You're now listening to Vices and Vultures, a podcast on cultures. Previously on Vices and Vultures, we compared to the most influential active NBA players and noted their impact on the level of social media we're left here of. This is the finale to a three-part conversation about branding's role in basketball and beyond. For those of you who are listening that know me in the marketing realm, you know that I've spent quite a bit of time on social media, um, beginning in college.
And one of the things that I sought out to do was just find the balance between the social media aspect of my life and my real life. And I just contrary to popular belief for a lot of people, there is a difference, right? So what I did, um, and I wanted to put this on record because I feel like this is so important. I have so many conversations about people with this, I have conversations with you about this.
And something that I really sought to do from the time that I really took social media seriously and not necessarily from a personal aspect because that's just not like what it's for. I'm talking about like as far as my branding is concerned because I look up to a lot of these people that we have mentioned in one way or the other as examples or as role models, even you know, not all of them like fit that same category. But I do take the time to collect that data because it's important. When I started getting into social media heavily around like 2014, 2015, um, one of the biggest things that I wanted to make sure was that my, um, my sanity was intact.
And from there, I said to myself, let's take a fast, let's take 24 hours of the day every week and just fast from social media. And you know, it was a novel concept, obviously because social media to the common person exists as more or less of a time waster, right? And I wanted to fight that. And it wasn't easy, but as time went on and I've got the hang of getting it into habit.
Something that I look forward to. And it's not like over halfway through 2019, I'm still doing this fasting, sometimes I'll even extend it by an extra 12 hours just to get that. And the reason why I bring this up because I feel that is so important to understand that balance. I feel that when we look to people, such as LeBron, for instance, one of the biggest things that he's doing right now with this personal brand is highlighting the fact that he enjoys being with his family.
You know, he's got his son on Instagram is oldest son, Bronny. And part of that whole family aspect that he shows and he shares and he loves and it's very apparent and it's very respectable is the whole taco Tuesday thing. And you know, that thing took a life of its own. I heard it much.
Yeah, I heard a remix of it recently. It's crazy. Like for people like me, I don't know what to like, why is this a big deal? Yeah, but you have to understand this is just the power of brands.
The fact that exactly the fact that people are talking about it, it's like what? Like you people talk about it on ESPN. That's like a whole section where, you know, a couple of people are talking because it's like, and also because it's the off season, like they don't have any talk about. So, you know, that also means that that's how that's how significant social media is a lot of people.
Yeah. And but you have to draw the boundaries. So getting back to it, you look at people like LeBron and they're leveraging their platform to show different aspects of their life that are important to them. Meanwhile, you have people like who are not on social media at all.
And it still have found that balance because at the end of the day, you know, Kawai is not hard to Google. You can find stuff on him anywhere, but he's not putting himself in this arena of comparison, which is what it comes out to be in this arena of noise in this arena of all that. And when people ask me, how do you do this fast? It comes down to like self awareness and discipline, which is what you see in, honestly, that shouldn't be a question, it shouldn't be a question, but you want to know why it is?
That shouldn't be a question. You want to know why it is because those people are looking for an answer other than what I'm trying to give them. This is what separates you from people in general. The fact that you're able to do certain things that they can't comprehend.
I challenge people all the time. Yo, take it. Take that fast. And I'm not nobody's mom, thankfully, but at the same time, I know that at the end of the day, you plant seeds in this way.
Like for me, seeing Kawai operate the way that he did, especially through 2019 in particular, 2018 was weird because people had all kinds of shit to say about him. Like, oh, this and that, you know, there was a medical aspect when he was in San Antonio, like, you know, people were saying like, Oh, this guy sucks. Like he's being a jerk or whatever. And he literally will his way into the finals.
Like, you know, he made sure that he got into like the company with Kyle Lowry, who was like a long standing rapper and all these other dudes, you know, Danny Green came with him from San Antonio as well. And he played a big role. He went through all of that noise without having the need and feeling the need to be on a platform and get through there. And that to me is admirable.
And it can be done. Like he's a mega star for all intents and purposes, he's a mega star. And he's probably known in countries where he doesn't even think that he's known about. Once again, this is this is powerful because this guy doesn't talk to anybody.
No, you know, just like he's just knowing what he's going in. This is it. Like he has this awkward type of personality. And which is the reason why you don't really see him talking to a lot of people because I feel like that's not even something he has mastered.
I actually watched his video and he was he went to this award and somebody was asking for a picture. You can tell that this dude was mad like, yeah, even though I react like that's not that's not any time. Even the fact that he's not used to it because he's a mega star and I'm sure a lot of people is asking him to take pictures. But I feel like it's still something that he's not comfortable with because he's an introvert.
