- 1 year ago
THR Editor-in-Chief Maer Roshan moderates a panel on "The New Fame" with creators Drew Afualo, Michael Blaustein, Boman Martinez-Reid and Hasan Piker, diving into the realities of online stardom during THR's Creators A-List Dinner at Beverly Hills hotspot Matsuhisa, presented by Facebook and sponsored by Gersh and Blacklane.
The group discusses how to cut through the digital noise, measure success, balance personal life with public personas, and the mental health challenges of being a creator in the 24/7 online world.
The group discusses how to cut through the digital noise, measure success, balance personal life with public personas, and the mental health challenges of being a creator in the 24/7 online world.
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00:00The four of you don't seem to, on the surface, have that much in common, and yet you've all managed to build up these huge global audiences.
00:12With so many content creators on so many platforms these days, that must be so difficult to get noticed and break through the noise.
00:20What do you think it takes to do that, and what do you attribute the secrets to your own success in doing so?
00:26So, why don't we start with you, Hasan, and go down the line.
00:31Oh, okay. Hi, everybody. I have noticed that we just got up here as the Wagyu is being served.
00:39We'll make sure we heat it up.
00:43Just something I noticed, but it's fine.
00:46Yeah, I think my, quote-unquote, secret to success is probably being very stubborn and being very consistent.
00:57Both in my political commentary, but also in my day-to-day activities.
01:03I have a very regimented work-life balance that mostly leans on the side of doing work more than anything else.
01:11But I'm live seven days a week, and for eight hours every single day on Twitch.
01:18And it's not something that I think others should also follow through on, because it's not very healthy.
01:24It works for me. It doesn't work for everybody else.
01:27But I do think that building a sense of, building a community, building an environment on the internet that is habitable, where people can feel safe,
01:39and the consistency that they get out of that has been probably the secret sauce to what I do.
01:50Hey, next?
01:51Sure.
01:51Okay. All right, fine.
01:53I think for me, well, the obvious one would be making fun of men.
01:58Right.
02:00Right, Miriam.
02:02Yeah, nothing really cuts through the noise quite like that, you know?
02:05I would say that. I would also, you know, agree with Hassan on consistency, I think, more than anything.
02:12And also, really letting go of anyone thinking you're cringe, or weird, or not funny.
02:20Well, I know I'm funny, so we don't need to worry about that.
02:22But as far as cringe, I think it's subjective to the person.
02:25And I think if you really, really want to do it, nothing's going to stop you, like, regardless of what people may think.
02:30But yeah, also you can make fun of men, too. I did that, so.
02:33Yeah.
02:34Bowman?
02:36For me, the secret is being insatiably hot and sexy.
02:40Obviously.
02:41That's opened a lot of doors for me.
02:44No, I think for me, it's just quality over quantity.
02:47I remember my first week of creating content, somebody in some office on a Zoom call in 2020 was like,
02:54you have to go live three times a week, post in feed six times a week.
03:00I was like, I make episodes.
03:02Like, that's not going to happen for me.
03:04And so, as long as I've just, like, done what I know how to do and create quality content, that's all I've ever needed to do.
03:12I post, like, once every two weeks sometimes, and I'm still here.
03:17So, like, you don't have to do all that much, turns out.
03:21Me and Hassan, every day you have to grind.
03:25I'm like, you can quit if you want.
03:27I think for me, the secret sauce is dick jokes.
03:34Those really work.
03:36No, consistency.
03:37Obviously, all four of us said that.
03:38Consistency is I don't ever miss a Thursday or a Sunday to post a clip.
03:42I do mostly crowd work online, I think, that sort of gives people watching a little taste of what I'm going to do on stage.
03:52And so, if they can't afford the live show, they can at least, like, nibble on a little portion of my show.
03:59And I think people, you know, are satiated by that.
04:02So, I think the consistency and the type of stuff I've put out, I think that's the secret sauce.
04:07I'm curious how you guys define success.
04:09Is it audience?
04:10Money.
04:11Oh, yeah.
04:12Brand deals, money?
04:13No.
04:14Or is there some other more personal metric that when, what keeps you, you said you work eight to ten hours a day.
04:22What's driving you to work that much?
04:25So, I might be in a little bit of a unique predicament here given the type of content that I put out.
04:31But, like, my measure for success has always been the amount of real impact that my community ends up having.
04:41When, you know, every now and then there will be a news article where people will be like, oh, the first Chipotle in Lansing, Michigan just unionized.
04:48And in the article there will be, like, a little blip where they were one of the two people before they engaged in the act of unionization,
04:57they actually bonded over watching my videos, watching my Twitch stream.
