hello my dudes my name is tiffany welcome back to my series internet analysis where i like to research and discuss things relevant to social issues and media i have noticed a trend it seems like every influencer is moving to new york right now it is the place to be now of course new york has always been a very popular city but for a while los angeles was the prime place to be for influencers and content creators now though the city most romanticized is new york i've seen a big increase in influencers specifically moving from la
to new york a lot of this is among youtubers that i watch or youtube friends mutuals many of whom i will be referencing in this video so this topic is just something i wanted to explore for a while it kind of goes a lot of directions so just hang out stick with me we'll see if this trend bears any weight or if it's just me and obviously we've seen a lot of people moving since 2020 with the pandemic the great resignation many of us want fresh starts and now is the time either move to the
city you've always wanted to live in or move out and reassess your priorities do you want a busy city life or do you want a cottage and a garden there's a lot out there in this video i want to explore this trend and specifically focus on why influencers might move for their content why is new york so popular right now and why does it seem like la is not as cool on social media as it used to be so let's continue the classic and endless east coast versus west coast debate and for personal context i
grew up in southern california about an hour south of la and i've been living in new york for a couple years now so i do have personal experience and my own opinions on each place i have love and some beef with both let's start with the trend cycle of locations this episode has been co-written by my friend sheridan and we were talking about this idea of the trend cycle of certain locations on social media for example a few years back the blue ass water era was peaking the most captivating intriguing content was about quitting your
job and becoming a digital nomad travel the world visit stunning places and work as a content creator it seemed like we'd never get tired of seeing alexis ren and jay alvarez run around on beaches and swim in greece but eventually the trend of drone footage of sick locations got old viewers had seen enough blue s water and we're no longer seeking that sort of content even the most beautiful luxurious lifestyle content can get old once we've seen enough of it it's over saturated it's overdone so this brought us to the idea that there is a
trend cycle in terms of which locations are the most clickable and aspirational to create content in the peak of the la years was a trend cycle for influencers blue ass water was another moment and now we theorize it's all about new york but we'll get to that in a bit let's discuss la culture and why creators move there when you think of los angeles california what do you picture the glamorous golden era of hollywood opportunity for fame and fortune beautiful weather year-round beaches more recently perhaps la evokes imagery of green juices fit people cosmetic procedures
let's do a little youtube geography history lesson dare i say early youtubers move to los angeles to seek out opportunities in the traditional media world like modeling singing acting they hope to use their internet fame as a stepping stone toward a more legitimate profession and also it was just more practical to live in la to be closer to your management team agents and brands to work with eventually i started getting jobs out in california and i would fly out for companies like 17 style hall or awesomeness tv and i really really loved all the work
i was doing there and i really fell in love with california in general and as i continued to travel back and forth it just became noticeable that it was very very economically dumb to be in arkansas why i was always flying out to california and spending money as more youtubers moved to the city la became a hub for collaboration remember when all the big youtubers were always collabing and doing silly challenge videos together ripped to that era naturally many youtubers moved in together as roommates to save money on rent but also to be able to
work together more easily and cross-promote on each other's channels eventually this concept evolved into the content house phenomenon where we've seen groups of influencers live together in massive mansions to do work and definitely not just flex on us all around 2014 with the rise of vine short form content creators flocked to the city as well certain areas like the spot around sunset and vine attracted a sea of creators all hoping to become superstars at one point it would have sounded absurd to move across the country to advance your career of making six second videos but
for many of the most popular miners the risk paid off soon enough la solidified itself as the place to be for all digital content creators including youtubers viners instagram models gamers take talkers trying to think of more platforms that's about it before we continue let's give a shout out to the sponsor of this portion of today's video blue land blue lands effective convenient cleaning products can help you save space and waste less instead of buying endless single-use plastic bottles all you need to clean your hands or house are these little tablets blue land doesn't use
