De-Influencer

 

In a one-act show written and presented by P L Deshpande in Marathi named ‘Asami Asami’, the cynical father of the protagonist says a very apt line.  In fact, this Cynicism was so typical of lower and middle-class segments of pre-liberalization Indian society which kind of celebrated minimal existence and avoided splurging on things you don’t need.  The dialogue goes as “God created the universe but his favorite creation is Donkey. All that you need to be is a Potter (who makes the donkey carry the mud), and there is no scarcity of Donkeys around you”.   The relevance of this is apparent in a very modern term called Social Media Influencer.    

Influenza is an infectious viral illness. From Latin influentia, “to flow into”; in medieval times, intangible fluid given off by stars was believed to affect humans. Italian influenza referred to any disease outbreak thought to be influenced by stars. Today our lives are influenced by stars of another kind popularly known as Influencers. Social Media is omnipresent and omnipotent. It engulfs all aspects of our lives. We are so used to it that we live our lives through social media.  We buy things, services and do certain activities dictated by Social Media. 

Social media influencers are individuals who utilize social media platforms to build their own personal brand or influence their followers to act (including buying products, supporting a brand, or vacationing in a certain location). They can share anything from clothes and beauty products to make-at-home slime with their followers. While it might seem like frivolous fun, some influencers are making significant amounts of money from their connection to their fans, making them the modern entrepreneur.   

These days everyone aspires to be an influencer.  It may have its own advantage like making public choices more democratic in comparison to conventional celebrity endorsements. For businesses: it offers a more effective means of extending brand awareness in terms of cost and reach. There are downsides and risks for businesses as well but what really is disturbing for society as a whole is problematic engagement with society. This needs a mention as Influencing has significant volumes and revenues of social media influencing — it’s a US$13.8 billion industry. Influencers are motivated and often incentivized (through product and brand endorsement) to increase their power on social media and many are becoming more proficient in attracting and engaging followers.  

Followers, on the other hand, can easily become attached and obsessed with influencers and their engagement can often become excessive and unhealthy. Problematic engagement with social media influencers is common among followers, but not well-known or understood. There are two types of attachments — parasocial relationship and sense of belonging, both of which are key in social media influencing.  Influencers’ social attractiveness has a stronger effect than other factors in building followers’ attachments. Following more influencers could reduce the impact of attachment to the community (sense of belonging) when it comes to problematic engagement. Social media influencers should also be aware of followers’ problematic engagement. Although it may be in contrast with their goal of increasing follower engagement, they can focus on creating a healthy relationship with their followers.  

Today, social media influencers endorse various products and brands showcasing their use and how it benefits them. This tempts their followers to try it out for themselves. Fashion and beauty influencing, food and travel vlogs are on the rise. Constant consumption of content from these influencers has resulted in people spending humungous amounts of money on endorsed products and brands.   

Savings are taking a big hit as money is being spent on either trying out a new fine dining restaurant every weekend or purchasing expensive skin serums and other beauty products suggested by social media influencers for clear and glowing skin. While every expense resulting from following social media influencers does take us on a guilt trip, the urge to get our hands on the products is equally real and uncontrollable.  

This calls for another service: Deinfluencers: influencers on Social Media are telling their followers what not to buy under the guise of critiquing overconsumption and saving money. The growing trend – which has mainly taken root in the beauty and lifestyle communities – comprises videos in which popular products are labeled overhyped. If influencer marketing uses personal endorsements to sell products, in principle, de-influencing should urge consumers to think critically about their purchases and evaluate their necessity.   

‘Deinfluencing’ videos surfaced very recently, as a sincere attempt to join the dots between trend cycles, unethical labor practices, excess waste, and other existing social ills. Deinfluencing’ videos have metamorphosed into a viral video format in which influencers are slating products they didn’t like and redirecting followers to other products or their ‘dupes’. In essence, most ‘de influencers’ on the app are really influencers in sheep’s clothing. For most, ‘de influencing’ appears to be the latest ‘socially conscious’ marketing ploy loosely based around sustainability and the financial hardship consumers may be experiencing during a global economic decline. Worldwide, people have tightened their purse strings to survive rising rents, utility bills, and inflation rates. At the same time, saturation and increased competition in the influencing market mean the job is simply not as easy as it used to be.  

What would a genuine wave of de-influencing look like if it were to happen? There won’t be an anti-consumerist revolution against the apps engineered to sell us stuff. Social Media can pressure people to buy stuff they don’t need or can’t afford in order to keep up with the latest trends and maintain their social status. It’s naïve to think we can outsmart all the marketing devices deployed at us. Many intelligent thinkers have offered radical solutions to overconsumption, but in the meantime, remember that the next fancy item you buy will only be as good as the other ones collecting dust.  