05:03So, it's stuff like that.
05:05It's the amount of community organizers that I have.
05:06It's the amount of activists that I have in my community.
05:09The amount of impact that they have around the world and the material changes that they're able to make that I think is the most valuable.
05:19That's what I measure my success on.
05:21And also, you know, it doesn't hurt when you get to play a formative role in electing the next mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani.
05:30That was pretty good, I will say.
05:33But it's things like that that I measure my personal success on more than anything else.
05:44Yeah, I think for me, likewise, in terms of impact.
05:47Because obviously, I have lots of women and many, many other people that are not just cis straight men.
05:53And obviously, because they're my victims.
05:56But everyone else, very happy and feeling empowered, period.
06:01Yeah, period.
06:03Like, I think uplifting and encouraging, empowering marginalized people who have been forced to live within the confines of what a cis straight man loves or desires or finds cool and funny.
06:13So, I think their kind of validation in terms of how much my content has helped them is really a measure of success.
06:21Also, taking care of my family.
06:22That's been a dream of mine was to retire my parents and retire a lot of my other family members and take care of everyone.
06:27So, now I can do that, thankfully.
06:30Empowerment and money.
06:31Making fun of men pays, period.
06:33What about you, Bowman?
06:34Well, Drew, I think for me, I just really want to make people laugh.
06:40I think that one of the joys of my life was getting to be that source of laughter for people during the pandemic.
06:47I'm not a doctor, so I couldn't help in that way, unfortunately.
06:52But when people come up to me and they're like, you were the reason I was laughing during those terrible, dark times.
06:59Like, that is crazy.
07:01And so, I feel like I've already achieved success.
07:04Everything else is just extra.
07:07Yeah.
07:08You killed that.
07:09And I'm going to retire today.
07:10Yeah, I mean, I just want to echo the two sentiments that you said.
07:16That's what I believe success is.
07:18I get a lot of, like, DMs, especially with just mental health.
07:22I'm a big advocate for that.
07:24And I get a lot of DMs saying, like, your clips are the reason that I kept going.
07:28And I think that is, like, a big marker for me for happiness, honestly.
07:33So, that's huge for me.
07:36Because the money doesn't hurt.
07:38Excuse me?
07:38The money doesn't hurt, though.
07:40Yeah, it doesn't hurt.
07:41I like it a lot.
07:43So, a lot of the people that we cover, actors or other kinds of performers, they do their thing, they go home, and that's it.
07:51But for creators, there's a much more interplay between your personal lives and your public lives, right?
07:58A lot of you mine your personal lives.
08:01Where do you draw the line with that, and how exhausting must that be?
08:04I mean, I'm a stand-up man, so there is no line.
08:07I mean, like, the more chaotic shit happens in my life, the more stoked I get because I get to talk shit about it.
08:13And so, if my car blows up, my mom will be like, oh, fuck.
08:15I'm like, oh, hell yeah.
08:16Here comes an 11-minute bit about how I ran over a congressman's kid or whatever.
08:22All right.
08:22But, yeah, so I don't, honestly, I don't, there is no, there is no line for me.
08:29How about you?
08:32For me, there is a line, a very strong line.
08:35I am not personal online at all.
08:40I parody the Kardashians for a living, which is the least personal thing you can do.
08:46All of my content is characters and bits and stuff, and so I actually quite enjoy that nobody really knows me,
08:56and I have maintained a very exciting and lovely personal life.
09:01Like, I'm not that influencer that's taking photos of dinner.
09:04Drew, on the other hand.
09:07God, this one.
09:09So, I actually enjoy the line that I've created, but there is also that part of me that is like,
09:16I do wish that I could connect a little bit more with people, but we can't have it all, I guess.
09:24I know, beautiful and funny.
09:25Those are your crosses to bear.
09:27Yeah.
09:28For me, there is a pretty distinct line, I would say, too.
09:31I think it's also because I chose to do this, but, like, everyone associated with me didn't necessarily choose.
09:38So, like, when this did start to happen for me, I had a lot of very serious conversations with everyone.
09:43Like, it's too late for me, but how do you feel?
09:46Like, do you want to be private?
09:48Do you care?
09:49Like, does that bother you?
09:50So, but I also am very private in a lot of ways.
09:53I think a lot of people assume, based off what they know about my content, like, just generally how I am,
09:58but they couldn't be further away from how I typically am in real life.
10:01And I like it that way.
10:03I like there to be kind of a barrier or boundary between us, especially with parasocial relationships being the way they are.
