Vol. 1, No. 3: Tapped Out
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Performance Improvement Plan
Performance Improvement Plan seeks to solve problems by answering questions about working in the creative industries. What’s vexing you? Talk to us: pip@softlabor.biz. All communications and sources will remain confidential and anonymous.
Dear Soft Labor,
I run a small . . . let’s just call it a creative agency and am therefore a relentless self-marketer by necessity. I came of age professionally just as social media became a real vehicle for aggressive personal branding and by now, I’m as much an influencer in my industry as I am a practitioner. In fact, I spend more time planning and producing social media content than I do executing deliverables for clients, most of which I farm out to a few Gen Z’s— "the kids," as I call them—who freelance for me.
The issue: I truly despise social media. I resent the hold these platforms seem to have over my life: my own behavior not only shocks me, but it embarrasses me. A decade ago, I never dreamed that I’d be a Tik Tok talking head making content about handbags and clothes—consumer goods related to my work, but only tangentially, by desperate justification. Some say that the influencer model is waning in 2025, yet the compulsion to keep producing content that yields free stuff is real. My question is this: Can I step away from social media to save my sanity while still maintaining the “brand” I’ve worked so hard to build over the past decade?
From behind the ring light,
Tapped Out
Dear Tapped,
Narcissism and addiction are curious bedfellows, aren’t they? Don’t take it personally, Tapped: the clever folks of Instagram and Tik Tok clearly struck a universal gold well when they designed, built, and evolved their platforms to meet the deepest psychological needs of their users—which is most of us. Social media is so entrenched within our everyday lives that a life without it is almost incomprehensible. Let’s avoid pat punditry here though, shall we?
Clearly, Tapped, you need a new approach. Some might tell you to quit cold. We, however, are staunch realists: We, too, love a good dopamine hit. You won’t be dropping social media anytime soon, but you can reframe your relationship to it while questioning its actual, measurable value to your business. What’s on display here, Tapped, your creative skills or your physical self? While the answer may be “both”—and that’s just fine—it seems to us like you’re struggling to differentiate between the two and that perhaps the commingling of brain-self and body-self is part of what’s stressing you so.
You can be a wizard behind the curtain, Tapped, meaning that you can (and hopefully do) develop relationships in your industry that aren’t predicated on the carefully-curated version of yourself you present online. If there’s anything the pandemic taught us, it’s the true value of IRL social skills. Another casual PSA: Your personal brand value system is malleable. It can represent more than performance art. You can be known simply as “the guy” who delivers airtight work; be the “fixer” who knows how to untangle a project or a problem. It would be wise to develop some healthy respect for younger folks, Tapped. (Hint: They're not your kids.) It wouldn’t hurt to do some actual work at this point, too! There’s nothing wrong with being an individual contributor. We suspect that spending some time regaining confidence in other facets of your professional identity will help ease your unease.
Be yourself.
Yours,
Soft Labor
Search Results
“Search Results” points toward Soft Labor’s ongoing research interests.
🔗 Follow Soft Labor’s research channel on are.na.
🔗 An addendum to Soft Labor's last issue: The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding is a website based on the work of Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu and "adapted" by Daddy-o Rick Rubin, co-released by AI safety and research company Anthropic. Barf, meet our hands.
🔗 Chronically Online is a digital magazine about, well, being that, published in-house by Manychat, a company whose real purpose eludes us.
🔗 Forbes details the top five influencer marketing trends for 2025. We're particularly interested in so-called "faceless" content creation.
🔗 Dazed’s “The Rise of the Deinfluencer” is from 2023 and still conceptually relevant. “In essence, most ‘deinfluencers’ on the app are really influencers in sheep’s clothing,” writes Diyora Shadijanova.
🔗 Kyle Chayka’s 2021 New Yorker piece “Tik Tok and the Vibes Revival” identifies the “thoughtless hypnotism” of Tik Tok’s distinctly audiovisual format. Was 2021 the peak time for vibes-as-value proposition, or was it just the beginning?
🔗 Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker piece from 2019, “The Age of Instagram Face,” was and is an instant classic; “How Tik Tok Holds Our Attention.” is another solid one from that post-#metoo, pre-pandemic year.
🔗 Here’s a little study on the labor politics of social media from the journal Media and Communication: “In/Visibility in Social Media Work: The Hidden Labor Behind the Brands.” [PDF download]
Progress Report
“Progress Report” updates readers on Soft Labor’s own work, as well as that of our collaborators and comrades.
▶️ Soft Labor devised the editorial strategy for the Cooper Hewitt’s Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial digital exhibition platform, which recently launched an expanded version that includes excerpts from the (stunning) related book, Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, a co-publication with The MIT Press. Other notable highlights include the Triennial Reader, a collection of citations and other ephemera that informed the participants’ contributions, as well as several commissioned essays by Miami University professor Adam Rottinghaus ("The Old is New Again in Tomorrow's Smart Homes") and founding principal of New York-based architecture practice Mattaforma Lindsay Wikstrom ("Cool Fires and the Cultivation of Biodiversity"). True thanks to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and all of our collaborators on this project.
Dress Code
“Dress Code” spotlights workplace looks of all forms and kinds.
