I’m watching this video about Tommy Tallarico. He’s made music for over 350 games garnering him 7 Guinness World Records. His mansion was on MTV Cribs a couple times and celebrities love him.

Noo he lied. He hyped himself up and took credit for other people’s work and stole millions of dollars from crowd-funders. His Guinness records were fabricated, he wasn’t on cribs. This guy is a cautionary tale about lying.

But I want to learn from him, he was great at trust using indicators. These are like, you go to an online store and see they have 5 star reviews listed. Or a band has 1M followers. Suddenly you trust them. We’re stupid like that, our image is largely based on pre-existing tropes. Your image is actually somewhat in your control.

Obviously it’s not fully in your control as the truth eventually comes out, but it’s worth considering what image you offer the world.

Like my site had a gentle pastel logo and I changed it to the current retro punk logo, it’s more in line with what I’m making but it’s also a more appealing brand. Who is Jeremy? A harmless pastel fella or the cool retro animator?

This might all seem obvious. Didn’t I learn in high school that image is how we are perceived? Like Ru Paul said, “We're all born naked and the rest is drag.”

So lean in to it and have fun with your image! Trust indicators is a very boring way to say that life is a stage and we are all players. Now if you’ll excuse me… *lights cigar and gets in private jet* I’ve gotta fly 😎

I feel like this post was going one direction and I’ve ended up over here. I was gonna say, I should make a bigger deal of all the awards and media and festivals and clients I’ve worked with. Hype myself up. It feels disingenuous to bring up my friend’s film festival from 2014 or like, a school project that was in a festival. Do you have to lie to succeed?

I’m seriously asking

Man I guess lying will get you pretty far but the bubble pops! Look at the people who succeed for doing great work. Ya some are presenting an image but that image can be 100% true. So maybe I can lie and promote myself but I really don’t want to. Not even a little bit. Because if the world believes it I’ll know.

Integrity is the word here. Keeping my integrity while creating and promoting my stuff.

I’m gonna add more trust indicators and think of more ways to promote my work, even clever ways that have a hook. But I won’t lie about it and hopefully the integrity shines through.

“A lie has gone around the world before the truth gets its shoes on.”

a but the truth doesn’t have to be spread. It just is.