We need definitely have to derive wisdom from our earlier generation symbolized by the father of P L Deshpande’s protagonist to help us get vaccinated against Influenza of a new kind.  

Science of Being Happy

 

We all strive to find happiness. In search of this happiness one day I turned to find a scientific solution to find happiness. Literally, I turned to science. Psychologists at the University of California have discovered some fascinating things about happiness that could change your life. Let me summarize their observations which I felt were quite surprising and yet we all know them.  

One of the main discoveries by scientists surprisingly is that we all have a happiness “set point.” When extremely positive or negative events happen—such as buying a big Car or losing a job—they temporarily increase or decrease our happiness, but we eventually drift back to our set point.  

They have found that our genetic set point is responsible for 50% of our happiness, life circumstances affect about 10%, and a big 40% is completely up to us. The large portion of your happiness that you control is determined by your habits, attitude, and outlook on life. Permanently adopting new habits which are a bit vague to define, such as how you see the world—is difficult, especially at this age. But breaking the habits that make you unhappy is much easier.  

There are many bad habits that tend to make us unhappy. Eradicating these bad habits can move your happiness set point in short order.  

Immunity to awe:  Amazing things happen around you every day if you only know where to look. Technology has exposed us to many things and made the world so much smaller. This exposure raises the bar on what it takes to be awestricken.  It’s hard to be happy when you just shrug your shoulders every time you see something new.  Smaller surprises and new experiences increase your exposure to awe. 

Isolating yourself:  Isolating yourself from social contact is a pretty common response to feeling unhappy. Socializing, even when you don’t enjoy it, is great for your mood. We all have those days to isolate ourselves, but the moment this becomes a tendency, it destroys your mood  

Blaming: We need to feel in control of our lives in order to be happy, which is why blaming is so incompatible with happiness. When you blame other people or circumstances for the bad things that happen to you, you’ve decided that you have no control over your life, which is bad for you.  

Controlling: It’s hard to be happy without feeling in control of your life, but you can take this too far in the other direction by making yourself unhappy by trying to control yourself too much. You feel that nagging desire to dictate other people’s behavior.  Those efforts will inevitably fail and make you unhappy.  

Criticizing: You enjoy judging other people and speaking poorly of them.  It feels good while you’re doing it, but afterward, you feel guilty and sick.  It just creates a spiral of negativity.  

Complaining: Complaining and the attitude behind is troubling. By constantly thinking and talking negatively about things, you reaffirm your negative beliefs. While talking about what bothers you can help you feel better, there’s a fine line between complaining being therapeutic and it fueling unhappiness.   

Impressing:  People will like your clothes, your car, and your fancy job, but that doesn’t mean they like you. Trying to impress other people is a source of unhappiness because it doesn’t get to the source of what makes you happy. Instead, you can find people who like you and accept you for who you are.   

Negativity:  Life won’t always go the way you want it to. You have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. Happy people make their time count. Instead of complaining about how things could have been or should have been, they reflect on everything they have to be grateful for. Then they find the best solution available to the problem, tackle it, and move on  

Hanging around negative people: Complainers and negative people are bad news because they indulge in their problems and fail to focus on solutions.   People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spirals. 

Comparing your own life to the lives people portray on social media: The thing to remember about social media, in general, is that they rarely represent reality. Social media provides an airbrushed, color-enhanced look at the lives people want to portray.  Social media has some advantages; just take it sparingly and with a grain of salt.  

Neglecting to set goals:   It’s important to set goals that are challenging, specific (and measurable), and driven by your personal values.     

Giving in to fear: Fear is just an emotion that’s fueled by your imagination. The danger is real. It’s what you feel when you almost step in front of a bus. Fear is a choice.  Don’t be afraid to take risks. People say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.  

Leaving the present:  Like fear, the past and the future are products of your mind. No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Happy people know this, so they focus on living in the present moment.   

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and it will create your future.   

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future, and don’t place unnecessary expectations upon yourself.   

  

You have heard most of the things mentioned somewhere or the other. But you may not have heard about the Set Point of Happiness and the very simple fact that 40% of happiness is what you control. Now is the time to follow very simple tips and get full 40% marks. Happiness will be a simple subject. 

