Everything I have learned thus far: 
1. Become your own master
No more giving fellatio to Henri Cartier Besson,  he is a lame duck. Also let us know… That after 30 years of successful photography, he gave up photography, because he secretly had penis envy of all these other famous painters and the like. Note his relationship to Balthus. I think Henri Cartier Bresson secretly desired to be a Picasso, not a photographer. 
In zen and taoist philosophy, there is this idea that one should kill their masters. Or the funny idea… If you see the Buddha walking on the road, you must kill him. 
We must consider that all of our mentors and masters are all imperfect human beings, full of petty emotions, vices, etc.
In fact, if I think about it very very critically, maybe the only true guitar for I think, who emerged from the Internet, based on my travels is the swiss german photographer Thomas Leutard– 85mm.ch, who I am forever grateful for helping me fund raised my first travel and street photography workshop in Beirut Lebanon, I think back in 2010? Now that it is year 2024… Wow 14 years already? Or only 14 years?
Anyways, the reason why I admire Thomas so much is that he intentionally decided not to read all this historical nonsense on all these master first from the past, and I think he really did try to pioneer his own individualistic vision. I think his method, maybe the Swiss German approach was good… He analyze things critically, ignored the art world, ignored Public critique, and just followed his own vision. And he was the first person to really make all of these open free source e-book street photography resources, he had a well-paying job working in IT. He also had the wisdom of knowing that maybe, the goal wasn’t to monetize photography and his travels, but for him to simply pursue his passion. 
I think maybe the difficulty of Thomas, was he became essentially the most famous or well regarded photographer on Flickr, which was essentially a dying ship. A sinking ship. And now that Flickr is practically dead… You cannot take your dead Flickr followers with you. I think the last time I checked, he made a private telegram channel, but still… I think the open Web, open Internet, chatgpt is better. 
Anyways, the cautionary tale, or the practical one is never build your empire on quicksand, don’t be a digital serf, a digital slave, a digital sharecropper.
To build your following on any social media platform, whether Instagram TikTok YouTube whatever… Is like building your empire on a foundation of cotton candy. It taste sweet and gives you a momentary high, but will sink the second you add heat or water to it.
2. Strong foundations
I think the best way to approach things is to study the past, the greatest of all times, who I still regard as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, and Richard Avedon,,, analyze their best works their photos etc.  But once again… Take it all with a grain of salt.
I think the difficulty is Trying to find