The Unnerving Existence of Teen Boss
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
That being said, I think it's generally a positive thing. Teen Boss isn't replacing kids reading the WSJ, it's replacing tweens swooning over boy band photos in Tiger Beat.
YT/Streaming isn't without its weirdness, but it's significantly more participatory and encouraging of people creating and making things as an alternative to purely consuming media.
I'd rather my daughter want to make YouTube videos and open an Etsy shop with her designs than mindlessly watch Hannah Montana (which I feel like is the equivalent from a decade ago).
As a peek into this world, check out Rosanna Pansino (Nerdy Nummies YT channel) and how successful she is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i2cebTn0nc
There are worse role models for kids.
until you see the instagram/snap feeds of these 'kids' once they become 18+..
the unnerving thing about this isn't what's on the surface - it's the preemptive/subliminal training towards 'monetizing their image' which is basically training to become defacto prostitutes in adulthood..
Children have more choices for idols today and that’s good. Many children are thinking entrepreneurially and I’m happy they have role models. I don’t care if the magazine looks like Tiger Beat. I’m a small business owner and I want my kids to grow up understanding the hustle mindset as opposed to the employee mindset.
In fact I'd rather kids would read the WSJ than this garbage, at least then they'd understand how hard it is to start and maintain a business. Otherwise you're setting this kids up to follow every MLM trap they got offered later on in life. HODL HODL HODL am i right?
Go on the thread for yourself, there are lots of people picking apart the idea, but no one saying the creator is foolhardy for favoring an entrepreneurial career / calling him a scammer.
While those skills are not common enough in adults, it's rare that ANY 10 year old anywhere would have the life experience to develop those skills.
Also making this business activity socially acceptable for kids opens the door to parents putting pressure on their kids to make money ("WHY ISN'T MY 12 A VIRAL BEAUTY GURU!?!?!" says some soccer mom). I'm also willing to bet most of these kids have parental involvement, so it opens the door to parents 'pimping out' their kids so they can market some shitty product with an edge of it being sold by a kid.
At that age, kids should be focused on developing fundamental skills instead of focusing on their brand or get rich. What's wrong with saying something is ok for adults but not for kids?
Also I don’t believe at all that a 12 year is really passionate about building a line of “eco friendly” skin care products and the botanical mixtures (like one of the girls on the cover of teen bo$$).
> The title is aimed at girls aged eight to fifteen, and it has a bright, pink-heavy, clamorously cheerful aesthetic to match.
(Your broader point may be right, I just don't think the current crop of scams is a great example.)
your collectivism is a misapplied abstraction leaking reality at every seam
'Individuals' on HN (or 20-something CS guy from the U.S.) and their 'unique opinions' are so fucking similar and revolve around a couple of basic platitudes and ideologems
Pretty much anything that isn't a specific technical subject is totally boring and predictable on HN
Also your last sentence is painfully cringey to read
Hell “how to build your brand by being you” is the gist of a ton of the articles you see in Forbes, etc, just with more glitter.
That is the flip side of it. Endlessly shouting "Express yourself and amazing things will happen!" is a bit of a trap. It doesn't prepare kids to handle the lucky breaks that some of them will undoubtedly get.
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
I agree that instant gratification is a problem, but it doesn't strike me as bad that kids might think YouTube or social media or whatever is an easy way to make money, and then try their hand at it. I think they'll quickly find that success still takes effort and perseverance.
I feel like the best way to learn that is try it out yourself, which is what such magazines are encouraging no?
Which means most of them get to experience failure early on in their life. I think this is a good thing for them in the long term.
As someone who just followed through all the usual treadmill of doing well in school, going to top college, etc. just to find out later that there was this entirely different and more exciting world of entrepreneurship where I can decide my own destiny, I think it's good to experience failure as early as possible in your life.
A lot of people who are not cut out for unstable life will realize it's not for them and just go on to live a stable life without regret, and many others who can recover from the failure, will have learned some lesson which can be helpful in their future adventure.
