Keeping it Real: The Moat is IRL, Not AI
If you live long enough, you’ll spot the patterns. Here’s one I’ve been keeping my eye on.In the 1990s the term Keeping it Real was used by many of us in the hip hop community which was lifted from African American Vernacular English. But why did this term in particular resonate? We have to think of what was happening at that time as a scene which had local roots and a foundation in New York City (Bronx and Queens to be precise) in the 1970s started to really grow and create influence across the globe in the 1980s and early 1990s. With this growth, the era of the “corporate sellout” was in full swing. We could easily spot this “talent.” Pawns of the larger major labels given six-figure record label deals because they had one or two solid hits, acted a particular part, but really lacked a vision for a long tail career that said anything. As more of this talent got signed, an entire underground spawned. Labels, artists, even clothing lines. A backlash to the fakery usually driven by a visual image. And this is where we heard people utter, Keeping it Real more to the point it even ended up as a mantra on a popular reality TV show, “When people stop being polite, and start getting real.”At its heart, Keeping it Real meant and still means:* Staying authentic* Being honest about who you are* Not selling out, fronting, or pretending to be something you truly are not for status or moneyThis idea was deeply important in early hip-hop, where credibility and lived experience mattered a lot. Maybe more than anything for a life long career of artistry. It reminds me I was able to meet RZA when I worked at a record label in the early 2000s. He’s the real deal. A prime example of someone honest about his roots, his passions and influences. A lot of early gatekeepers told him Wu-Tang would never go anywhere. But he heard things others didn’t and went with his gut.The reason I bring this up?It taps into a universal tension: who you really are vs. who you’re expected to be. And let’s be honest (a phrase that came out of keeping it real), authenticity never goes out of style, even when that word gets overused.Fast forward to the early aughts and many bloggers that inhabited the web would write out their entire souls to strangers online. There was something wonderful about this. These were normies, people like you and me who simply had a digital mood board. But instead of using it to try to convert into a career of sorts, many did this from the point of how open source works. They approached their writing from a “What Can I Offer the World” point of view. I remember talking to many of these bloggers. Most of them were introverts uncomfortable with their new found fame. One told me something that still resonates. “If people can learn something, cope better with what I share, and unite with others based on shared experiences, then maybe this will help bring humanity together with a common understanding. Maybe we’ll find more commonality with our universal human peers.”This type of Hopecore continued to spread as online influence grew and social media rose in popularity. Before you knew it, an entire cottage industry of creators and influencers had spawned. Need dating advice? There’s a creator/influencer for that. Need tourism ideas? There’s an influencer for that. Need ideas for an outfit? There’s a creator who does some cool hauls with a style you might like for that. And even how we approached our careers started to transform. “Oh, so and so has 900,000 followers on Insta (ahem, little did anyone know this person bought all those followers), they must be good at social media marketing. Let’s hire them!”This worked for a really long time. In fact in the past 15 years I would note that I have gotten hired from a great social media presence on LinkedIn, TikTok and now Substack. But when people hired me, they also knew my real credentials. I had the portfolio of work to back it up. And most important? I had the lived experiences. When you meet me, I can tell you all the learnings and relearnings from these experiences. I can talk game.This is a huge advantage not being talked about much by those so keen to lean heavily on knowledge engines to give them all the answers. IRL is now the moat in a world where prompt addicts think they can just figure out answers from some Large Language Model and be an “expert.” They’re looking more and more like the Matt Damon character in this Good Will Hunting scene…For the past six years everyone assumed what people tell them they’ve done or even have experience in is all fake quackery. Snake oil. That creative? AI must have made it. The people you say you know? BS to just get a meeting to talk about investment. And part of this is because instead of Keeping It Real there have been so many faking it until they make it with illusions of grandeur that trust has eroded our social fabric. “Should we believe what they say on their resume?” “I’ll just write anything to get it through the ATS systems.” “They said they did this on their website but I don’t believe them.” “They wrote a book, but anyone can write a book because of AI.”All of this questioning about the truth and about what is real and what isn’t has led to some people, mainly creatives, doing something I never thought would happen. We’re on the fringe edges of it as an eccentric behavior but it mimics what I’m also seeing in current club culture. People are blowing up their online profile. Debranding themselves from the web. Doing what Cal Newport calls “Deep Work” and just going back into making things and doing more IRL instead of telling everybody about those things on these online platforms. Showing people rather than telling them. This has had a profound effect on the entire creator economy cottage industry. There must be thousands of people who do videos talking about brand trends, social media marketing trends or other business trends. Heck, I was one of them with a Top 100 business podcast from 2011-2021. But I also had the resume to back up these discussions. Most of the people now? They’re consultants who have never even held a job at a Fortune 100 but dictating to Fortune 100s what they should be doing. They don’t have any lived experience. But what do they have? A personal brand.In the past few years these people could get away with getting hired for decent sized contracts because they were good promoters of themselves. Good stagetalkers. Good hype artists. They might even have an AI avatar doing keynotes. But more and more when I talk to companies who have hired these folks they realize something quick: business impact, making business results, heck, even coming up with a workable strategy and executing it is very different than making good TikToks, highly viewed YouTube videos or mass shared Substacks. As Kyla Scanlon noted in her recent piece entitled The Great Entertainment: “We teach people the only thing that matters is great content. The spectacle. Yet business and life is governed by trust. By realness. The real world doesn’t make for good content.”We’re entering a realness era again. One that only IRL can secure from all the b******t we’re up to our knees in the past 15 years. Mainly because we are seeking real people, real voices that we can trust. Do they have to have one million followers on Instagram when you can buy those? No. Do they have to make snackable short videos with an Australian accent so they look sophisticated? No. Can they be an expert and maybe have 122 subscribers on some underground newsletter?Yes.If anything, we have learned the hard way that people who are a bunch of media elites, podcasters cosplaying in roles they have no business being in, (FBI Director, cough) is what led us to yearn for IRL again. We’re tired of people telling us some narrative we’ve heard time and time again that just gets tired, cooked and washed with time. That only being online will help us feel connected (nope, more alienated). That… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativestudies.substack.com