10:10Even with barely sharing any info at all, like, fans will make up things and create narratives, and they're already doing that.
10:17I don't need to give them any more ammo.
10:19But that's been really a good balance for me, I think.
10:23Oof.
10:24Where do I begin?
10:25Man, I'm a Twitch streamer, so I'm live all the time.
10:29I put way too much of myself out there than I am even comfortable with, really.
10:36But, yeah, everything I do is hyper-scrutinized, hyper-analyzed, sometimes under a microscope by political actors as well.
10:48And anything and everything can be used against me.
10:51So I try to set a hard boundary on my private affairs, on my friends, and I try to stay as grounded as possible by surrounding myself with what I like to call normies,
11:03which immediately exposes the brain rot that I have, obviously.
11:06But I try to shelter them from public scrutiny to the best of my ability, my friends and my family.
11:13Because, like Drew also pointed to, they didn't sign up for this.
11:18And I feel like keeping some things private in your life is good for your own mental sanity.
11:27Because that's a place that you can go to at any moment to feel comfortable and to feel secure and to feel like a human being again and not like a zoo animal that's trapped in this room and being watched at every given moment.
11:43And so I do establish those boundaries.
11:46People still try to break through them to the best of their ability and hyper-analyze everything I'm doing.
11:53There are a lot of cyber-stalkers and things of that nature in the industry that we're in, unfortunately.
11:59But, you know, I guess that just comes with the territory.
12:04There's something about your medium that people feel like they really know you, maybe even more than normal celebrities.
12:11And we're also in a time that's kind of a scary time.
12:14And I wonder how you, without having all the buffering that allowed people to get when they're in Hollywood,
12:20you can kind of start out on your own, how you're dealing with outside success when it can be scary.
12:27Like, do you have security?
12:30Do you, like, Hassan, like, especially after the Charlie Kirk stuff?
12:35No, I don't.
12:35My manager freaks out every time.
12:37I go to, I mean, the thing is, like, I go to protests.
12:42I get shot at by the cops.
12:43So it's, like, kind of difficult for me to sign people on board with that,
12:47even though I have some freak-ass camera operators who are, like, also on board with that.
12:52But we, for example, we were looking for the No Kings protest that's going to be taking place this Saturday.
12:59And I'm going to see all of you out there, I know, of course.
13:02And the thing is, like, we want to get security because of the Charlie Kirk stuff.
13:10But then we go to the security teams and they're like, well, we're cops.
13:13And you're going to an anti-cop rally.
13:15We can't secure you at an anti-cop rally because then, like, that ruins our, you know,
13:20we're off-duty cops or we have a good relationship with the LAPD.
13:23Like, we can't ruin that relationship.
13:27And I guess it's a bit of a risk.
13:31But if that gamble didn't exist, I mean, if I didn't understand the risks associated with that
13:36or if I cared too much about that, then I wouldn't be able to do what I do.
13:39I think as far as the personal risks that come along with it, it's just something that you have to take on the chin.
13:50I'm a profoundly privileged person at the end of the day.
13:52And I try to use my platform to give a voice to voiceless people all around the world to the best of my ability.
14:00And if a lot of people get upset about that, if they get angered by that,
14:04and then they choose to take matters in their own hands, you know, it is what it is.
14:09It happens.
14:10Are the rest of you worried about incursions on your privacy?
14:13Do you take steps to kind of...
14:15No, I'm pretty big, so I can fuck them up, man.
14:18Yeah, same, honestly.
14:23No, I mean, for me, yeah, I do.
14:26Obviously, I have, like, security protocols in place.
14:28I pay a lot of money to protect a lot of information through various different channels.
14:34From what I do, obviously, I anger cis straight men quite often.
14:39I wander in that hornet's nest, and I just start swinging.
14:42And that is my mom laughing.
14:44That's, like Hassan said, unfortunately, that is something I chose to do.
14:49Like, that is something I chose to enter into.
14:51So you can put as many barriers as you can in place and just protect yourself as best you can.
14:56But at the end of the day, like, no man's going to scare me into not saying what the fuck I want to say.
15:01So, like, that's really how I see it.
15:03I'm like, well, if I die, I die a real-ass bitch, you know.
15:07And I'm sure you have protection against the Kardashians.
15:13They're after me.
15:15For you especially.
15:16They're after me.
15:19No, I, well, I spend half my time in Canada because I'm Canadian, which is a crazy duality these days.
15:27Lucky girl.
15:28So, yep.
15:30So the idea of security is, like, not on my radar.
15:33The other day, actually, I did, in Toronto, Canada, I did a brand shoot on the street.
