Lately, I find myself thinking a lot about a common trope that used to be in a lot of sitcoms in the 90s. One of the parents would get caught up in some kind of get rich quick scheme (usually some sort of MLM) and the solution to it all would either be finally asking that boss for a raise or committing to doing what they love because the family has enough money. Living in late stage capitalism, we can’t say we didn’t see the signs. While there are people who love their trade and can solely focus on it, it seems like the only time we actually see it is in history books and at the Renaissance Faire. Even more so, rarely can anyone afford to focus solely on one job. All of my life, I’ve been forced to hear people brow beat the idea that every fast food job is something to be ashamed of. It was relegated to be a stepping stone job and because of such, there is no reason to ever expect a living wage. Why any job that has a need to exist would ever be lesser than another is beyond me, and honestly the subject for another essay. Today, I want to talk about the over commodification of our lives. Let our would be Spongebobs and Squidwards live freely and make a living wage, though.

Everything is content!

One of my good friends and I had a long conversation about the thesis of this essay and it can be summarized by something he yelled through the phone in the most New York way: 

“Yo, why does my mechanic need a podcast!?” 

I laughed for a minute at that one, and before we go any further let me clarify. Your day job doesn’t dictate your dreams. If you’re a plumber who wants to break into the burgeoning manosphere media industry, go for it. I’ll hate it, but do you. In this essay, I’m talking about how everyone and literally their mommas want to create content. Content creation has become the new MLM, but we didn’t cut out the middle man, we cut out the product. Well, sort of. We made the product ourselves. I understand the irony of being an entertainer writing that out and saying it’s a problem, however that’s always been a part of my job. When you’re an entertainer (shout out to Cedric), the product has always been you. Before the internet became a stage our only option was physical stages, and those had some serious gatekeepers. So, first off, that’s not what I’m doing or saying. If you’re in entertainment, the internet at large is a stage we can use to bypass the gatekeepers or at the very least, help them notice us. Now we’re in an age of me witnessing people who have no desire to be perceived, being overly perceived on my timeline with the oiled up models and the miniature ones I like to paint for fun.

If I’m being honest, this isn’t surprising. People are looking for jobs and the ones that have them aren’t being paid enough. With the 15 minutes of fame some people are flipping into Crypto scams, I’d do the same in the same situation quicker than you can say Hawk Tuah. However, I’m more worried about what happens after this point. From where I’m sitting, Winnie the Pooh style in this stylish chair beside my bed in a London hotel room, we’re losing the recipes. Instead of accepting our fate of feeding a low paying algorithm and training bots for a failing AI industry, we should be fighting to lean into our trade. Now look, part of the solution to this does require a few economic overhauls, billionaires paying their taxes, and property management companies to stop bleeding the poor dry. If we simply allowed people to live freely without the crushing weight of capitalism on their shoulders, many people would opt to spend their free time just enjoying themselves, their families, or one-sided DMs with their favorite hot celebrity. However, it also has to do with the current nature of content creation asking everyone to join in.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad but on Instagram now

Every algorithm likes to take a big swing every now again. They’ll drop something new into your feed and if you interact with it in any way, it is now a part of your daily feed intake. Sometimes it’s a similar artist, musician, onlyfans model, or take to what you usually dig. Other times it’s rage bait or a bad reel that you have to pray to whatever god you believe in that you didn’t accidentally tell your algorithm you want to see more of. For better or worse, TikTok and Instagram reels have gotten our dopamine cravings down to a science. (Twitter just does the opposite to ragebait everyone into fighting each other.) So, it’s no surprise that I get a lot of content creation tip videos on my feed, and every time I see one it makes me realize that my MLM comparison earlier was spot on. There are tons of folks online explaining how to amass views and make money with social media. Some go even as far to say that you’re leaving money on the table by not feeding the content machine. Meanwhile, every video where a content creator is bemoaning how little they make when they consistently post reels that do well seems to miss everyone’s feed. Side note: my favorite game is browsing the feed of a “content creation coach” and seeing how well their advice is actually working. Thing is though, you don’t actually have to be good at what you do or accurate to gain traction online. More on that later…