any single-use plastic in any component from their bottles to the tablets wrappers or shipping each tablet is just two dollars and the price can go as low as 155 each if you buy in bulk let me show you how it works first you fill the bottle with warm to hot water a nice comfortable temperature drop in a tablet and once it dissolves put on the nozzle and start using it right away it's very easy and weirdly there's something satisfying about watching things dissolve is that just me so last time i got the hand soap duo
which i am still using and loving this time i got the clean essentials kit so now i have the bathroom glass and multi-purpose spray bottles and tablets and by the way going for the kits instead of picking out individual products can save you 20 percent plus if you use my link you can get an extra 20 off your first kit i highly recommend that you guys click the link in the description and check out blue land so getting back into it let's talk about los angeles as a resource everyone considers the pros and cons when
deciding whether to move somewhere what can this place offer me what opportunities await but for content creators and especially lifestyle influencers or bloggers the city they live in is a resource for their content having an aesthetic apartment with really good lighting is a tool everything that can help you create enticing clickable content is a resource so as i mentioned many creators moved to la to collaborate and to have a community but also for many simply being in la could get their content more attention honestly what's going to get more views a vlog in your nameless
hometown with your random high school friends no offense or a collab video with your new la squad doing stereotypical la things let's reminisce on the emma chamberlain dolan twins and james charles friend group sister squad was it their friendship group was a resource living in la together doing la things was great for their content the combination of the people involved and the location created some of their most highly viewed videos the sister squad era definitely had its fair share of controversies and drama which helps with attention as well there was a hint of romance emma
got a lot of hate from viewers who believed she changed after moving to la but still this era succeeded in bringing in a lot of attention and therefore income to each member of the group just like a nice camera great b-roll or unique editing a city can serve as a tool for storytelling and content creation and just like any commodifiable resource it can run out of supply and demand when everyone flocked to la after seeing the rapid success of their peers the city started to feel like the stereotype of a budding content creator get your
first 100k followers move out to la and repeat however as time went on the influx of influencers also caused the la lifestyle to lose its unattainable luster because everyone was doing it instead of being seen as a chill cool place to live and grow your following la started to be known for clout chasing and obnoxious influencers then negative experiences in la due to the disillusionment of the hollywood dream and culture shifts like the pandemic have shown that you can produce great content from anywhere so do you have to stay in la i realized for the
first time that i don't need to stay in la for my career i also think it's very much a myth that you need to be in la in order to do youtube and instagram the real work of youtube which is just sitting in front of a camera and then sitting behind a computer and editing it for like 30 hours and that's all something that i can do anywhere la fatigue as is true with people living anywhere sometimes the downsides of a place outweigh the positives and feeling the fatigue of a city can be about more
than just craving a fresh start for la common complaints include high cost of living traffic lack of walkability or public transportation fake people flaky people etc negative aspects like these can turn a place that you've always wanted to be into a reality check you can't wait to get out of i was expecting my life to somehow drastically change after moving to a new big and shiny city but after i moved and the dust settled i realized that my life didn't automatically just get better the problems i had before were still there ultimately i moved out
here based on a fantasy in my head an idea of what i wanted my life to look like so let's touch on the why i'm leaving la or why i hate la videos because they've become so common and by the way while i'm sharing the downsides that influencers have had living in la or the reasons that transplants commonly leave this video might sound like i'm [ __ ] on la and that is not the intent my main goal is to analyze how influencers interact with the cities they live in and i think very often the
la that most influencers or transplants experience is very different from how native angelinos experience the city influencers often complain that everyone is fake in la which is obviously not true but maybe influencers do get stuck in a more entertainment focused group of people social circles more prone to clout chasing or people who want to use you for fame or money and also influencers and certain transplants often stick to very specific gentrified neighborhoods or influencer bubbles so again they're experiencing certain parts of l.a certain la cultures but you cannot generalize that across la which is a
huge city l.a county as well and this isn't to take away from anyone's individual experiences in a place everyone is of course welcome to make their complaints or talk about what they went through or how they interacted with the city but people often say that la is not very diverse or that l.a doesn't have any history or culture all of which are very untrue so anyway i would love to learn more about la and i definitely recommend that you do as well if i found any resources or podcasts or books i will list them here
