It is a widely known fact that living in the entertainment capital of the world is not cheap. With gas prices finally falling, it doesn’t make up for a sales tax of a whopping 9.75% in one of the highest-grossing consumer cities. The typical LA lifestyle includes hours of traffic, a highly competitive job market, and expensive coffee that averages $7 a cup. And yes, I really need my daily dose of caffeine.
While there are ways to circumvent these expenses, the city will always find a way to take your money.
So how are the Americans taking it back?
Side Hustle Culture
Nowadays, everyone’s got a side hustle. Services like Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and Depop give digital marketers a platform to sell their products, from which many earn their entire incomes. It seems like a great way to make extra earnings. From art commissions to podcasting, side hustles are becoming more widespread by the day. The surge of side hustles is not entirely surprising.
The Harris Poll reports that 51% of young professionals turned away from their 9-to-5 jobs and refocused their attention on investing and building their personal businesses. Gen Z’s tech-savvy upbringing is proving to be incredibly useful in this contemporary era. When I’m doomscrolling TikTok in the middle of the night, I often see videos of creators promoting their products, or even advertising sponsored brands while screwing with cashier clerks in a 7-11. Stuff like this makes me wonder where we draw the line between building a business and turning every aspect of ourselves into a product.
Why Is It Necessary?
The pressure to monetize every hobby didn’t appear out of thin air; it was poorly wrapped and gifted to Gen Z. For many digital marketers, transforming their hobbies into profit is not a result of ambition or greed—it’s survival. Rent prices are increasing every year. For a one-bedroom apartment in the U.S., Zillow’s calculator computes the average rent currently stands at about $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom. While in big cities such as Los Angeles, the average is around $2,100 a month, and that’s before utilities. Most of these apartment seekers are recent graduates who are haunted by the thousands of dollars in student debt.
If the cost of living or debt isn’t enough of a reason, perhaps the volatility of the job market is more convincing. Even with a bachelor’s degree, my hundreds of unread applications are constantly glossed over by AI. Entry-level positions often require portfolios, specialized skills, and tons of experience that are difficult to obtain. It’s easy to see the appeal for supplementary income through monetizing hobbies.
Too Good To Be True
There is no shame in trying to make an extra buck. In fact, it’s quite genius, especially in the U.S. Yet with anything that is remotely promising, there is a catch. To some degree, the expectations of productivity overshadow the love for hobbies. Once those hobbies become content, likes, followers, and revenue, it is likely to suck the joy out of making little handcrafted crochet bunnies. Each loop around the hook is a couple cents closer to the finished sellable product and burnout. A survey conducted by SideHustles.com shows that among 1,000 side hustlers, 67% report that they feel burnt out by their gigs. A substantial fraction of them (one in five) state that their side hustles are more stressful than their full-time jobs.
Another contributing factor to burnout could be the unwavering feeling of being left behind. With the accessibility of the internet, it’s easy to come across those even younger than you going viral, starting businesses, or even getting your dream job. It could be discouraging at times, especially when you’ve exerted so much effort to pursue such aspirations. This concept is attributed to fashion photographer Melissa Rodwell for coining the phenomenon of social comparison in this context as compare and despair. An article by Psychology Today covers how social media is capable of undermining confidence through carefully curated “highlight reels” to showcase the success of others.
A Potential Silver Lining
There are many repercussions to commencing a side hustle, but this isn’t an argument of how they could go wrong. These gigs are becoming essential to keep afloat when the current cost of living is so high. They provide the freedom to express ourselves creatively, challenging traditional 9-to-5 jobs we were conditioned to build towards till we collapse. In an economy that demands that you have experience from birth to land an entry-level job, resorting to side hustles could be the answer for the lack thereof.
As social media persists in brainwashing creatives into making their art into money, we forget that hobbies were never meant to be profitable to begin with. Not every fanart sketch needs to become a commission. Not every funny home video needs to go viral. Maybe there is no price to the hours spent making that crochet bunny. In the end, nothing is more fulfilling than joy.