I have recently noticed a huge spike in regular people creating reels with seemingly no goal. We’ve somehow regressed into early YouTube where it was its creators at a zoo and myriads of random slice of life videos meant to be shared with family and friends. However, this is happening on active social media sites with large user bases and it’s a dice roll what the person who posted it has set themselves up for. One of my favorite “regular people” trends is when a middle aged person posts a selfie video hoping to show off their look of the day and is inundated with sweet comments and compliments. Unfortunately, the converse of this phenomena is an unsuspecting person being bullied for something they felt good about by complete strangers. I’m not gonna lie to you, sometimes these make me laugh too. Other times, I’m stuck feeling bad for a stranger fighting for their lives in the comments of a post they never expected to reach so many people. (Since I seemingly can’t stop dog-earing ideas for other essays, I’ll say I definitely want to do one about the degradation of empathy online.) Whenever I encounter either of these kinds of videos, my first question is always, what was the intention behind posting. If I told you the amount of times I’ve scrolled through a stranger with less than a hundred followers’ reels, you’d take my phone away. That being said, I always find it fascinating that so many people treat their social media like an online journal, which when interacted with so little, I can completely understand why they believe no one’s watching. 

We’re currently living in an evolution of the Twitter user who posted a tweet for their small audience, but had it break containment. Sometimes it led to being noticed for your creativity, but more often than not, it was someone just becoming the main character for the day. At a certain point, you lost sympathy for the main character paying for the opinion that caused ire. I would always think, after 100+ main characters on that site, did you actually think it wouldn’t break containment, or did you think people would agree with you? Now we’re here and it has become much harder to feel that way, because even the best content creators I know can’t seem to figure out how the algorithm works. And yet, self proclaimed experts are telling our aunts, uncles, grandparents, and parents that they’re leaving money on the table by not creating content.

Why get good when you wanna get famous?

If the title of this essay didn’t give it away, I love watching videos of people really good at their craft. Whether that craft is cleaning rugs, mowing lawns, or even fixing cars I will watch the hell out of a timelapse of what you’re doing. I also understand that this is a great way to advertise your trade to your local community, so what’s the harm in that? Then you watch them blow up, sell merch, and get a little extra dough and you’re excited. Unfortunately, someone bad at that job just saw that too and just asked themselves: “If they can do it, why can’t I?” What’s worse, you told your algorithm that you like cleaning rug videos and now this crappy copy cat is all in your feed and you can see how much worse of a job he’s doing because you spent the past six months watching a master at work. Now, the next video you see is him pushing AI generated merch on redbubble and wondering why his ain’t hitting the same. 

That didn’t actually happen… at least I don’t think so, but I have seen so many people genuinely bad at a craft and indignant about it on my feed lately. If you want second hand embarrassment, I challenge you to simply search “bad tattoo” on any of your shortform websites and see how bad it can get. I started finding them by way of great tattoo artists dunking on them, but now they seem to pop on my feed from liking too many comments roasting people on Instagram. I know this is true, since it’s not just tattoos. Art, singing, unappetizing meals, bad lifting form all show up on my feed because I didn’t realize the algorithm was also watching my comment-like behavior. This has been happening for about 3 months now, and it isn’t funny anymore- well, it is, but it’s also kind of depressing at this point. I am friends with so many artists, vocalists, chefs, and meatheads who are passionate about what they do. They work so hard to be good at it and many of them are celebrated for it. Nothing these people do online take from that, but I get so bummed out knowing that they’re not letting the joy of mastering a passion drive them. Never has it been more clear that people want notoriety and will try and push the ball of clay online instead of the fully designed and fired pot.

In the end, I don’t think many people actually want to be famous. They want the wealth that is often paired with it. They don’t really need that much money. If anything, one percent of one percent of the wealth being hoarded by people shooting trash into space would be enough to make anyone’s life better. They’re probably wishing for more, though. I’m just simply wishing people could get back to doing what they love.