When Social Media Success Causes Controversy
How hubs.life quit his 9-5 job and caused an uproar, plus some of my latest movies
In today’s newsletter, you’ll find the following:
The story of hubs.life quitting his 9-5 and causing an audience revolt
Making French Onion Soup as we emerge from the winter cold
NYC food reviews (Win Son Bakery & Shelsky’s Bagels)
Who thought quitting a job could cause so much controversy? A content creator who goes by hubs.life caused an uproar when he quit his 9-5 job. He had grown an audience of millions across social media platforms by making content that “normalized” a 9-5 lifestyle. The trouble was that his social media success soon gave him the freedom to quit that lifestyle and follow a more creative path.
His audience revolted. Many felt betrayed and used, believing that hubs.life had used their attention solely to escape the very lifestyle he had championed. This scenario illustrates a broader challenge for creators who define themselves too narrowly.
Hubs.life defined himself as a “normal” corporate guy. Similarly, many moms on social media define themselves as “baby moms”, but find it difficult to generate the same content when their children grow up. Others who start as private chefs for Hamptons residents, only to become Hamptons residents themselves after social media success, understandably generate a lot of hate, anger, and jealousy from their audience.
But why? This is the game, folks. Are creators not allowed to grow and evolve based on their success?
It’s like being mad at a film director like Steven Soderbergh who made a mainstream hit (Ocean’s Eleven), only to go arthouse on subsequent films that he made as passion projects for himself (Bubble, Che, and The Girlfriend Experience). Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven audience may have been mad, confused, or disappointed in those three more arthouse films. But in the end, Soderbergh is an artist and storyteller, and he must live and die by what he puts out into the world.
Same with hubs.life and creators like him. Same with people who write on the internet like myself.
The unfollow button is only a click away (along with the subscribe button).
But being angry that someone created something compelling, experienced success, and then changed their life is simply audience projection and unacknowledged envy. So many people can’t stand to watch others succeed while their lives remain unchanged, especially if they feel they contributed to that creator’s journey.
While I’m largely supportive of hubs.life and creators like him, it’s important to distinguish genuine creators from social media frauds. Creators who pull someone’s discarded Dior shopping bag out of the trash so they can pose in front of a Dior boutique are not being genuine. Similarly, creators who livestream inside a Ferragamo boutique and pretend to shop without actually buying anything are giving fraudulent impressions to their audiences, not real experiences.
There are countless examples of this on social media. Many creators fake or exaggerate certain experiences or life moments in the hope of going viral. It’s why we have entire accounts to make fun of these people like Influencers in the Wild.
The social fraudsters deserve all of the scrutiny and scorn they receive.
The storytellers like hubs.life, however, are in a different class of creators. I understand why some people are mad that hubs.life quit the 9-5 job he “normalized” through his content for years. He can no longer make that same content. It doesn’t play as well from a WeWork office.
If people are upset they won’t see the same content from hubs.life, they should unfollow him. But to be angry that his social media success about normalizing his life allowed him to escape that life of monotony is not justified. If you’re one of those people, honestly ask yourself why it’s making you upset.
Do you genuinely feel used by hubs.life? Or are you simply upset that you’re not experiencing similar success?
As far as I can tell, hubs.life did nothing fraudulent compared to many other fake creators online. He told genuine stories of his basic and mundane corporate and family life. It was clear that he had an interest in videography and storytelling. Hubs.life wasn’t trying to represent himself as someone he wasn’t.
Now, if he continued making 9-5 content without telling anyone he had actually quit, that would be a problem. But he didn’t do that. He was honest and transparent with his audience. He told them to expect a change in his content and storytelling.
We celebrate creators like Casey Neistat or Emma Chamberlain who told us stories for years about their lives. But they were generalists and didn’t have narrow niches like hubs.life who was focused on celebrating a “normal lifestyle.” Hence the lack of scorn for the Caseys and Emmas of the social media world when they inevitably branch out and try new formats.
The core issue reveals a troubling expectation: that creators must remain static, confined to their original narrative. Apparently, some 27,000 people who liked the comment above think hubs.life must stay chained to his corporate job forever if he wants to post videos on social media. They seem to think that creators have to stay in their defined lanes forever.
That’s completely unreasonable. People change. Society changes. New stories need to be told for those changing times to help all of us explain this complicated concept called life.
If someone is making their best effort to put unique art and stories out in the world, and it leads to them succeeding and changing their life, we should celebrate them, not revolt.
Yes, they run the risk that their new life may not inspire the same quality of content. But did any of the haters once stop to consider that it could unleash even more powerful expressions of creativity from hubs.life? Maybe we only saw a sneak preview of what this guy is capable of creating.
So if someone is staying true to themselves, but you’re mad about their success, they’re probably not the problem. You are.
My recent videos
Like hubs.life, I enjoy making short movies. Below are three: (1) French Onion Soup; (2) Win Son Bakery (just opened in Manhattan’s East Village); and (3) stop #9 on our bagel tour of NYC - Shelsky’s in Park Slope Brooklyn.
French Onion Soup:
Win Son Bakery
Shelsky’s of Brooklyn
Thank you for reading, watching, and subscribing. Have a good rest of the week.
Being typecast is as bad as being pigeonholed