This is where you’ll find a living archive of my projects, the work I’ve done with clients, and chonicles of my adventures as I change the world.
I’m a Miami-based photographer + brand strategist focused on defying the odds and telling the dopest stories for clients who are interested in doing the same.
I believe stories are the vehicles that move culture forward and there’s nothing more important today than strengthening cultural integrity across the arts, urban environments, fashion, and hospitality.
Curiosity: How long before we come to terms with our addictions? Category: Insights
We’ve seen this all before, although maybe we wouldn’t want to believe we were the ones who were willing to give anything just to get another hit.
TLDR on the dangers of Crack: Crack hit people hard because it created an incredibly intense addiction pattern. When smoked, it reached the brain within seconds, creating an intense euphoria that lasted only 5-10 minutes, and then you’d feel a crash. This brief but powerful high led many users to binge, sometimes for days, trying to maintain the feeling, and becoming addicts in the process.
Crack would create a psychological grip on people.
The extremely short duration of the high combined with the intense crash led to immediate cravings for more. Users would develop significant physical dependence within weeks or even days with crazy side effects after a crash. People would experience severe depression, anxiety, and agitation that would only subside temporarily after another hit.
It was common for users to say they felt an overwhelming compulsion to obtain more crack even after just the first use...
These actions and reactions would sound familiar if you were honest.
From MySpace to Vine to the Snapchat exodus, there’s always been a shiny new platform calling to us with the promise of fame, fortune, and first-mover advantage. Yet with the recent TikTok ban and the subsequent stampede to Xiaohongshu, it’s becoming painfully clear that we’ve been feeding off an addiction no less potent than the epidemics we’ve heard of.
When your entire livelihood, sense of relevance, and metric for self-worth depend on a platform’s algorithm, you’re one tweak of the Terms of Service away from being forced off the block and made to either suffer withdrawals or find another platform to get your fix from.
For creative directors and agencies, the fallout might feel less immediate.
You can pivot budgets, explore new platforms, or pivot to “real-life” experiences and activation events. But for influencers who’ve built entire careers hawking the latest fashionnova drop or exclusive discount codes, this ban was the equivalent of a surprise eviction notice. And let’s be honest: it wasn’t just them. We all played along. We championed one-dimensional creators as the new celebrities, funneled millions in marketing dollars into 15-second content, and used engagement metrics like a gambler chasing every new bet.
The ban simply underscored a truth we’ve danced around for years: we’re conditioning ourselves for addiction to digital validation.
In pop culture, we’ve seen how quickly empires crumble. Look at the fall of Blockbuster when Netflix arrived on the scene. Or the desperate MySpace pivot after Facebook opened the floodgates to the public. Entire corporate strategies hinged on fleeting trends, often because so many business plans and personal fortunes were built on illusions of infinite growth. Once the bottom dropped, we realized how fragile our supposed strongholds really were.
Sound familiar?
As influencers left TikTok en masse for another app, one that many can’t even read the terms and conditions of, what was the motivation? Sure, some said it was a form of protest against the U.S. and Meta-owned platforms. Others claimed they wanted to be the first to build a fresh following, hoping to get a head start on securing brand deals that would hopefully pivot to the new platform too after the TikTok brand. But if you strip away the PR spin, you’re left with a raw and unsettling desire to feed the addiction. The desperate pursuit of ‘influence’ and ‘social proof’ has reduced once-creative minds to chasing algorithmic highs wherever they can get them. And brands, in turn, followed like silent enablers.
It’s easy for me to stand on stage and condemn influencers and users for short-sightedness. But the reality is, we’re all complicit.
We’ve turned platforms meant for sharing and connecting into the new economic frontier with promises of freedom, lavish living, and access to the untouchables of life. When that frontier suddenly shuts its doors, entire digital lives and livelihoods disintegrate overnight. If your long-term plan can be undone by a few lines of code or by a political whim, that should be a giant neon sign reading
“RETHINK YOUR STRATEGY.”
So what’s the lesson here? Get back to what’s real. Not just across platforms, but across real world pursuits while adopting the real definitions of the words we use to reveal our ambitions. Build your creative network, relationships, and brand value outside the confines of any singular social media ecosystem. This way, the next time a platform is banned or pivots, you shouldn’t be left without an audience or a revenue model.
Freedom from dependency.
Social media isn’t going anywhere, but the fevered chase for digital relevance at all costs isn’t sustainable.
If we’re being honest, it never was.
When we place an outsized amount of hope in the hands of algorithms, we relinquish our power to create meaning in the real world. The TikTok ban should be a wake-up call. Are we willing to face the truth, or will we stay addicted and keep chasing the next high? One platform at a time.
Here’s the truth: An industry built on dependency is one breath away from collapse. And if that doesn’t make us question where we’re placing our trust and our talents, then maybe we need to question whether or not our thoughts are as sober as we believe them to be.