He wants to do what he loves and he want to be he want to be left alone. Yep. He's an introvert. And I think that's another reason why I respect him so much given all of the attention that he's been receiving, especially over the past year, especially over the past six months, because I myself am an introvert.
And when I see people who are clearly introverts in extroverted situations that, you know, anybody else would be like, yo, I'm loving this attention. If anybody not in co I was in co I situation, nine times out of 10 blown up social media, nine times out of 10, you know, like the whole conversation would be different. But because he is what he is, you know, he has created this precedence, which I feel like people don't talk about, but this is why we're talking about it. He's created this presence where it is so important to above everything else, respect yourself.
You can tell he has so much respect for himself first and his family, you know, if he didn't have that presser, you wouldn't you probably you may or may not have known, especially at that point in time that he had a child, you know what I'm saying? And I don't think he said this just to, you know, let people know, like just casually, I think he said this because he understands like when you're at a presser, when you're doing all these like, you know, media type obligations and stuff like that, you have to like, you know, you know, you have to humanize the brand, right? Because he doesn't have social media, he doesn't have an opportunity to humanize that brand. The problem is so many people look at people like, um, not even co I but like other megastars, like LeBron, like Russell Westbrook, like James Harden, you know, like James Harden has the brand of the beard for pretty much ever, right?
People look at that and people want to, people want to copy that, people want to check that swag, people want to get those likes, people want to get that approval because they see what it's doing for other individuals and they think that if they do it for them, that they will get the same results and when they don't get that disappointed and it goes back to the same thing of just self awareness, like do you respect yourself that much that you're willing to put aside social media? Right. Even for a day, I am not in a point, especially like with, you know, vices and vultures, you know, honestly, like for me, social media, I guess it's starting to get a hoe. Myself, because I don't think social media seriously becomes a problem in my life.
On a personal level, on a personal level, directly. So I go in and I spend, especially now that I'm not doing anything, schoolwork related. So I spent like about two, three hours on social media just swiping about things that I don't even care about. Right.
This is why I had to pretty much took it off my phone because I was like, I know how to separate social media from real life, but it's still distracting. And I wanted to get that distraction out of my system and take this time to make it more productive. And but a lot of people don't know how to do that. A lot of people don't know how to do that because they haven't confronted themselves about how they should go about it.
Most importantly, they don't know how to, you know, they don't know how to separate social media from real life. And that becomes a problem. And this is where, you know, you come across people who don't believe in what they're doing, we don't believe in where they are because somebody else online is telling them, hey, this is who you are. You feel me?
Like, at the end of the day, like, I don't listen, that's what I don't listen to. Relationship advice online. Like, you can't tell me what's more work for me and my girl, like, right. We never met you.
Exactly. That's the whole thing. I feel that 100%. On a personal, okay, on a business level with social media, that's that's something that exactly business, like, I understand it on a business level.
There's so much, let me just say this. Like, there's a couple things I want to say because yeah, yeah, there's a couple of things that I want to wrap this up with. Number one, as if you're doing social media for business, this conversation, is it necessarily for you, but it isn't here? And here's why.
When it comes to business, first and foremost, there's so much free information online. Like, there's one person, I don't even need to say his name, like, you already know who this person is. If you know about social media, look up this stuff, so much free information, you can put yourself on so much just by doing that. But not only that, like, there's so many people who are doing social media for business and they're putting their personal ambitions and egos in the way.
You know what I mean? It interferes with the results that they want to get as a result because they're worrying about the fact that they're not getting enough likes when in fact, they might need to run ads instead as an example. And I'm going to stop myself there because, you know, that's the conversation that we got to invoice people for, but that's what's the point. So that's number one, like, if you're listening to, if you're listening to this and trying to apply to a business context as social media, that's not what it's for personal stuff above everything else, you know, stuff awareness is so important.
Um, so practical advice, right? I want to use this platform, not only to like really shake people's minds as far as what they're thinking about, whether you guys care about basketball or not, whether you like it or not, social media, whether you guys care about basketball or not, social media is always going to be there. It has always been there. It's woven into the tapestry of our culture, not even in here in America, where we are right now in New York talking about internationally.
So practical advice. Um, I just showed you this before the episode started, before we went recording. Um, I don't know how to do this on Android. Um, so, you know, my thoughts and prayers are with all you people using Android, but this is for you iOS users because I know a lot of y'all use this.
So go to your settings and your phone. Go to general, go to iPhone storage. And you see a list of all your apps that you have there. Go to Instagram.
And it's funny because Instagram is the only app on my phone that I have a time living on, you know what I'm saying? Because I'm human, so I'm not going to act like just because I do it fast. Like I got it all together. I still got a lot to work on.
