new ideas won't come from people who are chronically online
the fear to unplug and lose touch, putting hours into things you like but aren't good in and looking for inspiration outside of your laptop screen
It’s been a couple of months since I decided I wanted to throw my hat in the game and start making TikToks. Not because I dream of being the next Alix Earl or looking to make some extra cash off of brand deals but because my brain was dying to get creative and my hands were itching to make stuff. I like making videos as much as I like writing but I am not nearly as decent at it. In college, we had a program that fed into the USC film school, so I had a bunch of film major friends who had Premier Pro permanently open on their screens. It was impossible to not be interested in filmmaking, it was everywhere - we lived in SoCal after all. After taking one film class, I even flirted with the idea of taking my business degree to Hollywood and becoming a big time movie producer but ultimately decided it was going to be hard to break into an industry built on nepotism. So, I chose to break into an industry built on ego instead and resorted to channeling my amateur passion for filmmaking into dumb YouTube videos and a couple of very serious promo videos for my school.
I don’t remember what early YouTube was like but TikTok has been a tough place for channeling creativity into. I keep seeing takes that TikTok is the future of television (rip Quibi) but so far it feels more like those telemarketing channels you come across at two in the morning and make relentless fun of with your friends or a date, still a little drunk from your night out. Even though I didn’t set out to get views, I still found myself trying to replicate “what works” rather than try to figure out my own voice and style. I tried to shoot without a script and that made editing tough. I tried writing some sort of script to follow in my head and that ended up being even tougher. I got so mad at myself for not being able to produce award-worthy short content right out of the gate and completely forgot that the whole point of the exercise was to enjoy the learning and the creative struggle. After torturing myself for a couple of weeks, I decided it was time to regroup and unplug. I bought a vintage camcorder because I couldn’t stand looking at my phone anymore and left the city for a short retreat in Santa Monica. I filmed everything home-video style, seeked inspiration in breakfast burritos and surfer dads, and teared up a little looking at the waves crash into the sunset.
After letting the internet drive mainstream culture for a couple of years since we were physically unable to participate in “the real world”, many young creatives, myself included, have developed this fear of becoming irrelevant and out of touch with culture if we were to unplug. Creative directors, marketing managers, and especially social media managers are describing themselves as “chronically online”, “raised by Youtube”, and “babysat by reality TV” which is supposed to signal how “in the know” of the culture they are. I’ve been nodding in approval and may have even used “extremely online” to describe myself before, until very recently when I suddenly did a double take and realized how weird and almost pathetic that sounds. Chronically online? People are out there trotting through Europe all summer, reading “A Little Life” on the beach, getting their tabi shoes stolen, and you are bragging about staring at a 13-inch screen ? Everyone is looking for someone who is internet-native when they should be looking for someone who has stories to tell.
I can’t be too hard on myself and the rest of my generation though - staring at screens is all many of us know. We never properly learned how to do research, how to be a student of life, and how to live life in a way that inspires you. We may have asked our friends and family to fill out a survey for a science class with a one-credit lab but we never scouted a library or an archive the way they show in the 80s movies. We didn’t have to - anything we need to know has been easily accessible to us ever since we can remember, bringing us to the destination and depriving us from false stats, rabbit holes, and learning to enjoy the process.
My last few years in college I couldn’t wait to graduate. I couldn’t wait to get out there and do something but not in a way college kids drop out to make a startup (having met a couple of drop outs I personally think they are walking red flags). My ambition was to make something of my own but I proudly declared that I wanted to spend a couple of years just sort of living life and learning skills I could use in the future. “I just spent five years looking at my computer screen, how can I come up with any fresh ideas?” I said laughing not knowing I was going to end up looking at my screen and kicking myself for not being “creative enough” for a couple of years to follow. I thought I was going to be one of those people who went inside European churches, ventured out on a cross-country ice cream sampling roadtrip, and got inspired by shapes and colors and sounds of the street. Instead, I found myself bookmarking websites, making boards in Figma, and barely taking any days off.
People talk about the effect of TikTok on fashion and consumer behavior - the way it made it impossible to keep up and buy into trends. We talk about how it’s more important than ever to just try and find personal style because of that. What we aren’t talking about is the bigger picture - a similar impact of TikTok and social media on creativity in general. We are constantly chasing the things that are “cool right now”, centering projects around conversations that are fizzling out as we speak. We are pumping out crappy content to try and be one of the firsts to jump on or reference a trend that’ being pushed by the algorithm instead of just making cool things people enjoy and want to share and talk about. Project timelines are getting shorter, the teams are getting smaller, and there is definitely no time to go inside European churches and sample ice cream in Ohio for inspiration. I remember bringing up how I wanted to go out and see and learn things a couple of times which was always met with enthusiastic nods and “yes of course! let me me see if we can reimburse any of it!” but in the end I was given a workload that practically chained me back to my desk and my laptop, and I started to forget what I wanted to do in the first place.
It’s been an interesting summer for me. I am yet to go on a cross-country ice cream tour but I’ve gone inside European churches and street markets, I’ve read a stack of books (fiction! fashion! research! food!) that I am not sure how I will keep traveling with, and I’ve been talking to strangers and paying more attention in the streets (sounds! colors! shapes!). I’m trying to accept the reality of being bad at things I like and accept the challenge of getting better at them with effort and time. When you make stuff you care about, stuff you are proud of, it’s not so discouraging to not get many views right away. It’s less intimidating to show it to others and less embarrassing to ask for favors or to collaborate. It doesn’t frustrate you that you spent so many hours working on this thing that didn’t turn into a career launchpad right away. It feels okay to step away and do nothing for a little bit until you start feeling giddy to get back to it.
If you feel passionate about the topic:
Emily Sundberg in Feed Me:
“I think it’s going to be harder and harder to be impressive. I hope great creative team members can turn the energy they’re putting into their personal brands into just living a better life outside of work. I think we’re going to see more people logging off and prioritizing privacy. And then same answer as above, not just relying on the internet for inspiration — getting outside, traveling, reading, studying archives for ideas.”
Nikita Walia in thinking out loud:
“To build more exciting beauty brands (and, let’s be real, brands in general) we must focus on fluency instead of relevance. Cultural fluency is the practice of understanding the context in which images, signs, and symbols operate – relevance, on the other hand, starts with building a moodboard and imitating what you’ve seen before. Relevance creates images that are devoid of context but work and fluency build new meaning. In other words: stop putting stuff on a moodboard and go outside. Read books! See museum exhibits! Find meaning, not vibes.”