Also "Garbage" is a subjective term, I personally see many mainstream journalism driven by ad revenue much more garbage than many Youtubers who create unique content that you won't get anywhere else. A lot of the successful ones actually start out doing Youtube because they're passionate about the topic they make videos on. It's the failures who jump in just for the money.
Telling young girls they can "get rich quick" is not the best way to go about all this, but it mostly serves to show, in part, what is possible. Girls are not reading these flashy magazines for deep reading. It's not something they consciously mull over as they read-- the effect is subconscious. The more magazines consumed, the more the messages of what's possible become more concrete in the background, and she will start to pay attention to the Youtubers she loves from a different perspective-- one of gathering tips and watching for how they became successful. That is, if she wants to start a business anyways. Mostly moms pick up these magazines for their kids.
edit: I also want to say that becoming successful in an enterprise like Youtube while one is young is phenomenal for confidence. Even just starting to create is very good for confidence. The venture won't last forever, but the adult will always have the confidence they built in their younger years.
If your daughter wants to learn about successful business and making money, she will very soon look into characters like Trump, or Koch brothers, or even tycoon oils Rockefellers. There was nothing for a child to look into the souls of these characters; business is tough, its jungle, and you make extra buck when you didn't have to but took it away from someone anyways. I don't think I would want my children to be exposed to this kind of shit without their brains being properly wired already.
I know it's sexy for modern day champagne socialists to rant about this on /r/LateStageCapitalism and co. and signal through communism LARPing. I'm however confident the HN crowd is a little more educated than that.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/04/03/17024/warren-buff...
I don't know if that should discredit what they accomplish and give back altogether, that's an interesting conversation.
Because that’s for chumps.
Being into boy bands is a perfectly harmless (and normal) use of a teenager's time. Being obsessed with emulating their YouTube idols on the path to riches, is insidious, demoralising when you realise most of it is luck, which you will not have, it's perverted and unhealthy.
I really like Jia Tolentino's writing.
The magazine sucks because it valorizes materialism. There's not much more to it than that. Greed is repackaged as positivity and girl power, but it's still a void. The passage I quoted is right--our idea of success is slowly narrowing to this kind of 21st century internet-mediated entrepreneurship. We should dream bigger than kids screaming about video games on youtube.
It reminds me of the often repeated phrase used to respond to people criticizing a popular kids' book: "Well, at least they're reading." The version that would defend this kind of content says "at least they're making something!" The act of creation by itself isn't noble, neither is the act of reading alone. "Would you rather they just watch TV??" No. It's a false choice. Aim higher.
The sad thing about this kind of capitalism though is in money via brand building (id argue) no real value is created. It’s just a knife fight for eyeballs.
http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-...
For older people, it's impressive that a teenager goes out there and makes a name for themselves on youtube and then older people will go on and talk about the merits of the media/product being made as you've done.
It's my understanding that for many teenagers the idea of this sort of fame isn't really that big of a deal, it's essentially commoditized, where anyone who's serious about it can achieve a certain level of success. This leads to younger kids to understand that they too can succeed by driving their ideas forward, and I imagine we will see all sorts of entrepreneurship come from Gen Z when they have the skill sets and experience to both raise money from VCs and develop truly innovative new products.
Material success, power, fame - have been drivers of ambition throughout all of human civilization. The unprecedented success of capitalism over the last 2 centuries has been marked by countless individuals pushing forward towards those goals.
>Greed is repackaged as positivity and girl power
You have cynical spin on this, but I suppose traditional moral gender roles would be more fulfilling? Or maybe women should be encouraged to go into low profit social work? What is it you want?
>whether they be becoming rich from social media self-branding
I'm not worried about that. There is no free lunch and anybody who thinks they can start rolling in Youtube money without putting in a massive amount of work (and even then, there are no guarantees) will figure it quickly enough.
The point is that replacing the idea of one's worth and potential - girl power/boy power, whatever - with shallow get quick money and get famous schemes is a negative.
Would you prefer children who dream of utilizing their potential to become great at something, like a career path, scientist, scholar, artists, farmer etc., or whose dreams are about becoming Youtube stars or selling crap to a bunch of people?