Right. So once you're in those, what's in your iPhone storage settings, what I'd like you to do is consider offloading the app. Now, when you offload the app, it pretty much uninstalls the app without removing it from your phone. So if I'm feeling like I'm really going to get stuck into the social media aspect of my life, like if I'm trying to go to sleep at a decent time, I offload the app and it just shows up as gray.
When you tap it, it reinstalls again. So it's on you to be self accountable or find accountability partner. Like I would definitely recommend that too. But for me, I kind of did it by myself because I understood that's where it all starts.
Right. So offload the app and that's how you can remove the app from your phone without deleting your login information and things like that. That's something practical that I feel like if anybody is listening to this, can take home with. All right.
Right. And the other thing is when it comes to social media, I actually forgot the other thing. Oh, man, listen, at the end of the day, I had this particular podcast. We just wanted to get the ball rolling.
We talked about some of the things that we're really passionate about. Um, I mentioned introversion and, um, Kawhi Leonard. And it's really interesting because I definitely did an interview prior to us doing these interviews in tandem where, um, I sat down with somebody and talked about introversion and the, and the implications of that in culture. And these are some of the things that are that you can expect in this rendition of, and these are some of the things that you can expect in vices and vultures that really are not, I have taken it.
BH and I have taken the time to sit down with people that were genuinely interested in and have conversations about them, um, about what they do, what they're passionate about. And throughout the season, you're going to hear excerpts, um, sometimes very, very short, sometimes, you know, 20ish minutes, um, getting into detail about like who these people are, what they do and how the cultures that they represent affect us. Because at the end of the day, whether it's about basketball or social media, it has had some sort of effect on the cultures that we represent. And this is why we're getting on Mike and talking about it.
Right. And this is, you know, this project is very important to me. This project is very important to me. Uh, we're expecting you guys to rock with us.
I want you guys to listen. We're going to be talking about people, but we're not going to gossip. Everybody that we're going to be talking about, it's going to be, uh, in relations to today's culture and how is that relevant and how, most importantly, how that, you know, that is affecting our lives and how we can learn from some of these people and, uh, how we can learn from some of these people and that make the same mistakes that, you know, everybody's making nowadays. So this is very important.
Um, well, there's something else that I want to talk about. Yeah. Vices and vices and vultures, vices and vultures, vices and vultures. We'll be talking, this is a podcast about cultures.
We'll be talking about a lot of cultural, a lot of cultural things. Uh, and we, I feel like we are the perfect, perfect people to be talking about that, considering our background. Absolutely. Um, especially, especially for like you, you are like from the Philippines and, I mean, I'm from New York, bro, but you know, I got, I got this flag up here.
I got my flags up here. And, you know, like for myself, I'm Haitian. So you'll be hearing a lot of that. And, uh, you'll be, you'll also be hearing about my experience coming from Haiti, moving to New York and how I'm evolving into this culture.
And because it's, it's, it's very different. Uh, leaving an Haiti and here in the States as we talking about two different cultures. And for us specifically, we are, we come from a religious background, which in itself is also something very big because that changes our life. And I can tell because when I talk to certain people, like when you talk to a Haitian, when you talk, like for me specifically, when I talk to a Haitian, who is not a 70 event, and when I talk to a Haitian, with 70 events, it's two different conversations.
Absolutely. So a Haitian who's not 70 events, even though we come from, we come from the same background, we share the same cultures, there are certain things that they're still not able to understand about me because they're not 70 events. So all of this is very important. And there's a lot of that that's going to be discussed above everything else.
There are going to be guests, presenters. There will be guest presenters throughout this season as well that will get into specific cultures. So as we go through a host of topics, we're going to have some topics that we're going to focus on specifically. And when the time comes to introduce that, we definitely will.
But about everything else, we want to make sure that all the cultures and all of the topics that we represent and we care about and some of the topics and cultures that we might not be as interested in, but we still want to talk about, we want to bridge those gaps. You know what I'm saying? We spent this whole episode talking about basketball and social media and people necessarily want to put those two in the same conversation, but it's very real. The connection is very real.
And, you know, as BH said, we're the two best people to talk about it. And we wanted to make a statement if you see the artwork that we have for rock with us. You know, it's going to be fun. Yeah, exactly.
It's going to be fun. Exactly. All right. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of Vices and Vultures and considering being a supporter of this project, even leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform goes along with us.
There is more information about this episode as well as who we are in the show notes. This includes all of our social media links so you can see us and not just hear us. Vices and Vultures is brought to you by aesthetic and is based in the great state of New York. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast for more episodes and tune in next time to Vices and Vultures.