The Creator Culture Trap: I have heard teenagers shout “SYSTUMMMM” on the platforms back in 2022. This is not an “I heard it once” experience, but multiple times, at different places, in full confidence and volume.
The Creator Culture Trap: Young People Look Only at the Glittery Part
It is kind of hilarious, but it also tells us something about creator culture that we do not really talk about because somewhere between YouTube, Instagram, Bigg Boss, podcasts and reels, creators stopped being “just people we watched” and became people “teenagers started getting influenced by”.
The way they speak, dress, the words they use, the careers they want, and sometimes even the way they think about education and work. This is where things start getting interesting because the internet is exceptionally good at showing us someone’s fancy life and vibe, but it is not perhaps good at showing us their CV.
The two are very different and should not be confused.
The Internet Gave Us Idleness as Fashion Statement
Think about the Elvish Yadav era. Back when Elvish entered Bigg Boss OTT 2, the “systum” wave was everywhere. His internet personality was raw, loud, irreverent, desi, and very deliberately fashioned in “I do not care”, and I think a lot of teenagers watching him did not really see a person who had spent years studying, building something and figuring out a career.
They saw the guy, the slang, the videos, the roaming around, banters, “chill kar” energy, and somewhere in that consumption, a weird idea of idleness easily emerged, which did not require you to study, but the thing worth noting is Elvish Yadav never himself said that.
If someone who appears to spend his life having fun is successful, then surely the boring route must not be unnecessary, except that Elvish has a B. Com background from Delhi University’s Hansraj College, which requires you to have a good grade.
This makes the picture a little less convenient because the “systum” guy also had an academic side. The problem was never that the academic side never existed but that we were not shown that. There is a difference.
Nishchay Malhan aka Triggered Insaan
Nishchay Malhan is known to millions as Triggered Insaan: the roasts, reactions, commentary, gaming, memes, chaos. Nishchay portrays the exact kind of internet personality that can make an Indian parent frown a little.
Except Nischay is from IIIT Delhi, where he completed a B. Tech, and the institute itself lists him among the graduates, and this is where I think our understanding of creators gets slightly lazy because we have somehow decided that being “academically accomplished” and being “internet-famous” are on two extreme opposites. Nishchay Malhan even raised money as relief fund for Assam floods through livestreaming.
Either you are the kid with amazing scores, or you are the guy making YouTube videos; you can either be serious in life or goof around, but never both together. This is a common (mis)conception we have planted within ourselves.
The Fascinating Rebel Kid Problem
Apoorva Mukhija, aka The Rebel Kid, is probably one of the clearest examples of how an internet personality can completely swallow a person’s other personality. For many, Apoorva is simply “kaleshi aurat”, as she calls herself. There is chaos, sarcasm, oversharing, travel, dating stories, and a lot of cuss words: the girl who says exactly what she is thinking before her brain processes it formally and honestly that made people get hooked on watching her.
When the same girl moved to New York to pursue an MBA at NYU, suddenly the internet wanted to know if the girl really studied. Worse was some people online even alleged that she had secured admission through donations.
Apoorva finally addressed those claims herself in a recent YouTube Storytime, rejecting the allegation and pointing to her academic brilliance, professional experience, portfolio, and the business she has built through content creation, growing her Instagram followers to more than 4 million and YouTube subscribers to over 1 million. She said she had been exceptional academically, had worked with major brands, and had experience across reality television and acting while also building her social media presence.
I find this whole episode fascinating for the simple reason that people are surprised that she could be academically accomplished. But why? Just because she did not look like a stereotypical “academically accomplished” person?
The Good Creators Have Made Hard Work Look Like Idleness
I think this is the part young people need to understand: effortlessness is often a performance too; they have worked really hard to achieve whatever they have.
We consume the creator’s life through holidays, apartments, funny videos, confidence, and success, but do not see the brand meetings that went into it, the business decisions, sleepless nights, 20 retakes, years of rejection and being ignored. We blind ourselves to the extremely boring weekday afternoons when they are figuring out their next steps.
Since social media is designed around snippets, we naturally start treating snippets as their full biographies, which is dangerous becaise a person can look completely jobless for five minutes on Instagram or can even vlog when they are free; that is when they would vlog but at the same time have a portfolio that would make the family sit up straight.
What is Recognised as Work Really?
This is where I think the conversation around creators needs to grow up a little. Every generation complains about their next one: there was television earlier, then came in OTT, social media, reality TV. Creator culture is different because the person on screen can feel much closer, and they are not some distant celebrity. They are talking to you from their home, using their raw slang, replying to comments, showing you a part of their bad days, joking around like your friends would, so naturally they sit in deeper.
But for a teenager, it is rarely “I admire their journey and want to work hard like them” and more “I want to be like them” without understanding what goes behind. Wanting the creator’s life is very different from understanding a creator’s work.
Study the Process, Not Just the Lifestyle
If there is one thing creator culture should consciously teach the young people, it is not that stuydyng does not matter or not that a piece of paper cannot decide your future but that there is more than one kind of studying.
You can study engineering and become a creator or a gamer; study commerce and build an internet empire; continue your online presence while pursuing your MBA. You can have a degree and a goofy personality.
Creators are not people with just a ring light: they are often writers, editors, storytellers, marketers, salespeople, entrepreneurs, performers, strategists, and even manage their HR departments. That is definitely not idleness, but hard work.
It is just work that looks fun on Instagram, and perhaps that is where the bigger cultural shift happens in front of us; thus, when you look at a creator, do not just look at the followers, but at the consistency, responsibility, hard work, and effort being put in.
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