As for the general remarks on history, power is the only factor in ambition beyond survival. Material success is just one form of power. Fame is power + self gratification for the emotionally weak. Ephemeral fame and get money quick schemes are superficial and weak means to power.
On the other hand, appeals to a universal subject, which doesn't exist, references to human nature, which we can't even define as a term, much less define what the elements of it are, don't really work in a proper argument.
There's a constant hum about the lack of women entrepreneurs and how women should be encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship, the earlier the better. What do you think that looks like?
If you do nothing, that's wrong, if you do something, it will never be right and will be critized.
This is an entrepreneurship magazine designed to appeal to teen girls. Entrepreneurship is a boring topic for most teens, so this is their attempt at making it relatable and fun. Give them a break.
>Would you prefer children who dream of utilizing their potential to become great at something, like a career path, scientist, scholar, artists, farmer etc.,
I noticed entrepreneur is not one of the options you listed, which is what this magazine advocates. But I support all those career paths as well. Advocacy for one, doesn't mean denial of others.
I certainly do not dispute the argument re: ambition and the desire for wealth as the source of capitalism's success.
I force myself to listen to crazy angry conservative and christian radio on and off for the same reason. If we can't embrace aspects of human personality that we find loathesome, I don't think we can love others, or ourselves.
Interestingly I feel like this article comes from a similar place as anger radio (which is, ironically, overwhelmingly money-motivated and exploitative).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't see the value in otherizing media like this. It exists, it's part of our culture, and in one way or another, it's a part of us. Embrace it, engage with it, teach from it, but don't revile it.
[1]https://www.thestreet.com/story/12791561/1/millennials-just-...
Saying "It exists, it's a part of our culture" is such a defeatist response. Culture is formed by all of us. You don't have to just let it happen. You can push back, and work to change culture for the better. That's why I like your last bit - we can engage with it and teach from it. I'd expand that to include: we can disapprove of it.
Those money-grubbing millenials are paying the Social Security entitlements to Baby Boomers
On a micro scale, if I had children, I'd teach them to take every advantage they can get. I'd teach them to be ruthless, because that's what the world rewards. If someone has to suffer, I'm doing everything in my power to prevent it from being them.
You can't attack these problems from the bottom. A parent would be putting their child at a disadvantage in the interests of the state, which is absolutely absurd to expect. It has to be an institutional movement.
It would be great if we could remove the system that rewards that behavior, but in absence of that, the correct move for any individual agent is to exploit the imbalances.
You can't be a doormat, but I don't think naked ruthlessness is necessary to be successful or to leave a good mark on this world.
I would say to strive for humane, resilient excellence.
Avarice is a deep facet of human psychology. Our kids don't need to be 'exposed' to it to discover it in themselves. If one condemns avarice, one doesn't provide a path for one's child (or oneself) to reconcile themselves with with reality. You and those you condemn remain avaricious, but under different flags and in your own ways.
I'd bet that this is largely because college students now graduate with tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and getting an entry level job out of college is harder than it's ever been. When you're struggling simply to stay float, you tend to be more concerned with your own well being than that of others.
I take it you were not looking for a job in '09-'10.
That's not surprising, considering that current college students did a lot of their growing up in the aftermath of the housing crash. It's kind of unfair to chide them for being preoccupied with financial stability (or for claiming to be when asked, not the same thing). Meanwhile, what's the messaging like about college today? That you should drop out to start a company, and that if you're studying anything not STEM related you're kind of a dope.
But really, in the link "helping others" is a close second at 65%, only a point behind the boomers and two points ahead of gen x. So, there goes declinism. Millenials are only about 4 points higher than gen-x in "well off financially" (70.8 to 74.4), hardly a generational sea change. The real difference is with the boomers, who come in at 73% "develop a meaningful philosophy of life" and 44% "well off financially". Perhaps rather than rejecting helping others, every generation since the boomers has rejected the solipsism it takes for a college student to list "develop my philosophy" as their primary goal.
The question is not about financial stability, but with "being very well off financially."
> Perhaps rather than rejecting helping others, every generation since the boomers has rejected the solipsism it takes for a college student to list "develop my philosophy" as their primary goal.
