dividing line

Not every trauma, every wound, every little detail of your life needs sharing, and how you create your business identity is entirely upto you.

One thing I found helpful, a perspective on this: Make an alter ego.

Your alter ego is a business person. That person takes actions, putting aside your personal biases, issues with the world, or things to share.

Having an office space where you become someone else, a brand where you adopt that character, or that personality (no — not the American Psycho type of mask), is a good move to use.

So how do you go about creating said personality and share everything in your business as per that particular character?

Think of yourself as Employee Number 1.

I know, huge shift from business owner to employee — but it helps.

That employee is the social media manager, the content creator, the content marketer, the copywriter, content writer, email marketer, email strategist, salesperson, and everything else in between.

But you know that the zone of genius of Employee Number 1 is being a content creator or email marketer, and there are only so many rules you can create and abide by.

After you figure out what best you do, you need to attract clients based on that. Social media is the multiplayer world where Employee Number 1 goes to play.

You, the person running the business, have to wear the hats of CEO, CFO, CTO, and everything else.

Now I know, isn't it too stressful to live a double life, a double brand, a double vision? As if things weren't hazy enough already?

No — once you divide your identity in two as per this strategy, you plan your days, your level moving tasks, your business identity, your entire operations and outsourcing accordingly.

If anything such a move helps you act and work like a business owner and the Employee Number 1 gets to live a good life where he/she gets assigned a task and simply completes it.

So, when it comes to social media and playing the multiplayer game, you know how much to share with the world if you wouldn't share it with Employee Number 1, or Employee Number 2, and so on, as you scale.

Influencers don't get that luxury.

The entire motive behind this is → You don't productize your traumas, your issues. You separate them, and productize your interests, your skills, everything that is still you, but from a distance.

I don't get to define who sees you from which lens.. You do, and ultimately your audience, and connections as you move through the world.

That way, you're not sharing "10 B2B Sales lessons I learned when… I failed college" , "…quit my job", or any other life achievement, really, this is how you keep the cringey and formulaic thinking away.

You go through the world, and just share your insights. Not lessons to learn because your trauma is for your own spiritual self to heal, not to extract lessons from, to make a point.

Not every part of your life deserves or needs sharing in lessons.

No one needs to be educated (without permission) on what to do today, they just need your perspective, your worldview, your sharing, and your reasoning. Because at the end of the day, your employees, your followers, your die-hard fans follow you because of your moves, not lessons to learn.

They need to learn their lessons, live through their life. Not learn more tips and education on how to live their own.

It's called permission-based marketing.

AI Content: Artificial Content vs Organic

AI - Artificial Intelligence, the very name means it is external, synthetic intelligence, reasoning.

It is not your own. You get it to think and give an output based on giving it context, aka your prompt.

If you've studies data structures like me in college, you know how every database requires you to "query"/"ask" something, to get a result or stored data from a "table".

In this case, the table is a blackbox. You don't know which drawer opens what. It shows you what you need, and often gets it wrong, or too shocking to make you believe what is right is a truth.

Your brain digests this information thinking its fact or not based on your natural intelligence. If the first one is lacking, a synthetic one won't make a difference.

But when we talk about content. AI can do it for you sure. It can generate 50 posts, 50 blogs, opinions in a minute or less.

If you use a good reasoning model like ChatGPT O1 Pro or something similar to Claude, it can impress not only you but also your followers.

But we write for our own clarity. Our own thoughts are to attract business via top funnel marketing.

But here's the thing though, despite separating your identity in two as a business person and Employee Number 1, your friends, family, and close connections still know you as one person, not two identities. Strangers only know about Employee Number 1 hopefully.

So where does AI start, and where does it finish in your personality?

Because if everyone is having an Employee Number 1, and this employee is sharing what everyone else is sharing — AI generated or not, sure you may get some attention, but this person wouldn't be able to give the life lessons and clarity that comes from doing your own thing, writing your own posts, clicking your own photographs, basically mastering your own craft.

This is a thin line and can surely cross into irony. But the point I'm trying to convey is that you, your natural intelligence, and the different drawers, the different connections inside your brain, are you. Going forward, whether AGI comes or not in the next 2-5 or 20 years, if you truly love what you're doing, and all your needs are met, your actions would lie higher in Maslow's pyramid of self-actualization. What do you do then, when there are no worries about revenue, and everything else will matter?