15:41And my agent in the Zoom meeting was like, and what are you guys going to do about security?
15:47Everybody laughed.
15:49Everybody laughed.
15:50And then on the day, I show up, huge black man, ready to protect me.
15:56We're in a public park in Canada.
15:59And he's running after me if I go to the bathroom.
16:02And why did he have an earpiece?
16:05It made no sense to me.
16:07It's crazy.
16:07Who is he talking to?
16:08Who is he talking to?
16:11But I felt secure.
16:13And maybe I need to look into that for America.
16:19Yeah, we got bigger weapons of the blunderbuss out here.
16:23Yeah.
16:23Talk to me about your relationship with your, you're all on different platforms and still
16:28on the same platforms.
16:29How has that balance of power with creators and platforms changed over the years?
16:38And how much input do they have in deciding your content, if any?
16:42I mean, you're among friends here.
16:46I'm mad at people.
16:47Turn around.
16:48You want me to?
16:49I'll take it every time.
16:51I talk for eight hours straight, guys.
16:53I will not shut the fuck up unless you guys tell me to.
16:57Listen.
16:57Okay.
16:57I take very little input from my audience.
17:02I yell at them all the time.
17:03I'll tell them to shut up all the time.
17:05I tell them that they're wrong all the time.
17:07It draws a lot of ire.
17:08It pisses a lot of people off.
17:10But I think it's important to establish boundaries and to tell someone when they're wrong.
17:16I duke it out with a lot of right-wing people, too.
17:18So there is that.
17:19But in terms of feedback and what kind of impact that it has on my content, I would say that there are criticisms.
17:31It's sometimes hard to parse through what is valid and constructive criticism as opposed to someone who is just talking shit.
17:38And you get a lot better at figuring out if you can really identify what is honest criticism and what is just someone being parasocial with you.
17:48And tune out the parasocial stuff or tune out the ridiculous stuff and focus in and laser in on honest and constructive feedback.
17:57You can improve yourself as a content creator for sure.
18:00We're living in interesting times.
18:01And you saw what happened to Jimmy Kimmel.
18:03You think you're going to get Jimmy Kimmel over there?
18:06I think I'm going to get worse than Jimmy Kimmel by the time.
18:08Have you guys seen the Antifa designations?
18:10I read the report that came out.
18:15Shouts out to my friend, Ken Klippenstein.
18:16About the new designations for what constitutes terrorism on U.S. soil.
18:23And it said anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-America, anti-family values.
18:31And I was like, damn, this is a checklist of everything that I say all the time.
18:35And I was like, this is not good.
18:37But we'll see.
18:38We'll see what happens.
18:39What kind of relationship do you have with your platforms?
18:43And do they give you advice?
18:45Do you sometimes good advice, bad advice?
18:48I mean, for me, no.
18:50I don't think.
18:51If they sent me any info, I haven't.
18:54Any advice, I haven't.
18:55Actually, the only advice I've gotten is maybe cool off making fun of people for a little bit.
18:59And I was like, well, no, I don't think any of the platforms I post on ever dictate anything I do, really, at all.
19:10I don't think I would have the platform I do now if that were the case.
19:14Especially since when I first started making content and growing really fast on TikTok, I lost my TikTok account four times.
19:20Just from mass reports.
19:22And then I had fans teach me how to get it back.
19:25And then eventually, I lost it right before I hit a million.
19:28I lost it right after I hit a million.
19:29I had also just signed to my agency, too.
19:31And I said, time to work for that money, girl.
19:32Give me that account back.
19:34And she did.
19:35Thank God.
19:35She's great.
19:37But yeah, based off the things I say, I genuinely would never entertain commentary from the platform.
19:45But I also think, too, for my content specifically, I just got too big to ignore.
19:51It wasn't really something where they're like, actually, I think this is fucking awesome.
19:54It really just got to the point where I grew three million in three weeks.
19:58And they were like, all right, fine.
19:59I'll give you a check mark.
20:00Fine.
20:01But now they love me.
20:02So I think it works.
20:03We're in a very symbiotic relationship right now.
20:05But yeah.
20:06And I don't really take instruction well.
20:08I don't know if that's obvious.
20:09Bowman?
20:10Well, Drew.
20:11I really actually enjoy engaging with my audience.
20:16I feel like one time somebody said that virality is fun, but engagement pays the bills.
20:22Tea.
20:23Tea.
20:23And I feel like that part of it, the actual connection part of it, of replying to messages,
20:31replying to comments, reposting their messages to my story and being mean to them.
20:36They enjoy that.
20:37I enjoy that.
