Ya' Cousin Cleon
OG COUCH CORNER HUSTLA
Not a lie was told
The rise of Hustle Porn
- Thread starter Pressure
- Start date
Not a lie was toldNo More “Struggle Porn”
I don’t like @GaryVee.
I say @GaryVee because I don’t know Gary Vaynerchuk personally. He could be delightful and entirely unlike his online persona. But his Internet character is doing harm to would-be entrepreneurs.
Go watch a typical post from GaryVee if you’re not familiar with him:
There are two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this.
The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what GaryVee broadcasts: struggling is good.
You should be working long hours, failing for ten years, starting a side hustle to fund your side hustle. You shouldn’t be comfortable because comfort is death, or worse, mediocrity. I mean shyt, he even suggests feeling suicidal is normal. Notably absent is the step where you get to start with a $3,000,000 wine business (1).
Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing. I think Vaynerchuk would want them to hear “If I work hard at the right thing I can succeed,” but the message is easily misinterpreted as “if I’m struggling, I’m doing the right thing.”
I call this “struggle porn”: a masochistic obsession with pushing yourself harder, listening to people tell you to work harder, and broadcasting how hard you’re working.
Struggle porn has normalized sustained failure. It’s made it acceptable to fly to Bali and burn through your life savings trying to launch an Amazon dropshipping business. Made it reasonable to keep living on your parents money for years after graduation while you try to become #instafamous. Made LinkedIn into a depressingly hilarious circlejerk for people who look way too excited to be having their headshot taken.
Working hard is great, but struggle porn has a dangerous side effect: not quitting. When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.
I went through a startup accelerator when I was in college, something I’ve written about from other angles here and here, and one thing that stood out to me is how many people in the entrepreneurial community were working on businesses going nowhere slowly.
In one particularly egregious case, someone had been building a company for four years, had no revenue or customers, and would sneak into his alma matter’s cafeteria to steal food to extend his runway. Last I checked he was still working on it. He’s also a big fan of GaryVee.
Of course, there were some big successes out of the Pittsburgh startup ecosystem, but the vast majority of people in the accelerators and community were strugglepreneurs: people building businesses going nowhere quickly that felt they were accomplishing something because they were struggling.
Struggle porn gives you a sense of progress if you feel like you’re failing. You don’t need to look at metrics like revenue because you know you’ve been working hard, and that guy on Instagram said that’s what it takes. Eat Sleep Code Repeat.
In this way, struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something. When a real human won’t have sex with you, you turn to porn, and when your creative work is failing, you turn to struggle porn.
Rule #1 of #StrugglePorn: if someone is bragging about how hard they’re working, you can be sure their business is failing.
I don’t know anyone running a multi-million dollar business who follows struggle pornographers like GaryVee. They don’t need the feel-good reassurance that beating their head against the wall is worthwhile. They’re making money, not LinkedIn posts. They’re busy, not struggle busy.
“Struggle busy” is how struggle porn distracts you from accomplishing what the struggle is supposed to be in the direction of. Instead of thinking “maybe my difficulty getting traction is a sign that I need to try something else,” the reaction is “this isn’t doing well yet, but if I keep struggling then eventually things will work out.”
It’s worth making a distinction here: I’m not saying you shouldn’t work hard, or that starting a business isn’t hard, I’m saying you shouldn’t fetishize struggling, and you definitely shouldn’t waste your time on consuming quasi-motivational struggle porn that makes you feel bad about how hard you’re not working.
A good way to tell if that’s what you’re following is the value of whatever media someone posts. Most of GaryVee’s posts are just variations on the same message: work harder, stop doing a job you hate, you can do it, look at me I’m GaryVee. He occasionally breaks from that to try making something useful, like this post on how he grew VaynerMedia, but it’s a 550-word fluff post that says “culture is important.”
I’ve been picking on GaryVee a lot since he’s an easy target, but this applies to most of the entrepreneurs on Instagram. Going through the “ten Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow,” it’s more of the same junk. Photos of them with some motivational quotation plastered over it, sharing some platitude and telling their followers to follow their dreams (2).
If you’re looking at motivational quotations on Instagram while squatting over the toilet, that’s not going to solve your creative roadblock. And if you’re one of the Instagram accounts spreading #struggleporn, please stop.