but feel free to share in the comments anyway one thing that is definitely true is that a lot of people have been moving out of california primarily because housing is so expensive so this is another component of why people may be leaving la and i've gotta touch on the trend of male creators leaving california following the trend set by dudebro entrepreneurs like elon musk joe rogan graham stefan even ben shapiro mostly seeing things from a more conservative lens they cite high taxes liberalism and too many homeless people as their main reasons to move to more
affordable lower tax states like texas or nevada and not to mention you can of course get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of space and property in different locations as a content creator you have so much equipment like you just need space but i wasn't about to spend three grand a month on it i feel you again with the pandemic we have seen huge population shifts many people have left big expensive cities for many reasons a lot of people have realized hey instead of spending this much on a tiny apartment i could
go buy a house or at least rent somewhere else with more space many people have lost their jobs and had to either move home or relocate to places with lower cost of living remote work has made it a lot more possible than ever to kind of move wherever you want to rather than that being dictated by your job for the people who are privileged enough to have that flexibility so again within this whole video this framework of like why are influencers moving why are they leaving la and moving to new york part of that is
just the same as everybody else different factors in their life might have made them want to move now but i will say i think there's a big difference in leaving a place that you can't afford or no longer find joy in versus being a multi-millionaire who will do anything to avoid paying taxes like logan paul who even moved to puerto rico which conveniently offers massive tax breaks for mainlanders honestly though i'm sure locals are not sad to see people move away california is crowded let's reduce that traffic congestion anyway coming back the question remains is
it just not as trendy to be in sunny beachy southern california anymore this la fatigue is not only potentially felt by creators but also possibly by their own audiences i asked about this whole topic on my instagram and one of my followers replied la has become synonymous with influencer culture new york city is complex and exciting la is basic some viewers and audiences have just grown tired of seeing the same places events and frankly the same creators that they see all the time so in my opinion new york city is the place to be right
now i've been thinking about this like which came first chicken or egg are creators moving to new york because it's trendy or is moving to new york becoming even more trendy because lots of influencers are here right now does this analogy make sense let's say you're a lifestyle influencer and people just don't seem as interested in your day in the life in la videos anymore so what do you do your ability to thrive as a lifestyle creator largely depends on having a trendy aspirational lifestyle then you might notice that lifestyle content in new york city
is really trending getting a lot more views and engagement it could be advantageous to move there so your content can benefit from that location plus moving often gives a major boost in engagement because audiences love moving vlogs and apartment hunting videos plus you'll have a new space to redecorate with a fresh trendy aesthetic which is more content it's all a win-win if you're willing to move and thanks to the flexibility of the internet content creators do have the privilege of doing their job almost anywhere so why not get a change of scenery shelby church mentioned
that a major motivator for her move was the chance to change up her location and spice up her content i also found myself being less inspired to shoot videos there felt like i had overused all the locations in la and i felt kind of burned out like i had shot i felt like everything i wanted to shoot there i felt like i was making the same kinds of videos and elena tabor even predicted the influencer shift to new york city as a good business decision early on saying she moved from california to new york city
to boost her career as an influencer in her interview with business insider elena said that she chose not to move to california's influencer hub los angeles because she thought new york would challenge her more this is partly because everyone in new york seems to be working so hard well la is more about chill lifestyle content i knew moving here would open more doors because it's where a lot of brands are where a lot of other creative individuals are it's a great place to just meet people and get connected there's a hustle that you find in
new york that does also bleed into content creation let's get into why people love new york new york is one of the most famous and well-loved cities it is obviously not a trend to want to live in new york but i do think there are many reasons why influencers specifically are coming to new york right now and again i think that's part of the content creation location trend cycle new york feels like the epitome of city life the density the buildings the skyline there's great public transportation and the city can be very walkable depending on
