 Ladies and gentlemen, Silent Mike here with something a little bit different. We're going to dive into a topic that may be controversial, maybe just a little bit something different than I've talked about. Very common in the industry. Connor and I, the man behind the magic, behind the camera, behind the editing. We ran a little sociology experiment. We want to figure out whether it's kind of an external reward system of likes, follows, views, or maybe an internal self-conscious reason. Why something like maybe using performance enhancing drugs or steroids, Photoshop, highly edited pictures or videos, the perfect lighting angle, etc., is so common in our industry or on social media today. Obviously, it's been going on for years in the Hollywood world, right? Movies, magazines, pictures, articles, etc., everyone does it. We were recently watching a movie, I believe it was Star Wars, one of my faves, a new hope to be exact. And we noticed how many blemishes everybody had in the movie because they didn't just filter out or paste on makeup on everybody. We're nowadays probably since the 90s. Every movie, you don't even see a wrinkle or a pimple or anything. They basically don't even look human. They almost look like some kind of mannequin. So this is very, very common in our industry and there's been some bigger scandals, if you will, about people getting called out for their Photoshop, whether the fans or the followers then met them in person and realized how small they were or how much muscle they didn't have, or even how much weights they lifted or didn't lift, whether it's fake weights or lying about how much you lift. It's very, very common. So basically what we did is Conor found an app, I think he was actually weirdly sponsored to or advertised to on Facebook for this app. So who knows what he's been searching on Google, but Twitter, he was advertised on Twitter because he's been looking around for fake things, fake people, fake butts. And he found an app that with just one push of a button is supposed to make you have more hair if you're balding, better facial hair, no wrinkles, look more athletic, look more jacked, look leaner. And so we took one of my progress photos, chucked it up right onto the Instagram. And so some of this obviously is just a tiny experiment. There's many a variable that we couldn't count for. I tried to post at an optimal time. I try to make a good, nice motivational caption for all the haters out there. I use the regular hashtags that I normally use. So I tried to use it just as much as I could, any other post to gain good traction and give it a chance to grow. And we want to see whether it would take off, get a couple more likes, views, follows, or not compared to just a normal progress picture of myself. Connor did all the editing in the photo. After some discussion, we agreed upon that it was good that we just tweaked it a little bit. We want to just compare it to and show maybe what somebody, your YouTuber, Instagrammer, fitness persona might actually do. They're not making themselves from a 180 pound kid look like a 250 pound guy. They're just making them look like a dope looking 185 pound guy. So we wanted to emulate that best we could. Basically what Connor did in the app is just small changes. Like we said, we want to emulate maybe what potentially these people that you follow or the world follows on fitness inspiration do. So he just added a little bit to my abs, kind of outlined them. He brought out my shoulders, made them a little bit broader, and brought in my waist just a little bit to kind of give that v-taper that everybody's talked about. Again, I'm probably, I'm throwing these random numbers out, but I'm probably 12 to 15% body fat anyways. And Connor maybe made it look like I was closer to 10. And then bringing in my waist and making me a little bit more handsomest. Didn't change the face at all though. So that's just all handsome, ladies and gentlemen. No Photoshop there. And this brings up a different discussion. We're gonna dive into a couple ideas here. And this brings up a discussion of where that moral line is for you, where it should be maybe for the industry. Because I think everybody that posts on the internet trying to gain some traction or has some kind of followers has some type of responsibility to lead the right way. And obviously the right way is by perspective and what that content creator believes. But for me, it's to not dupe anybody. It's not to scam anybody. It's no gimmicks. It's to show you my progress, what I look like now, and maybe how I achieve those things. So for me, when I'm putting up any kind of picture, one, I'm notorious in my group of friends in the industry, especially Bart and Omar, tell me how terrible I am at taking selfies. Which in hindsight, it's an insult, it's a slap in the face. But it makes me almost feel good that I'm not putting up the perfect light and I'm not putting up the perfect pose when I'm showing you guys some of my progress. Two, for myself, that again in hindsight kind of feels good, but it just shows how crappy I look in pictures is meeting some of you guys, my subscribers, people listen to almost always podcasts, people that follow me on Instagram. In person, they always say how much bigger I look than in pictures because I'm so bad again at kind of showing off, I guess, on the internet. I'm just not good at taking pictures of myself and I'm not that photogenic in my opinion. So that's another thing that makes me feel good and makes me feel like I'm not scamming or kind of blind siding you guys. When I do post on Instagram, Instagram has filters. And I think filters, in my opinion, personally, again, this is all about perspective. I think that they're not crossing that line. I'm insanely pale. Again, take terrible pictures. So for me to throw on a filter to make me look a little bit tanner, I don't think is that big of a deal. I do think once you start to manipulate lines with face tune or whatever some of these apps are out there, I do think, one, you're lying to your followers who hopefully you're building a community and trying to help those people rather than trying to deceive them. Two, you're not really producing content, in my opinion, because that's not you. Same thing similar to putting on an act of who you may be. If you are an actor or you're doing skits, sure, of course you're going to not be yourself. But if you're vlogging or you're doing some of these things, in my opinion, for the long run of being a content creator and, again, that responsibility of being a content creator, having a following, being a public figure, is you have to be honest. You