But the broader takeaway is to avoid focusing on bad proxies for success. How hard you’re working isn’t a good indicator of the value you’re creating or the progress you’re making. It’s a vanity metric: just as how many Twitter followers you have is a poor measure for the vitality of your business, the amount you’re struggling isn’t a good measure of how much you’re learning and progressing.
Footnotes
1. This is a cheap shot, I know, but it’s ridiculous that someone who was given this insane of an entrepreneurial head start is telling people to stop working normal jobs and start a business “like him.”
2. The Instagram accounts of popular entrepreneurs are so similar I have to wonder if they aren’t hiring the same media agency to run them. Or if they’re all just copying each other.
Last edited:
Take It In Blood
Banned
I thought this thread was going to be about ppl using social media like Twitter and Instagram to promote their home-made porn hustles
I think everyone needs to come in this thread...
This is the realest most important thing to learn...
I was caught up in this for about 4yrs... because i thought being "lazy" in my younger years or not being focus set me back... so i had a goal and killed myself trying to reach it...
only to realize... hardwork isnt all you need to succeed lmao, smh...
U are not suppose to kill urself working...
i feel like i wasted 4yrs of my life, and i can barely remember what happened in them years... it was a fukking blur of work, driving to and from work, and alil sleep.
the beginning of 2018 i made a resolution...
1) Work less... Im still trying... but ive cut back substantially
2) Give more... crazy aint it, but i know its possible
This is the realest most important thing to learn...
I was caught up in this for about 4yrs... because i thought being "lazy" in my younger years or not being focus set me back... so i had a goal and killed myself trying to reach it...
only to realize... hardwork isnt all you need to succeed lmao, smh...
U are not suppose to kill urself working...
i feel like i wasted 4yrs of my life, and i can barely remember what happened in them years... it was a fukking blur of work, driving to and from work, and alil sleep.
the beginning of 2018 i made a resolution...
1) Work less... Im still trying... but ive cut back substantially
2) Give more... crazy aint it, but i know its possible
You thought this was gonna be a Brian Pumper thread in Higher LearningI thought this thread was going to be about ppl using social media like Twitter and Instagram to promote their home-made porn hustles
Me too
No More “Struggle Porn”
I don’t like @GaryVee.
I say @GaryVee because I don’t know Gary Vaynerchuk personally. He could be delightful and entirely unlike his online persona. But his Internet character is doing harm to would-be entrepreneurs.
Go watch a typical post from GaryVee if you’re not familiar with him:
There are two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this.
The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what GaryVee broadcasts: struggling is good.
You should be working long hours, failing for ten years, starting a side hustle to fund your side hustle. You shouldn’t be comfortable because comfort is death, or worse, mediocrity. I mean shyt, he even suggests feeling suicidal is normal. Notably absent is the step where you get to start with a $3,000,000 wine business (1).
Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing. I think Vaynerchuk would want them to hear “If I work hard at the right thing I can succeed,” but the message is easily misinterpreted as “if I’m struggling, I’m doing the right thing.”
I call this “struggle porn”: a masochistic obsession with pushing yourself harder, listening to people tell you to work harder, and broadcasting how hard you’re working.
Struggle porn has normalized sustained failure. It’s made it acceptable to fly to Bali and burn through your life savings trying to launch an Amazon dropshipping business. Made it reasonable to keep living on your parents money for years after graduation while you try to become #instafamous. Made LinkedIn into a depressingly hilarious circlejerk for people who look way too excited to be having their headshot taken.
Working hard is great, but struggle porn has a dangerous side effect: not quitting. When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.
I went through a startup accelerator when I was in college, something I’ve written about from other angles here and here, and one thing that stood out to me is how many people in the entrepreneurial community were working on businesses going nowhere slowly.
In one particularly egregious case, someone had been building a company for four years, had no revenue or customers, and would sneak into his alma matter’s cafeteria to steal food to extend his runway. Last I checked he was still working on it. He’s also a big fan of GaryVee.
Of course, there were some big successes out of the Pittsburgh startup ecosystem, but the vast majority of people in the accelerators and community were strugglepreneurs: people building businesses going nowhere quickly that felt they were accomplishing something because they were struggling.
Struggle porn gives you a sense of progress if you feel like you’re failing. You don’t need to look at metrics like revenue because you know you’ve been working hard, and that guy on Instagram said that’s what it takes. Eat Sleep Code Repeat.