 

The Tale of Two Debacles

 

We have read tons of analyses of why Silicon Valley Bank Collapsed. We also have read accusations of running high and dry out of loss of market capitalization of Adani Group. The analysis of the former is more technical in nature blaming systemic issues faced by banks due to their exposure to the Interest rates and effects of liquidity.  And this analysis is correct. No one blames US Government to be hand in gloves with the bank operators neither the US banking system is blamed apart from a few procedural issues. While on the other hand, there is a political slugfest to discredit Indian Institutions which have delivered profits and stability for their millions of users. India is branded as the most crony capitalist country on the planet by some private investigators operating on the Internet who work for profits: rightfully so and within the ecosystem of investors and markets and also rightfully praised for their acumen by experts. I am not absolving anybody nor accusing anyone but the basic assumption (in most of the analysis and reporting) that India operates as a third-world, power-driven ecosystem seems a bit agenda-driven and filled with inherent bias. 

Most of the analysts agree on the following: SVB a bank that catered to the tech industry was the biggest US lender to fail since the 2008 global financial crisis—and was the second-biggest to fail ever. Analysts say SVB was largely unprepared for the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate increases, which shrank the value of its investments. As word spread quickly online that the bank could be in trouble last week, customers withdrew $42 billion in a single day, leaving the bank with a $1 billion negative balance, according to a regulatory filing by the company. While financial regulators have announced that the US will guarantee all deposits at SVB, its collapse has spooked customers at other banks and raised concerns about other financial institutions. Many observers postulate that the vulnerability was hiding in plain sight, a result of a combination of COVID government stimulus followed by a series of rates hikes. I would add other contributors: general uncertainty exhaustion after several years of dealing with surprises ranging from shortages and runs on basic goods to the Fed’s limited ability to control or even forecast inflation. Something will also have to be said eventually about the profitable business of inciting runs that some hedge funds have been up to. While all of these factors likely played a role, this narrative oversimplifies a few points and plays into the panic. We actually do not know much about SVB’s exposures, since they fell below the Fed’s threshold for the annual collection of Form FR Y-14A Capital Assessments and Stress Testing. At the moment, we also cannot track what fraction of SVB’s deposits was connected to the local venture capital (VC) ecosystem that it was serving. But we do know that this bank was different, and it is highlighted in its name and in the history of its public statement. 

 It is very clear that there is no other bank with over half of its loan portfolio dedicated to private equity subscription lines—that is, lines secured by VC and private equity fund commitments but ones used to fund investments in the short- to mid-term in lieu of capital call.  To add to that, the SVB leadership’s unorthodox approach to the management of liquidity pressures clearly backfired. The triggers of the run on SVB were no more apparent than the runs we have seen in the crypto space.  The bank run was devastating for SVB, but the real problems that triggered this event were the underlying interest rate exposure and the slow withdrawal of deposits. SVB was forced to issue a large amount of equity, which brought a lot of attention to their situation. There is now a lot of attention on the situation at all banks. The underlying interest rate exposure is common across banks, so some drop in bank equity values is appropriate.  So other banks might also face problems. 

 Now let’s compare the analysis of the debacle of the Adani Group as depicted in the International Media. Since the Jan. 24 Hindenburg report which alleged improper use by the Adani Group of offshore tax havens and stock manipulation and also raised concerns about high debt, the market capitalization of seven listed Adani Group companies has fallen by half or nearly $100 billion. Its dollar bonds have tumbled. To be sure, analysts say, the shock to the system comes because of Adani's heft and influence, rather than exposure. His conglomerate spans ports, coal mines, food businesses, airports, and lately media, and before the rout, its seven companies had accounted for more than 6% of the National Stock Exchange market value. While the Adani Group has total gross debt of 2.2 trillion rupees ($26.86 billion), top banks have said their credit exposures to the group are small. Shares of the firm are closely held, and mutual funds have low exposure too. Investment research firm TS Lombard said the Adani allegations had "hastened the decline we expected in Indian equities as foreign investors rebalance their portfolios on China’s reopening" but that the declines would be limited for several reasons, including Adani being “too unique to fail”. 

The aspersions and surmises about the stability of Indian Institutions have been running wild. Indian opposition parties, anti-incumbent intelligentsia, and vested interests in the domestic and international media have joined the bandwagon. I am not saying that there were not any irregularities in the Adani case. Thankfully Indian systems are robust to weather the debacle of one such entrepreneur group. The banks and institutions exposed to the investments in this group are doing well and have performed as per expectations. The same short-selling research group which had published Adani's report had no insight on SVB failure though they might argue that that’s not their business interest. Both failures are independent market-driven business events but are viewed differently based on inherent biases.