I'll give you that point. Younger generations may not be as materialistic as we think. But that doesn't invalidate my argument: It would still be shitty if they became more materialistic. That could happen if we tell 12 year olds they need to worry about their personal brand.
I think we worship obscene money (ex: celebs, athletes, tech founders) and get rich stories but probably don't worship money as a whole - if we really did we wouldn't be in such debt buying crap and having no savings. 63% of Americans don't have enough to cover a $500 emergency. [1]
College students could be having that financial outlook you mentioned as a result of the crazy debt they took on. And the fact that 75% said raising a family was a life goal, which is higher than boomers and Gen X, at a time when raising a family is way more expensive than it used to be. If this is the case, then they actually value education and raising a family over money and money is just a means to attain those things. So I don't think that's alarming.
What's alarming to me is poor financial education and decisions and the desire to get rich quickly or feel like you're owed $X salary because you have $Y debt which I see with many new graduates.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-...
Most people who are daydreaming about a get rich quick scheme probably aren't thinking about putting the money they earn in safe investments and living the rest of their life on the $80,000 a year they can get from the returns. They're thinking about the mansion, sports car, exotic vacations, etc.
Dare I say it, “I have to remind myself that I can’t overdo it, so I’ll do my posts, and then turn off my phone for the night and just be isolated.” might be good advice for the author, who from her Twitter seems to be a fully paid-up member of 'lol trying to adult' Twitter.
Not surprised to see this comment on top
1) It reinforces the idea that for young women, the only way to achieve business success is to be performatively "girly" -- being unceasingly cheerful and social, presenting a breathless aw-shucks ("so amazing!") demeanor, working on things like fashion lines and skin care products or on image-first careers like "Instagram influencer." Society accepts that ambitious young men will present to the world in lots of different ways, but when it comes to ambitious young women we try to hammer them all into the same shape.
2) It puts pressure on its readers, who are in an age bracket we generally associate with childhood, to trade the traditional privileges of childhood -- shielding from the pitiless demands of the market, space to experiment with different facets of their personality, time to dedicate to education and self-development -- for the precarious, rat-race lifestyle that adults live every day. Kids who are saying "there is no such thing as a regular 9 to 5. We work 24/7!" are kids who have internalized the idea that work is all there is, that their lives don't have room for anything else. That would be a sad thing for a fully grown adult to believe, much less a thirteen-year-old.
2) The readers are self-consciously choosing this media themselves anyway - through the YouTube channels they subscribe to and watch, the Instagram influencers they follow, the products they buy. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds, these readers are now being encouraged to think how they can follow in their footsteps.
This article imo, reveals much more about the prejudices of the author than the readers or the publishers.
Who are creative within a narrow, conventionally "girly" band of creative endeavors. Teen Boss would not be interested in a 15-year-old girl who invented a revolutionary new type of automotive engine, because it is not a magazine about girls with grease on their hands.
Girls who want to should be free to engage in those kinds of "girly" pursuits, of course. To each their own! But by focusing only on those pursuits, Teen Boss sends the message to girls who are interested in other things (like STEM!) that they're weirdos who are walking away from success instead of towards it in their own way.
Perhaps not, but then you're being reductive by equating engineering with 'grease on their hands'.
There's plenty of STEM careers that don't involve any grease - such as materials science, fashion design, sound engineering, to stuff that this magazine would wholeheartedly endorse, like developing your own make up line. 'I made thousands building a FaceTune competitor' certainly would.
For that matter, how many people on Hacker News deal with grease in their day to day work? And is the kind of thing being discussed here that different from 'I made $32k a month recurring revenue' IndieHackers story, the likes of which regularly gets voted to the top of HN?
> she is notable for her strong advocacy of women in STEM, transhumanism, open source, and body modifications,[1][2] variously challenging both gender and tech stereotypes with her flamboyant public persona[3][2][4] which turns objectification on its head.[5]
It's a new magazine, how can you say that a 15 year-old girl that does something revolutionary couldn't be featured? I'm reading this as, it's a new magazine that's focusing on the low-hanging fruit and could eventually gain enough traction to feature other things. Who's to say the lessons learned from these "girly" ideas couldn't also be applied to STEM-related pursuits (after all, a specific section is called out where someone pitched a roomba-like idea).
