Influencing, Sponsored Posts, and the Art of Selling Your Soul

Can authenticity ever be pure if it is tied to monetization?

I grew up in a coastal town about 50 miles from Manhattan. It’s an affluent, well-to-do town. As a child, I noticed how all the adult men around me held white-collar jobs, and as soon as I entere high school, I watched as the older kids—this time not just the boys, but the girls too—followed the same path, pursuing secure, high-paying roles in finance, banking, and the corporate world. The recent graduates who pursued these careers were met with praise and admiration.

Security. Power. Sensibility.

My mother and both my grandmothers exposed me to art from a young age. We spent weekends at the MoMA and The Met. My mother showed me Degas’ Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, asking me to pose next to it as she took my photo. I have hundreds of photos of myself standing in fourth position next to that cast sculpture.

Innocence. Expression. Play.

Then we’d always go down to Chinatown for Peking Duck before riding the train back to Connecticut.

My Mom’s mom, Roz, was a painter. She was a housewife in Fairfield County, but she painted seriously until the day she died. She exhibited at galleries around Connecticut and had various small shows. She painted because she loved it, never for the money.

There’s no doubt I’m the more creative one between my sister and me—while she pursued finance, I became a writer and creator.

From a young age, I struggled with math but flourished in English and History. I spent hours in my bedroom making fashion magazines by hand and writing stories about girls my age. While my sister got a perfect score on the SATs and went off to an Ivy League, I settled on a smaller liberal arts school to study English.

When I went off to college and left Fairfield County for the first time, I felt free. I didn’t have to take math anymore and could immerse myself in the arts. I “tested out” the popular party girls but I didn’t jive with their boy-chasing, alcohol-guzzling antics. I preferred the tragic romances of the hipsters. I started a blog and the readership grew to the tens of thousands. I wrote, listened to music, and hung out with other “intellectuals” who studied science, social work, and environmentalism.

During my college summers, I searched for meaning through WWOOFing, returning to campus with a quiet sense of peace and knowing. In the fall, I’d sit on the lawn near the gazebo, rolling cigarettes with my friends.

It was there, on that sunny lawn, that I learned about selling out. My school, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, sat near one of the most vibrant live music scenes I’ve ever known. Indie rock was at its peak (now referred to as the indie sleaze movement) and bands like War on Drugs, Dr. Dog, and Beach House emerged from Philly and Baltimore. Those art kids introduced me to the Pixies and The Velvet Underground—I once mistook the latter for a new band at a party. Humiliating.

But when I discovered Kings of Leon, I felt a cataclysmic shift. I’d never heard music like this. How could one album make me want to jump, dance, have sex, and cry, all in one hour?

I introduced the band to my father, who also took a liking to them. My father appreciates music of all kinds. When Alicia Keys released “Fallin’”, my dad turned around to me and said, “This woman has some of the best pipes on the planet. Just listen to the emotion of her voice.” I couldn’t agree more, and it remains Alicia Keys’ #1 most-streamed song on Spotify.

Back to Kings of Leon. A few months after I discovered them, the band released Only by the Night and reached commercial success. The album was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 2009 Grammy Awards and the band went home with Record of the Year for "Use Somebody" the following year. All my indie friends at school complained about how their sound had changed and how they’d sold out.

“Such a shame”, I said to my dad as we heard them on the radio.

“How come?” my father asked.

“They’ve sold out.”

“Why is that bad?” he pushed.

“‘Cause they’ve sold their souls for money.”

It’s a simple, binary topic for a restless 20-year-old to cling onto. As I said this, I remember feeling a sense of intellectual superiority over my father, as if I were blessing him with my scholarly wisdom. He was probably so glad he’d sent me to a liberal arts school. How else would he understand the complex systems of artistry and craft?

Next, TEDx would be knocking on my door.

I was rebelling against my hometown’s expectation that I should work in finance and aim to drive a Mercedes-Benz. Starving for authenticity and angry at the world, it was also around this time that I showed up to the Occupy Wall Street event with no idea what I was doing or standing up for, other than just showing up for the #vibes, #food, and overall #resistance.

I felt that calling out artists for selling out to the “big man” gave me some sort of power and control. They were succeeding and doing big things and I wanted to feel important, too. Weilding my judgement was the only thing I could do. It was the first time I remember feeling holier than thou when it came to art and commerce.

And five years later, I myself would sell out by starting to monetize my Instagram page.