Scrolling through the Hunger Games-style dystopia of Instagram recently, I noticed how many influencers are now making sponsored content as a meta/ironic commentary on sponsored content itself. For the past decade, companies have paid social-media chumps to talk about their products, so that’s nothing new. What seems different, at least to my eye, is that a lot of influencers are openly calling attention to the fact that their hashtag #ad content is complete bullshit. The trick the influencer is pulling here, by breaking the fourth wall, is signaling to their audience that they’re just playing a role, for money—but, don’t worry! You can still trust them! Yes, they’re clogging up your feed with bullshit, but fear not: they’re still the same authentic, original, creative, strong, talented person whom you love to follow.

Content creators are trying to walk this tightrope of remaining authentic while being paid stooges. The fact that they’re kind of, sort of, pulling it off speaks to just how drastically social media culture has succeeded in making us think that turning ourselves and our passions into billboards is not only completely normal, but actually a desirable way to spend your time.

I guess we’re all fine with selling out now. Maybe at one point, you’d be embarrassed to share a nice mountain climbing photograph alongside your own personal discount code for dick-hardening pills, but not anymore. Today’s social contract, especially among younger generations, seems to include grace for your friends and colleagues when they sell out. It’s as if we all understand that we each privately roll our eyes when we see our friends awkwardly holding up cans of non-alcoholic beers at crags in their posts, and then just pretend it never happened next time we see them In Real Life.

An important distinction: one can “sell out” (v) without being a “sell-out” (n). I suspect most of us can distinguish the two just by using our basic moral intuitions about people. That said, it gets murky quickly. If you sell out consistently and for long enough, no matter how authentic and pure your motivations may be, eventually, you’ll become a sell-out.

True sell-outs are rare. They hold nothing sacred. They are the kind of person who would readily trade things they either claim to care about, or really ought to care about, for something that has no real long-term value: a paycheck, a bit of fame, some additional followers, a case of Red Bull, or even the chance to manipulate your own tribe into thinking you’re a virtuous leader when in fact you’re a piece of garbage.

Can you sell out without being a sell-out? Sure. I’d say most of us fall into that liminal space, especially if your job requires you to create art, writing, videos, photography, or professional-climber content. Selling out is a distinctly first-world problem in this sense. No one has ever accused a coal miner of being a sell-out. People who aren’t fit, attractive, and talented don’t get the opportunity to sell out, even if they would.

Besides, at some point, everyone finds themselves in a position in which they must interact with a person, company, or institution whose values clash with their own. It’s impossible to move through the world with an ethical clean slate, no matter how hard you try.

The phrase “selling out” has also historically refered to those who make their ascents seem harder, gnarlier, or scarier than they actually were. Avoiding the sell-out call-out by your peers used to be quite motivating, which is perhaps why so many routes from 30 years ago are sandbagged. But that stigma has largely faded. It’s all part of the same phenomenon. No one cares if your route is overgraded or your first [fill in the blank] ascent is historically insignificant for the same reason no one cares if it’s impossible for you to enter a public space without wearing a Red Bull hat.

I started thinking about this after reading a Facebook post from Colin Haley, pointing people to the trailer for a new film from Nat Geo featuring Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell. Colin wrote:

In the summer of 2010 Mikey Schaefer and I completed a super nice traverse of all 5 of the Devil’s Thumb summits, a traverse that had been nearly done 6 years earlier by Jon Walsh and Andre Ike. What I said at the time I still believe today: “It was a fantastic climb, in a beautiful area. It was higher in quality than difficulty, and is certainly a traverse that I’d recommend to others.” Last summer the Diablo Traverse was finally repeated, by my friends Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold, with a big film crew there to document it. Just now an old friend, who has also climbed a lot in the Stikine Icecap area, sent me a link to the trailer for their movie. I had to chuckle a bit… It sure sounds like the Diablo Traverse got a lot more extreme during the 13 years between ascents! 😅 And apparently it was a more grand adventure than making the first ascent of the Fitz Traverse! I know that Tommy and Alex are as legit and as talented as climbers come (and they repeated it in 1 day, while we spent 2.5 on the FA), but this trailer was a pretty perfect example of how hyperbolic and dramatized climbing movies have become, especially in the US. Is it a trend that will continue indefinitely?

To be clear, Colin isn’t calling his friends sell-outs—at all—but he is gently calling bullshit on this extremely dramatic trailer. He knows that this climb, to use Honnold’s signature phrase, was probably no big deal, especially for a couple of studs like Honnold and Caldwell.

Colin is whip-smart observer of climbing culture and this post poses a salient question. What is the point of the hyperbole? Why do content creators feel the need to make things into more than they are, to sell us on the idea that this is all a huge deal?

Can’t climbing just be enough?

To be fair, I must point out that this is just a trailer, and trailers are dramatic and hyperbolic by design. I haven’t seen the main film yet myself, so it’s possible the film is far less hyperbolic.

But to go back to an earlier point, I see an interesting dynamic in pondering who can thread the needle of selling out without actually becoming a sell-out. If you leave in the over-the-top lines from this trailer, but feature a couple of climbers who don’t have the bona fides of Caldwell or Honnold—especially if those climbers spend more of their time posting about climbing than actually climbing—the trailer would land quite differently. The question is, would anyone care? Maybe 10 years ago. Certainly, 20 years ago. But today? I really don’t think so.

In today’s media landscape, I think we’ve reached a point where we just expect that everyone has two sides: there’s the side that sells out online, and the side that you know IRL. The over-the-top, overly dramatic, hyperbolic bullshit side that sucks dimes out of Red Bull cans. And the side that keeps it real.

You roll our eyes at the online version. And next time you see that person IRL, you pretend you never saw it.