How sure are you of this? I think there's a good chance – I'd bet even odds – that they'd publish a profile of a girl like you describe.
> make up lines, t-shirts, YouTube channels
different from:
> job at BuzzFeed/Vanity Fair/Teen Vogue/New Yorker while building out performative angst Twitter persona
?
seems more like 'stepping stone' to me, no?
The "professional influencer" career path though, especially done the way the platforms want it done (i.e. NON STOP) requires that the person attempting it eschew any and all activities that don't work towards their perceived "career" in favor of ones that do.
It would be like if struggling to be an actor for a decade left to completely incompetent to even wait tables.
I'm all for approaching a utopian future where no one needs to work, but we're not there yet. If 1 in 4 young women are going for this kind of work today, we're going to have market saturation at peak levels. We already have way too many twitch streamers for it to be reasonably successful unless you slavishly dedicate your life to doing it, and I'd say the YouTubers are maybe a couple of years before they hit the same problem, if they aren't already.
We have an entire section of our economy right now based on, for lack of a more eloquent term, bullshit. Bullshit people pushing bullshit products with bullshit content published on bullshit platforms. And yeah sure, this has always been a thing, it's not new, but it's never been this HUGE. We're already seeing cracks forming from the sheer number of young women (and men too, it's for both sexes) who are dedicating every minute of every day of their lives to this "influencer" nonsense, combined with the fact that digital advertising is tanking, and long overdue privacy rankings are going to take the wind out of all of these platforms sales, and then we'll have to deal with having millions of people who's only once-marketable skill is smiling into a camera like an idiot, and peddling shit that no one needs.
You bled through a little here. The vast majority of YouTube stars aren't being discovered on the street, and the vast majority of kids who buy in to the promise never become stars. You're contrasting two largely overlapping paths while framing them as the alternative versus the standard.
Creator of what? IMHO, in generals "creators" and "creatives" are red-flag words, signaling, not creation in the sense of artistic work or craftsmanship, but capitalism - money to be made by graphic designers, whatever. Not to knock making money, just sayin' ...
> 2) The readers are self-consciously choosing this media themselves anyway - through the YouTube channels they subscribe to and watch, the Instagram influencers they follow, the products they buy. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds, these readers are now being encouraged to think how they can follow in their footsteps.
I dunno - "choice" gets complicated in a world of advertising, algorithmically driven video rankings, fake news, the general limited range of what is available over mainstream media distribution channels, etc.
People who make money off of something love to talk about how the people whose money they are taking are exercising choice.
I still think most people using the internet regularly find themselves in weird cul-de-sacs. It's very easy to find surprising and novel things to read, watch, look at. I'd be surprised if lots of people don't also have that experience.
I don't see the point you're making. Thirty years ago, people had a choice of four main TV channels, three newspapers, and whatever the Billboard 100 said they should listen to.
Most cultures historically have expected children to work and contribute - work and play intermingled, and then at a point, they were graduated to primarily contributions.
I wouldn't get too peturbed about children working.
n.b., exploitation is a different thing, I want to make clear. But historically, children contributing is a thing, and it was not an evil.
Or, it takes girls, who are already socialized that way, and teaches them that pink and glitter isn’t inconsistent with making money. (Which is the most important thing for kids to learn, because we live in a country where you die without money.)
https://twitter.com/girlswhocode/status/909883045406281728
I've seen other spreads that highlight people like Tim Cook, who, while famous in our orbits, isn't a typical topic of conversation among my nieces.
Traditionally children help out with chores, work on the farm, watch the other children, or even get jobs to help with the household expenses.
> ...kids who have internalized the idea that work is all there is...
There is a certain segment of the population that scrapes by and survival is the biggest concern. A certain level of privilege is needed to take principled stands on issues, invest large amounts of time and energy in charitable work, or even just travel and experience the world.
That is to say, life as a struggle is actually pretty normal. And it's not new or unique to this time and culture.
