Who is Thomas Kurek? A Scourge of Social Media Phonies, For One

And who are you? I recently published a short photo-biography of my life on Alvarism.com. I was inspired by a popular meme online, which stated, “The less you reveal, the more people will wonder.”

I thought to myself, “well isn’t that an invocation for manipulators and phonies, who use photography, social media, image filters, marketing, and mass psychology tactics to fool people into projecting what they want to believe.” In societies with corrupt economies – charlatans make the dollars and authentic producers are buried by their drama and lies. So it was in Weimar Germany, and so it is becoming across the globe today.

Of course, there is a place for discretion. In my biography, I do not participate in gossip, or use relational aggression against women I have dated, or conflicts that have occurred between friends and family.

What is the nature of the social media phony? Rather than doing the hard work of acquiring knowledge, skills, and productive experience, they are pure consumers and dreamers. Their reality is that they have spent so much of their life in leisure, low-value education, socializing, and consumption activities, that they themselves cannot produce much value.

So they invent fiction online and “reveal less” because the truth of their reality is that they are actually less. A simple conversation would reveal that fact. If they were honest about who they are, there wouldn’t be much of anything interesting to tell. They create drama, they imagine drama, they consume drama. Being productive and acquiring real value is too tedious and boring for them.

This is the phony social media age.

I say, tune them out, and give them no time or attention. Every bit of social media drama and shallow phoniness that we feed distracts people from actually doing something beneficial for themselves and others. I wrote the short biography to do the opposite of what this mob of internet phonies advocate.

There is my life, in photographic evidence, and synopsis. This is who I am, and I am very blessed and thankful for such an uncommonly good and interesting life.