In this very first episode, I'm unpacking my thoughts on the resurfaced video from Mikayla Nogueira, one of TikTok's top beauty gurus, in which she vents about how hard being an influencer is. The backlash has prompted discussions around work and criticism of the full-time influencer, which contrast interestingly with the rise of the anti-work movement and the popularity for kids of vlogging/YouTube as a career aspiration just a few years ago. I dissect the "creator" career through the lens of changing paradigms--entertainer, aspirational influencer, and neighbor--that are drawn from William Deresiewicz's theory of paradigm shifts for "artists" and ponder whether we have all just fallen victim to "producerism," the mutation of consumerism to make itself more palatable amidst growing anti-consumerism sentiments. Maybe we shouldn't all aspire to create, after all, or maybe creation is simply the latest iteration of entrepreneurship.

[timestamps]

2:02 - what my parents think

5:17 - the paradigm for creators

11:57 - the paradigm for artists

16:12 - artist/creator as entrepreneur

21:15 - the real question

You can check out Cece's other projects at www.cecexie.com/links.

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