your neighborhood again i asked my instagram followers to tell me their thoughts or perception of new york and here were some of the most common responses being in new york is motivating you know you have to work hard to survive now i do not support hustle culture but i know that some people do feel energized or empowered by this new york is very diverse while la is primarily known for showbiz new york seems to have more of a variety of industries you have the creative side with lots of art museums broadway new york fashion week
then of course you have wall street and lots of corporate work lots of stuff going on and again obviously la has much more to it than just the film and television industry but these are the common stereotypes or perceptions that my followers had what about new york city as a resource to create content i moved from los angeles california to new york city new york and i love it here like oh my god so fella generally offers sunny beachy locations and hollywood collabs what does new york city offer in terms of creative resources i think
a major benefit of the city is the aesthetic appeal especially for lifestyle influencers vloggers and anyone who posts a lot on instagram living in new york offers a lot of aesthetic benefits brownstone buildings beautiful sidewalks bridges riverside views new york also has really great street style so especially for fashion photos or outfits of the day there are just so many good spots to take great outfit picks new york also has much more distinct seasons compared to la which gives creators a full range to explore different seasonal styles and this i think really can't be understated
in terms of the fashion community being able to truly evolve what you're wearing the combinations of outfits you're putting together season to season can make a really big difference in making your content feel fresh and fun and exciting versus in la where typically the coldest it gets is like 60 degrees fahrenheit ish you don't get a true winter in la you typically have like very kind of moderate temperate temperatures temperate temperatures i am a meteorologist overall i think predominant like aesthetic trends and style trends are very influential in this conversation like to me la is
very reminiscent of beachy like bikini pictures palm trees which will always be a vibe but to some people it might feel a little passe again i think we got so much of it really in the past like 5-10 years that maybe audiences want something else and maybe creators want something else as well i think the popular aesthetics right now are shifting the mainstream aesthetics and perhaps new york city just more closely aligns to that aesthetic it's a more edgy mature style based on what i've seen kind of like this i feel like elena's instagram is
really great for this kind of dreamy city content but again this is my theory based on the stuff that i've seen the content that comes across my feeds but depending on which circles you run in online this may be completely untrue let me know and again in terms of using new york city as a resource for content you can use a lot of those same strategies from la or anywhere else and apply them to new york for example so like content production even collab houses my friend anne marie recently moved into honestly one of the
biggest apartments i've ever seen in new york city with a bunch of other youtube friends and they have a unofficial official content house your mom's house it's been very interesting to see that content house kind of dynamic work in new york city because i haven't seen that much i haven't come across that in my own feed and it's still working the cross promotion the audiences of everyone getting excited to see the crossovers it's a classic strategy and you get to live with your friends but i will say that generally from what i've seen new york
lifestyle or vlog collabs are less like sit down challenge 2014-ish and more natural just meeting up with friends and having crossover content with fellow new york influencers let's touch on tick tocks influence there's been a lot of fashion student in new york content lately typically depicting young women living the classic new york dream life lots of cute outfits running around the city going to clubs it feels very sex in the city even though i've never seen that these tick tocks obviously romanticize living in new york and yes it helps if you're thin white and rich
i was reading some comments and they said all of a sudden my entire for you page goes to new york city fashion school and as many commenters pointed out a lot of this content represents an unrealistic white gentrified version of new york and that new york city is not as glamorous as the internet makes it seem which brings me to the lifestyle that only influencers live the truth is the lives of influencers living in big cities are dramatically different from the lives of average young people living in those places while influencers live in incredible apartments
and almost exclusively only in you know the most expensive and in demand neighborhoods mostly just in manhattan or brooklyn some influencers seem to constantly be eating at the best restaurants always shopping for new clothes and can still afford to travel elsewhere frequently what i spend in a week videos really revealed how different the spending and lifestyles of influencers are content creation has allowed a lot of young people to make way more money than the typical 20-something salary so they have so much more disposable income than the average person and by the way i include myself