have to be yourself, and you have to stay true to yourself, and that's something that looking back at my entire career of putting my face on the internet that I've done decently. Even this morning, I got into a little discussion with my barber in the barbershop this morning. My barber runs multiple brick and mortar companies and also does, I believe, online seminars and owns a palmade or hair product company. He's been an entrepreneur forever, kind of a local figure here. I've been going to him for a long time too, and he kind of knows what I do. So we chat about content and marketing and different things, and some of the people in the barbershop were asking me what supplements that I work with, or companies, or that I promote, or whatever. They kind of ask me, well, why don't you just sign with the supplement company and only promote the product that you believe in? And what I told them is the picture in the fitness industry is bigger than that. Sure, there's one or two protein bars or energy drinks within a company that I might like to promote, but it's the, again, being honest to myself, the entire company, no company in particular, just generally the supplement company, may have athletes that I don't agree with, how they train, how they coach, how they promote themselves, and they're signed on. So now we're teammates. So in a way, I'm signing on for that person. Two, the way they promote these other supplements. Maybe I say this protein bar is just a decent snack for me and fits my macros, but then the protein bottle right next to it says, gain 10 inches in your arms in three days, four scoops a day, shit your brains out supplement. These are tied together with branding and I signed my name on to the entire brand. So in a way, for me personally, it's, again, too much of a sell out. I don't know if I've talked about it much on camera, but I talked to all my friends in the industry about how I believe selling out's a scale. You can go too far or you can go too less. You can be as conservative or not as you'd like, but it's all on you and your perspective and your moral. There's just barriers that I'm not willing to go across and I would rather be 100% me, both in person and online and stick to who I am as a person and my morals through both with the kind of Photoshop idea, the supplement deal, whatever it might be, anabolic steroids or whatever it is, I want to be as transparent as I can, both in person and online and stick to 100% what I believe in in person and online. Results of the experiment. I did notice I didn't do that perfect of an experiment. Obviously this was just for a little bit of fun the other day. I did get a bunch of new followers and I think that's because one, the hashtags maybe attracted those people there as well as the first visual drew them in. The likes were probably on average for what a picture or quote or whatever at that time of day would do on my page. So I would say that kind of surprisingly, it wouldn't do, it didn't do as great as we thought. We thought it might do better. In conclusion, I don't know what that means. I don't know if the content creator themselves are so self-conscious that they have to do these put it on the internet or if their goal is to attract more followers, more likes or whatever it may be. And we may never know because it is probably person to person. Me personally, I do, I want to understand both ends. I am self-conscious. I don't like showing a lot of skin. You won't really find me in tank tops. Those progress pictures online, although may seem that I'm comfortable, I'm very uncomfortable posting things like that. I don't like to swim. I don't like to be at the beach naked. It's just not my cup of tea. I like to keep my shirt on, hoodie on if I could. It's just 100 degrees in here. So I understand being a little self-conscious and wanting to make yourself look a little bit better before presenting it to the public. And I also understand doing it to try to get more likes, followers, views, et cetera. I mean, I am a content creator and all of us content creators, whether they say it or not, they want people to watch their stuff. There's a reason I invested thousands of dollars of equipment, time, time, money, and my energy to create the content. Of course I want people to watch it. I'd be lying if I wasn't, but I'm just not willing to bend those rules or morals of myself to get a little bit of extra traction. I do think if I continuously photoshopped a little bit of my pictures over the next six months that I do think the growth would probably be a little bit better. But again, it's not worth it for me, to get an extra 100,000 followers, even a million followers, I'd rather still just put my fat, ugly face on the internet and have the following that I have compared to you. And again, that's all on perspective. If people want to do that, by all means you do you, me do me. Close and thoughts, I do think that everyone who makes themselves a public figure who is a content creator needs to take more responsibility for what they put out there, what they say, the research they do, the products they sell, the companies they support. I think it's only on us if we want to make things better. I don't support people, I've bashed the fitness industry, the supplement industry, powerlifting, I've bashed it all just as much and talk shit just as much as everybody else. But what I try to do is lead by example and I tie my name to people, companies, things that I believe in and are doing things the right way. And if everybody's at least trying to do that, I do think that we can lift the industry. I'll leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius. The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury. And what that means to me is if I am hurt or I don't like something, I don't believe in what somebody else is doing, I'm going to do my best to act, live, breathe it into the industry, into content, be me and act the way I want this industry to grow. Maybe I will bash it here and there because things do agitate me and I may speak poorly on it, but I'm going to spend more of my energy, more of my focus doing things what I believe is the right way to make things better. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, if you like the style of video, comment below topics you'd like me to... Guys, if you like this style of video, comment below the type of content or topics you'd like to see me cover. Appreciate you give this thing a thumbs up. New videos Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, vlogs, daily videos, coming soon, Twitch coming soon. Silent Mach, I'm out of here, I appreciate you guys.