The "Influencers In The Wild" Instagram is well on its way to becoming an established franchise. The Instagram page has its own website, a merchandise shop, and even a board game. The creator of the page is George Resch, also known on the Internet as tank.sinatra, the Michael Jordan of memes. In the spring of 2023, Resch went on Shark Tank to pitch his idea for the board game to the sharks.

Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful – no sharks backed his business idea. When he went on the show, he said he only sold 1,500 units of the game. Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary called it "terrible," and other sharks started dropping out due to the lack of sales.

Although the idea didn't get picked up, the publicity undoubtedly helped popularize the "Influencers In The Wild" game and the Instagram page, as well. You can still get the board game on the page's website or Amazon.

In January 2022, Resch spoke to Business Insider about the success of the Instagram page and his plans for the future. He said the inspiration for this page was a girl whom he saw climbing a tree to take a picture. "The tree was like three feet tall, and I was like, 'Why wouldn't you just stand next to the tree?'" Resch observed. 

He says the page came to be from wanting to reveal the absurd and sometimes dangerous ways some influencers try to get 'the shot.' "It's always like, 'Oh, my god, look how silly we are,'" Resch told Business Insider. "Nobody can take just a regular picture anymore because it doesn't work. You can't just stand and take a picture. You have to be hanging from a branch to get attention."

Before becoming the Michael Jordan of memes, George Resch sold fences in Long Island, New York. He has left the fence business since, focusing on this and his other social media accounts. When talking to Business Insider, he didn't specify how much he earns from all his social media accounts and businesses but said it adds up to "a good living" and that he doesn't regret leaving the fence business.

When asked what the secret sauce to the success of "Influencers In The Wild" is, Resch believes it's the fact that some of these influencers don’t seem to have any self-consciousness.

"The best videos to me are when the person who's taking the picture is just in their own world and completely oblivious to whoever is around. Ten years ago, this person would have been looked at as an alien, and you'd be like, 'What the hell is this person doing?' But today, it's just perfectly normal."

The other secret ingredient seems to be the fact that these influencers don't actually expect to get on a page like "Wild." Some influencers try to boost their following by submitting their content to the Resch. One example is Elvis Lopeti, whose video got a boost of almost five times more views after a feature on "Influencers In The Wild."

However, George says the opposite strategy might actually be the best. "Don't try," he told Business Insider. "Don't try and get featured on my account because when people do that, it's very obvious, and it comes across that way. Just be yourself."

We like to talk about how being an influencer is not a real job and requires no actual talent. The tagline of the "Influencers In The Wild" board game is "Go places. Gain followers. Get famous. (no talent required)." Those who call influencing their day job are actually trying to lobby for people and governments to recognize it as an actual job by striking and unionizing.

A researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Emily Hund, stands in their corner and urges them to unionize in her book The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Influencers should "recognize themselves as the cultural laborers they are and organize accordingly," she writes. 

She explains how, after the economic crisis of 2008, many stable kinds of jobs disappeared. Making money through social media, therefore, became a viable option. "The influencer industry is both a symptom of and a response to the economic precarity and upheaval in social institutions that have characterized the early twenty-first century," Hund explains.