The TV series, Severance, is based exactly on this concept. Who are you when you work, and when you're not working?

However, it doesn't need to get as impersonal between you and Employee Number 1 or any other employee in your business.

I write lengthy and in-depth newsletters primarily because of this. It helps me communicate with Employee Number 1 and humanely connect with my reader, you, without putting a middleman in between.

Personal Branding: Should vs Must vs Want

There’s a paradox at the core of personal branding. Everyone tells you to “be yourself,” yet simultaneously urges you to optimize every piece of who you are into neatly packaged, algorithm-friendly content. Authenticity is a buzzword tossed around so frequently that its meaning has blurred into cliché.

But let’s cut through the noise and look at what personal branding truly means—no fluff, no sugarcoating.

There are three paths you can choose when building your personal brand:

• What you SHOULD be

• What you MUST be

• What you WANT to be

​

Should: The path of least resistance (and most regret)

The “should” path is simple. It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s what your family expects, what society dictates, what traditional career advice whispers in your ear. This path leads you straight to the crowded middle. You’re competent, polished, and perfectly forgettable.

On LinkedIn, it’s writing “10 Tips” posts because everyone else does. On Instagram, it’s curated selfies with borrowed Lambos because that’s what success “should” look like. It’s branding stripped of personality—just imitation in pursuit of acceptance.

And it works, temporarily. You’ll get followers. You’ll get clients. You’ll even make money. But you’ll never feel fully alive, because you’ve suppressed your uniqueness into submission, following someone else’s blueprint for success.

Must: The path of necessity (and exhaustion)

The “must” path feels heavier. It’s driven by survival, urgency, and pressure. You brand yourself strictly by market demand, trends, and whatever pays the bills. This is the freelancer who hops niches every three months, chasing the highest-paying trend. The creator who never settles into clarity because they’re terrified of missing the “next big thing.”

This path offers quick cash but little longevity. It’s endless hustle, endless anxiety. You’re never sure if you’re building something meaningful or just patching leaks. You never truly connect because you’re constantly shifting masks to meet immediate needs. It’s exhausting, unsustainable, and—worst of all—empty.

Want: The path of clarity (and freedom)

Then there’s the “want” path.

This is the hardest, most vulnerable path, but also the only one that genuinely matters. It’s you stripped bare of societal “shoulds” and financial “musts,” courageously asking yourself:

What do I truly, genuinely WANT?

Not what others think is successful. Not what pays quickly but dies quickly. But what deeply fulfills you—emotionally, intellectually, spiritually? What makes you curious, energized, and fully alive?

And lucky for you, I created The Nomad Clarity Compass just to help you plug your energy leaks and find what energizes you!

This path isn’t always easy. It’s vulnerable, risky, sometimes even scary. You risk rejection, misunderstanding, or failure. But you gain something priceless:

Real freedom. Real clarity. Real connection.

This path feels uncertain at first because no clear template exists. It forces you to define your unique vision, your original voice, and your true personality. But it’s also incredibly powerful. Because once you’re on it, you’re no longer competing in a saturated market—you’re creating your own category entirely. You’re unmistakably yourself.

How to choose your path clearly:

Ask yourself honestly right now—

• What SHOULD you do to fit in?

• What MUST you do to survive?

• What do you genuinely WANT to do—to thrive?

Then ruthlessly eliminate everything except what you deeply WANT.

Because when you build a brand from deep want rather than external expectations, something magical happens:

You attract people who don’t just follow you—they resonate deeply with you. You stop selling superficial solutions and start offering profound transformations. You escape the endless competition and find a world where only you can exist, thrive, and matter.

Personal branding at its deepest isn’t marketing at all. It’s radical honesty, raw clarity, and fearless courage to be fully yourself.

This isn’t about being polarizing for engagement—it’s about being honest for sanity. Your scars, your wisdom, your worldview become your competitive edge because nobody else can replicate your lived experience.

If you chase “should,” you’ll always be replaceable.

If you chase “must,” you’ll always be exhausted.

But if you courageously pursue what you deeply “want,” you become irreplaceable.

And that’s the entire point.

Because in a world rapidly commoditizing everything, the only way to stand out is not to try to stand out at all—it’s simply to stand within your own truth.

When you do that, you stop playing the content game—and start winning your life.

And that’s how you truly win the content game:

Not by competing, but by creating your own game altogether. And when you create your own world, you get to play how you want, and others live in it, how they want. Everyone wins!