Valenti Sanjaun is an influencer that started by sharing his struggle story and how he changed his lifestyle because he knew he wasn’t living a healthy life. After his successes in changing his daily routine, he started to feel selfish because he was sharing all of his success stories and they started to seem redundant to him. Valenti started sharing other people’s stories from all over the world. One of the main messages he tried to convey to his overall audience is what is your excuse? This theme carries on into his documentary called Cape Epic. 

Alex Libre’s story was one that Valenti shared in his documentary. Alex passed away from a motorcycle accident and had a list of 101 things that we wanted to go before he died. When his friends found this list, they wanted to do the top thing on his list, Cape Epic, in honor of him. Alex’s friends and family started a foundation called ALL1 for Alex’s loved ones that wanted to conquer what was on his list. One of his friends said that he can imagine Alex looking down at them cheering them on and saying, “Keep pedaling!” He made note to thank Valenti for all he does. He shared the inspiration that he spreads to this large group of people is important to spread their story about Alex.  

Valenti takes these stories and connects them to his real life issues. He related Alex’s story to his mother’s passing. He said, “One of the first things that I learned when my mother died of cancer is that, as it is not certain that there is life beyond death, it is important that we at least make sure that there is life before death.” Although Valenti does not have the same story as Alex, there is this underlying meaning of living that he wants to emphasise. He uses relation to connect with the other stories as they may also connect with the other audience. 

I think another major idea that Valenti uses as an influencer is metaphors. This is relevant to an influencers content because they want to make sure that they relate to their audience not only to keep them interested but also to keep them inspired. As he is tying all of these stories together about his mother’s passing and Alex’s, he adds in a scene from the Dead Poet’s Society that has a metaphorical approach to the situation. In the movie, the boys are looking at pictures of alumni in a trophy case. They realize that they are just like them except the people in the picture already lived their lives. The teacher proceeds to tell the boys to seize the day and make your lives extraordinary. 

Valenti relates reminds me of Jonathan Van Ness from the Netflix show Queer Eye. Although they are completely different in a number of ways, they both stand out to me as an inspirational person in a media crazed world. Jonathan is gay and has struggled growing up all of his life. Although he was openly gay all of his life, he still experienced bullying along with death threats and hatred from his peers for being feminine and flamboyant. Jonathan went down a rough path when he started college, involving drugs and sex addiction. His grades dropped and he lost his cheerleading scholarship and ended up having to drop out of college. He later also found out that he was HIV positive. He realized that that wasn’t the path that he wanted to follow in life so he got into hairdressing. He worked in many different salons and also started his own podcast called Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness. Soon after his two passions combined in the making of Queer Eye. This show is one of the most inspirational shows I have seen. These five gay men go to people that need fixing and encourage them to make their lives extraordinary. They fix up their style, hair, house, and their thoughts with a therapist. 

Even though these two men are completely different, they still have this story of a second life while living. They both had an epiphany where they find hope and carry on their lives in a positive way and to help others. Many people go through something traumatic in their lives that they think they aren’t going to get through but there are people like Valenti and Jonathan that chose to share their stories so that they reach an audience that can relate to them. All of these stories pose as one another in the sense that they all recover for a good purpose.