in this because i am also an influencer by trade and i know i for sure would not be making the income that i am if i were working at a nine to five it's highly unlikely plus the actual lifestyle like day to day of being a content creator you typically don't have a commute you most likely work from home or maybe a workspace like a we work or the wing your schedule tends to be a lot more flexible and for lifestyle influencers and bloggers specifically their life truly is their content so they're able to live
this relaxed productive lifestyle because doing those things is their content we see a lot of time dedicated to hobbies workout classes self-improvement activities that most people with a full-time job just don't have enough time or energy for i was actually interviewed for an article this one which is kind of roughly on the topic of lifestyle influencers living this perfectly productive aesthetic lifestyle say lifestyle one more time highly recommend reading it anyway compare all of that to the typical young person living in a big city especially if you're a student you're likely broke living off ramen
drinking cheap alcohol and for a lot of people in new york their day consists of long crowded subway rides low wage work and rent prices that are incredibly hard to keep up with i will say there's also usually a big difference in the behaviors and lifestyles of transplants which many influencers including myself are and born and raised new yorkers born and raised new yorkers horrible accent i'm sorry i just had to do it most of the popular new york city influencers are not actually from here so that just naturally kind of warps the audience's general
perception of like what is living in new york like just like the problems we have with la influencers sometimes the depiction of new york the new york that is shown by influencers is typically a very narrow scope of the city a more gentrified expensive glamorous version focused on a handful of neighborhoods versus like the five boroughs of new york where instead of every day being a dream it's a grind and it's [ __ ] hard next i want to discuss new york and main character syndrome at first i want to touch on the fact that
new york is a character i didn't make that up new york has long been considered a character in cinema the city is living breathing always moving the city is interactive in good and bad ways you don't just live in new york you get enveloped by it for example remember casey neistat's new york city vlog era so many of his best shots came from just living in the city and being able to capture so many exciting locations and shots but by the way i have to mention he recently tweeted this horrible tweet about la which i
found while researching this so our cars got robbed this morning because los angeles is a crime riddled third world [ __ ] of a city but tremendous appreciation and gratitude to the hard-working officers of the lapd west la who not only arrested the [ __ ] but they got all of our stolen goods back it's just infuriating and embarrassing that kind of just sums up when people move to a place and then just start [ __ ] talking it it's like hey you don't have to live here how dare you generalize an entire city with
such harsh words privileged to ask youtubers am i right anyway continuing living in new york often induces main character syndrome we've all experienced main character syndrome moments like the classic looking out a car window listening to music where you feel like you're the lead in a movie i think a lot of coming-of-age moments or transitional periods trigger this main character feeling for example taking the risk of moving alone to a big new city it's aspirational it's a major goal for a lot of people it's a classic young adult dream i think it's very natural especially
moving to such an iconic city like new york that this experience would make you feel like a main character riding the subway dancing in the street having a picnic in the park charcuterie boards looking out of your fire escape when your life is somehow mirroring the popular media depictions of a place it feels like a movie now let's say you yourself can't or don't really want to move to your favorite place it's not in the cards right now you can at least follow people who do live there this is part of the reason why lifestyle
content is so popular it allows the audience to live vicariously through the creator who is often portrayed as living the dream whatever sort of lifestyle you want there are creators making that type of content every exciting thing that the creator does and captures the viewer can experience that a little bit as well and now final thoughts my co-writer sheridan and i had had some very unhinged voice messages while writing and researching this and one of our perhaps most interesting tangents was about this what kind of person can you become in a specific place and what
does this place represent so when we're thinking about why people want to live somewhere or we're thinking about why influencers want to live somewhere we were thinking about like the media narratives about new york city all the shows we've seen gossip girls sex and the city that make us want to live there similarly shows about la southern california then we were looking at the trend cycles of places and kind of the the personalities of cities again the battle of east coast versus west coast one of the things that i remembered writing this video was i