20:38I blew up during the pandemic when I thought it was fake and I thought my mom was buying
20:44me followers.
20:45So engaging and interacting with the people that follow me is really, really fun.
20:52And I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
20:55Yeah.
20:56So I was thinking, like, you guys must have such a fabulous, like, go out and have a
21:03scene and everything.
21:04Like, Hollywood, like, where do you all hang out?
21:06And he's like, nobody hangs out.
21:08There is no scene.
21:08All we do is work.
21:09So that can be, like, you must go.
21:12Do you all?
21:12This is where I find out nobody's inviting me to stuff.
21:15You're going to be like, we're at the party every week.
21:18I never, ever go out.
21:20I mean, as I said, I mean, I'm a comic, so my out is, I'm essentially working while I'm
21:25out.
21:25So I don't ever, I also don't like people.
21:28So.
21:29Right.
21:30I mean, do you go out a lot?
21:32I don't.
21:33I don't leave my house literally ever.
21:35Sometimes I'm like, I've been in the house for four days.
21:37I had to go outside, like, look at sunlight, touch some grass.
21:41But I think that's just the nature of the job because you, we work from our phones.
21:44Even when I'm out, sometimes I'm still working from my phone.
21:47So I think detaching in some regard, I live a little bit further out of the city.
21:53And, like, when my friends who are also creators, like, come to my house, we call it, like, normal
21:58people time because we don't record anything.
22:00We don't take pictures.
22:01We just hang out and have normal human people time.
22:04And I think that's really important when you do what we do because every time.
22:07Like, normal people time for a bunch of creators, what do you, what do you, what does that look
22:13like?
22:14Psilocybin?
22:14Oh, like a bunch of creators hanging out?
22:17Yeah, you just, so there's.
22:19It kind of looks like that scene in Squid Game where they all wear those eyes wide shut
22:22masks and they watch poor people kill each other.
22:23Oh, yeah.
22:24You guys do the Illuminati rituals, too?
22:25Yeah.
22:26Yeah, me, too.
22:26I went to a great one last week.
22:28You know what I mean?
22:29That's kind of what it looks like.
22:31Ritual of sacrifice, that sort of stuff.
22:33Baby's blood.
22:35Yeah.
22:35For all of you who think creators don't work.
22:38It's about eight, 10 hour days.
22:39So here we go.
22:39Well, I mean, this is what I was talking about with you earlier, which is that like creators
22:44nowadays, I feel like are on 24 seven in the past.
22:47You could be like an eccentric Hollywood actor guy.
22:49You could be Daniel Day-Lewis and just like literally become the character and become a
22:53method actor for like a year and just be that dude.
22:58But creators on the other hand are brands like they're a business.
23:05So they have to be multifaceted and they are constantly presenting themselves as a brand
23:12in everything that they do, whether they're in public or not.
23:15And that's, I think, the reason why a lot of people just like don't have any time to
23:19themselves.
23:19But I also do think that L.A. in general broadly has lost its place as like a cultural hub almost
23:30where even the Hollywood people that I know, like the actual famous people, not people
23:35like ourselves, no disrespect.
23:37I agree with you.
23:38They don't really do anything like they don't or they don't do anything here.
23:41They don't like or maybe they're just not inviting me to stuff.
23:44Like I said, I'm a little insecure about this, as you guys can probably tell.
23:48Please invite me to your parties.
23:50Fuck, marry, kill.
23:52Jesus.
23:54All right.
23:55Let's do it.
23:56Instagram, TikTok, X.
23:59Oh, sorry.
24:00What was it?
24:02Fuck, marry, kill.
24:02Instagram, TikTok, X.
24:06I'll kill X a thousand times.
24:08Yeah, kill Twitter.
24:09Kill Twitter.
24:09Kill Twitter.
24:10I can't say what else I would kill because I would get in trouble.
24:14But kill Twitter.
24:16Yeah, kill Twitter.
24:17See, I would fuck Twitter.
24:19I feel like it's pretty dirty.
24:22Like dirty, dirty.
24:23And bigoted.
24:24Weird, dirty.
24:25I would marry.
24:26What was the other one?
24:27Marry.
24:28Marry Instagram.
24:29I would marry Facebook because I feel like it would make, like, it's like a, it's parental.
24:34Do you know what I mean?
24:34It has a nice feel to it.
24:36And then Instagram.
24:38What was the other one?
24:41TikTok is the other one.
24:43I would kill X, marry Instagram, kill, fuck TikTok.
24:48Finally, answer locked in.
24:49Anyone else?
24:50On that note, we're done.
24:53Have a good day.
24:54And on that note, get off the table.