In this way, struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something. When a real human won’t have sex with you, you turn to porn, and when your creative work is failing, you turn to struggle porn.
Rule #1 of #StrugglePorn: if someone is bragging about how hard they’re working, you can be sure their business is failing.
I don’t know anyone running a multi-million dollar business who follows struggle pornographers like GaryVee. They don’t need the feel-good reassurance that beating their head against the wall is worthwhile. They’re making money, not LinkedIn posts. They’re busy, not struggle busy.
“Struggle busy” is how struggle porn distracts you from accomplishing what the struggle is supposed to be in the direction of. Instead of thinking “maybe my difficulty getting traction is a sign that I need to try something else,” the reaction is “this isn’t doing well yet, but if I keep struggling then eventually things will work out.”
It’s worth making a distinction here: I’m not saying you shouldn’t work hard, or that starting a business isn’t hard, I’m saying you shouldn’t fetishize struggling, and you definitely shouldn’t waste your time on consuming quasi-motivational struggle porn that makes you feel bad about how hard you’re not working.
A good way to tell if that’s what you’re following is the value of whatever media someone posts. Most of GaryVee’s posts are just variations on the same message: work harder, stop doing a job you hate, you can do it, look at me I’m GaryVee. He occasionally breaks from that to try making something useful, like this post on how he grew VaynerMedia, but it’s a 550-word fluff post that says “culture is important.”
I’ve been picking on GaryVee a lot since he’s an easy target, but this applies to most of the entrepreneurs on Instagram. Going through the “ten Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow,” it’s more of the same junk. Photos of them with some motivational quotation plastered over it, sharing some platitude and telling their followers to follow their dreams (2).
If you’re looking at motivational quotations on Instagram while squatting over the toilet, that’s not going to solve your creative roadblock. And if you’re one of the Instagram accounts spreading #struggleporn, please stop.
But the broader takeaway is to avoid focusing on bad proxies for success. How hard you’re working isn’t a good indicator of the value you’re creating or the progress you’re making. It’s a vanity metric: just as how many Twitter followers you have is a poor measure for the vitality of your business, the amount you’re struggling isn’t a good measure of how much you’re learning and progressing.
Footnotes
1. This is a cheap shot, I know, but it’s ridiculous that someone who was given this insane of an entrepreneurial head start is telling people to stop working normal jobs and start a business “like him.”
2. The Instagram accounts of popular entrepreneurs are so similar I have to wonder if they aren’t hiring the same media agency to run them. Or if they’re all just copying each other.
Amazing post...
End Thread
I thought this thread was going to be about ppl using social media like Twitter and Instagram to promote their home-made porn hustles
Make the thread. Crack an egg on the topic.You thought this was gonna be a Brian Pumper thread in Higher Learning
Me too
Lowkey I could see citations needed doing an ep on this.
@ineedsleep212
@ineedsleep212
I mean it's patently anti-science that "if I listen to the audiobook at double speed I accomplish more" as if the simple act of checking the box that the book is "read" means more than actually comprehending and understanding the text beyond the most literal level possible. It's like people who complain about "plotholes" in films without actually engaging with the film itself as it's meant to be interpreted and it's themes imparted.
This whole "I work harder and thus am better than you" attitude is so toxic because the people doing this have dismissed every single engagement that isn't surface level as a waste of effort and efficiency. And yet they brag about this shyt all day long on social media.
This whole "I work harder and thus am better than you" attitude is so toxic because the people doing this have dismissed every single engagement that isn't surface level as a waste of effort and efficiency. And yet they brag about this shyt all day long on social media.
1000%
Would pair well with the perseverance porn episode they did.
Yes. Maybe that's why this concept sounded so familiar. I knew they covered some variation of this topic before....
Hell I literally talked with a shrink friend about this the other day. Pushing and grinding is all well and good in short bursts for accomplishment, but you can't live like that. You can't view the world as a struggle to grind up against every minute of every day. You gotta be kind to yourself and respect yourself and your time and that not everything needs to be codified in how much nebulous "accomplishment" you're making.
Sbp
Superstar
I always said Gary V was full of shyt
Yea I hate those ads on youtube ol "I turned 3k into 3000000000 in 2 months readings stocks" ass
I thought this thread was going to be about ppl using social media like Twitter and Instagram to promote their home-made porn hustles
