The Day Marvin Decided to Become an Influencer
Part 1
Marvin was twenty-seven, had a medium-sized beard, an above-average coffee consumption, and the constant feeling that he should probably “do something more” with his career. When he saw people on Instagram getting brand deals in sweatpants while he was sorting Excel sheets in his open-plan office, he made a decision: I’m going to be an influencer.
The current trend of turning our lives into digital products seemed perfect for him. After all, Marvin did have a life. A pretty average one, sure, but nobody needed to know that.
His first step: creating content. Marvin googled how to do it and quickly learned that the most important thing was “authenticity”. So he filmed himself getting out of bed. Unfortunately, he forgot to clean the camera lens, so his first reel looked like some kind of fog monster was slowly crawling out from under the blanket.
He posted it anyway with the caption: “Realness first ✨ #nofilter #morningvibes”.
Five minutes later his mum wrote: “Why does your room look like a natural disaster zone?” Ten minutes later his best friend Tom messaged him: “Did you dip your camera in mayonnaise or what?”
But Marvin kept going. Influencers needed a niche. And there were so many trends: gym-tok, minimalism, crypto hype, self-care, work-life balance, Notion templates, AI art.
AI! That was it!
He decided to become an “AI lifestyle influencer”. He wanted to use AI to plan his stories, generate motivational quotes, and maybe even create photos in which his room looked a little less like a disaster area.
His next story was titled: “How AI Changes My Life 🚀 – Day 1”.
The AI wrote a very inspiring text for him. Unfortunately, Marvin mixed up German and English and accidentally posted a weird hybrid:
“Rise and shine, you gorgeous Kartoffel 🥔💫 – today is your day!”
The reactions came quickly. Tom wrote: “Bro, did you just call me a potato?” A stranger commented: “I feel seen.”
Now that Marvin already had what he proudly called a “community” (fourteen followers, eleven of them bots), he planned the perfect drink for his daily self-improvement routine: matcha. Matcha was everywhere – green energy, trendy aesthetics, expensive enough to hurt even hipsters a little.
He ordered a matcha set online and filmed himself preparing it. What he didn’t know was that you can’t just treat matcha like instant coffee and dump it straight into the mug. The result was a green cloud of powder that slowly engulfed his kitchen. His phone recorded him coughing and stumbling out of frame.
He posted the reel with the “Mission Impossible” theme on top.
Then the unbelievable happened: the video went viral.
20,000 views.
Comments like: “This is the most authentic matcha tutorial I’ve ever seen” and “Same energy when I try to improve my life 😂” started piling up.
Marvin felt validated. He was on his way.
Next came level two: collaborations. He wrote to small brands asking if they wanted to work with him. One actually replied:
“Dear Mr K., we are interested! Please send us your media kit.”
Marvin googled: What on earth is a media kit?
After three more AI-generated attempts he finally managed to put something together. Unfortunately, page two contained not a demographic chart but an AI illustration of a dancing avocado toast.
The brand politely responded: “Very creative. Please get back to us once you have real numbers.”
But Marvin didn’t give up. He kept posting reels, inspirational quotes (some of them unintentionally food-based, like “Follow your path, you little pancake”) and tried the next big wave: fitness self-tracking.
His very first “progress shot” was completely dark because he forgot to turn on the light. Somebody commented: “Bro, are you a shadow being?”
And then it happened again: his chaotic, imperfect clips became a trend. “Influencers failing realistically” – a brand-new category.
A podcast mentioned him. A meme page reposted his matcha explosion. Suddenly he had 10,000 followers.
His next reel said: “I just tried to live a trendy life – and accidentally became the trend.”
That evening Marvin sat on his couch, drinking matcha (properly prepared this time), grinning to himself. Maybe the real trend wasn’t perfection. Maybe the real trend was being as wonderfully chaotic and real as everyone actually is.
He looked into the camera and said: “Rise and shine, you gorgeous potatoes – today we’ll manage to do at least something kind of right!”