Maybe it's perverse to choose to struggle as a middle class kid. And maybe it's especially perverse to chose this kind of struggle. But there are many less healthy things for tweens and teens to invest their energy in.
Then society got to the point where teenagers were no longer capable of doing anything useful, so society started extending childhood, to the point where nobody under the age of 30 considers themselves adults anymore. From that perspective, any reversion to the more natural pattern of human development is going to seem sad and destructive of childhood.
But that perspective is formed by a very unnatural way of life. Teenage naval midshipmen weren't wracked with angst and depression the way contemporary American teenagers are. They didn't chafe and rebel against their parents the way contemporary American teenagers do, because they weren't treated like children; they were treated like young adults.
It reminds the middle-class strivers that "MAKE MONEY FA$T!" isn't that far from themselves, despite all their scrambling efforts.
Regardless, it will happen whether us "not young" folk like it or not. Hopefully some kids will get rich with history and math channels instead of being attractive and making farting noises
Would we feel differently if it was called "Boy Bo$$"?
Who's graduating? https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teen-vogue-s-guide-a...
Good point! If this were geared towards boys and had articles like “How to turn your Minecraft playing into $$$ by streaming” and “Getting started in sales: baseball cards edition” would there even be a discussion? Would the New Yorker be so indignant?
As other commenters have pointed out, it's certainly better than celebrity gossip, and probably not any worse than the other crap they would be exposed to. Entrepreneurship is a fantastic thing to promote, and being a social media star is certainly more fun and lucrative than being a 9-5 office drone with health insurance.
But there's something insidious about priming teenagers into this materialistic mindset, that the way to "make it" is to gain a large social media following competing in a shallow clickbait-ridden space, where only the top 1% or so can ever make it anyways (not everybody can be a social media star, just like not everybody can make a living as a musician. Our attention span is limited).
I don't have a problem with this magazine. This magazine is simply a sad reflection of our hypercapitalist reality.
Socially-strong European nations are the most likely to survive the next 100 years of turmoil. Modern China is a house of cards held together by capitalism, Xi and his successors will grab for power but they can't hold it together by sheer force of will.
As you said worst case scenario immigrants could fill in the gap (certainly no shortage of people trying to immigrate to western Europe). Social cohesion could go down, but that doesn't mean the only option is American style "every man for themselves" hypercapitalism.
Is the marketed purpose of life for humans out there to just have a decent, modest and enjoyable life with plenty of vacation and time for friends and recreational activities? Vs the US's "rise to the top, you must become a star, make billions, write a memoir!" mindset?
And while I'm a guy, I remember that club being balanced roughly 50-50, boys and girls, and in point of fact, most of the leadership positions (we elected Presidents and VPs, in mock-corporate fashion) were girls.
I think all that's changed is the focus of how and where money is earned, and maybe not all that much? The article mentions that some of the ideas recommended are "snow shoveling" and "setting up a laser tag course", which aren't the wild, forced-estrogen-display, YouTube-infested hellscape that some other commenters seem to be upset about.
Lol.
"Money is to Teen Boss what sex is to Cosmopolitan—the essential, irreplaceable, attention-getting hook. (On the cover of each edition, the dollar signs in “Teen Bo$$!” occupy the same prime real estate, in the upper-left corner, that the word “sex” does on most Cosmo covers.)"
Well encouraging young women to make money and work for financial independence is better than encouraging them to become sex objects, as many other mags targeting them do.
And yes, as a parent I am unnerved by this article. While I don't want to discourage his budding entrepreneurship and do want to encourage his initiative, I want him to apply it in a way that is realistic for a kid his age, and I also want to protect him from the inanity (and worse) of stuff like TeenBoss and various get-rich-quick schemes and snake oil sales. I want him to learn the value of hard work, practise, being punctual, and skills that will help him excel in whatever it is he decides to do as an adult. At this point, that means studying, doing well academically, and possibly starting a cottage business his parents can help him with (fortunately, he's a First Honors student).
I once saw a magazine dedicated to a single hairstyle. (It was already at its 3rd edition and I later learned of new editions)
If you're not a content creator/owner, you're a content consumer. Content is the new rent seeking.