think a meme or a saying where it's like people on the west coast are nice but not kind and people on the east coast are kind but not nice and basically that's like would you rather have someone give you really smiley customer service like hi how are you thanks or are you better off with kind of rough customer service that isn't trying to bs you what do you want a coffee i'm not going to do more than new york accents i'm not going to do it and that is kind of something that i've noticed especially
you know i've lived in california i've lived in new york i lived in new orleans which was a totally different kind of hospitality and level of friendliness the way that strangers interact with others it's fascinating i think another major question that sheridan and i considered in this video was like what kind of working ethos does each city represent again elena taber mentioned in that article california is chill but new york is where you go if you want to grind basically though i would say a lot of people would say la is a very grind hustle
focused city as well depending on what you're doing watch selling sunset you gotta hustle to sell those million dollar homes the damn thing i just did was kind of like the uh out of the box again everything i've said in this video uh a lot of it's just based on stereotypes and my perspective on the uh perceptions so you can let me know which city is more hustle and grind new york or la or maybe throw in a curveball chicago toronto london lastly i want to include another message from one of my followers who said
i don't live in either place and it feels like not living in one of those two places means that i don't exist and that just reminds me of the whole concept of coastal elitism you know i feel for this person and i got a lot of messages from people who said you know they consume a lot of media about new york or la or american cities and they're not from this country you're not not even from this hemisphere and it's very interesting how far these media narratives stretch and how aspirational these places are even to
people who don't live in this country but yeah we do kind of have this popular idea that if you're not in one of the big exciting cities then you're not doing life right especially if you're young and that sucks and it's not true so for my last few points i know i said final thoughts 10 minutes ago content creators can make content from anywhere but i understand why living in an exciting enviable place can be beneficial and also it does make sense that people who are privileged enough to make a good living by making content
might want to enjoy that income and that freedom in one of their favorite cities wherever that might be it's interesting i've been thinking about this a lot the idea of like is there a perfect place for me what place do i feel my best in where do i feel at home i think we all dream of finding the perfect place to optimize ourselves be our best selves where are we gonna be our coolest our most productive our wealthiest the most social because i'll be honest any time i visited la it didn't really feel perfect to
me and i never actually dreamed of living in new york it just kind of happened and i've had a great time here but i won't say that this has been like a movie like experience you know so i get pessimistic and i'm like oh maybe there isn't that perfect place for me where do i belong but i think it's a comforting reminder to say that there is no such thing as a perfect place if you're lucky enough to find a place that really feels like home to you that is wonderful but many of us don't
find that place that just clicks with our soul and that's okay i think bottom line live wherever you want or wherever you can based on your life circumstances we don't all need to aspire to live in big fancy expensive cities but if that is what you value hell yeah if it's not hell yeah it's where i get very libra reminder that housing is a human right we need higher wages we need much more unionization so that workers can have more power in their workplaces i think a lot of that would help people be happier where
they are or be able to live in a more expensive place if they knew that their basic needs would be met a flexible comfortable lifestyle should not only be reserved to the random people who have gained a following online okay hope you guys enjoyed that oh my god i have an exciting thing to remind you of before i forget internet analysis episodes the entire full episode same thing that you'll see on youtube is now available to watch or listen on spotify i'm so excited this is a new feature that they've been rolling out and a
lot of you have said that you listen to these episodes essentially like a podcast so that'll be very convenient for you go follow subscribe to internet analysis on spotify and i hope that that makes listening or watching my content easier or more enjoyable and i want to be on a bunch of people's spotify wrapped next year so let's get on that what else oh shout out to my patrons everybody i've been posting more bonus content on patreon we do monthly live streams i did an animal crossing stream and it was really fun also i'm doing
a form of vlogmas on my vlog channel i'm just posting a bunch of random silly vids during december so if you want to check those out feel free i know there's a lot of content during december extra shout outs to casey luck vivianeolodon.com jeff oow face jaden marty schmeichel abby hayden and rebecca devilier thank you guys so much for being patrons and one last thank you to today's sponsor blue land make sure you click the link in the description if you want to get an extra 20 off your first kit that is all until next
time okay thanks bye
