"Less than 100K followers? I won't talk to you"

Here's something luridly lame: one of the very biggest influencers in the Biohacking/health space once REFUSED to talk to me because I have less than 100,000 followers. I had crafted a pitch proposing a micro-collaboration that would take less than 90 seconds of his time, literally. The response, "come back when you have more followers" (I have 15K real human followers across all platforms and a website that's been popular for over a decade in the space).

I argued that the number of social media followers is not the most meaningful metric, and the one that many influencers are faking. And they did not respond. A stinging rejection, as this is someone whom I’d been a superfan of for a while, sharing his content, clicking the buy buttons on his recommendations, and reviewing his books positively.

In the hollow, neon-lit world of the modern “influencer economy,” we have been conditioned to worship at the altar of the vanity metric. If you spend any time in the Biohacking, anti-aging, or personal growth subcultures, you’ll quickly realize there is a rigid, albeit invisible, caste system based entirely on follower counts. If your digital tail is shorter than five figures, you are effectively a ghost: a non-entity whose insights are disregarded by the self-appointed gatekeepers of “clout.”

The biggest influencer I know: Dr. Hany Demian

He currently has around 20,000 followers and probably wouldn’t love being called an “influencer.” When I interviewed him on my podcast last year, he had just 400 Instagram followers, but even then, he was vastly and profoundly more influential than the social media stars with five and six-figure followings in the Biohacking/health/personal growth space. Here’s why...

He operates a cutting-edge regenerative medicine practice that has treated hundreds of thousands of patients - liberating them from daily chronic pain. Think about that number for a moment and compare it to the “likes” on a generic fitness post. We aren’t talking about “manifesting” wellness or “going with the flow” of some bland platitude. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of lives transformed through the industrious application of advanced medicine and meticulous biohacking. When a patient who has been crippled by daily, agonizing pain is rapidly restored to a state of physical autonomy, that is a transformation that ripples outward with more force than any “viral” tweet could ever hope to muster. Here’s my interview with him...

Consider the sheer human impact of his work. The network effects here are truly exponential. When one person is freed from chronic pain, their entire family is also liberated from the shared burden of that suffering. The millions of family members who no longer have to watch their loved ones wither away are all part of the “reach” of Dr. Damian’s work. This is real influence: it is the tangible, measurable improvement of human ability to function and flourish in an increasingly toxic world.

Follow Dr. Hany Demian if you want to see what real influence looks like (yes, he has a Ferrari)...

If you think our race-to-bottom “influencer culture” worshiping at the altar of the follower count is lame, share this...

And comment, tag, or link to someone doing great work who doesn’t have a huge following. If this gets over a hundred shares, I will publicly name that ridiculously pompous influencer who turned me down because of my sub-100K follower count. I was a superfan and he Floccinaucinihilipilied me! Floccinaucinihilipilification - that’s a word meaning: “to make worthless.”

I don’t mind burning that bridge if this message gets the reach it deserves!

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