 I followed you on Twitter for 10 years. Oh, why tell me right now? Live reactions, live reactions. Pretend you haven't known me for 15 minutes now. How would you introduce yourself to me if you could do it all over? If I could go back in time, I'm Hunter. I'm a writer. I live in New York. I write about pop culture and movies and TV and music. I have a newsletter that comes out twice a week. Now you. My name's Tefi. I'm from Miami and I do a lot of pop culture series. I remember somebody asked me, Tefi, is it true that Brad Pitt was married to someone before Angelina Jolie? No, crazy. And then all my hair fell out. Oh my God, I'm sorry, I opened the schools. Yeah. And I started doing pop culture series stuff and I talk a lot about mental health. So I always tell people I get the most work during Hispanic Heritage Month and mental health awareness. I will say Black History Month keeps me in the green. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Like, can't wait for Feb. But I've been following you for so long and I feel like you've talked about culture for so long. You're such a fresh perspective and a real perspective. I think everybody's so busy being likable that you'd rather be remembered for having your voice. But I think that's what makes your stuff so engaging. It does feel like I'm hearing about this from a friend, not someone who's above me or someone below me. Like, I'm having a conversation with you about literally stuff that's happening in the news already. In equal. Yeah, yeah, appear, appear. All I'm trying to do is be a peer. It's all I'm trying to do. When did you start thinking of yourself as a creator or do you at all? I don't think that influencer or creator has the same negative connotation that maybe it did seven years ago. But I do think of myself as a writer only because my idea of an influencer or creator needs a level of validation that I don't require as a writer. I write what I feel and what I think is true and I don't have to partner with a brand or see myself as someone who is consumable in the same way. I think that my writing, either people like it or they don't. If I wrote for an audience that only agreed with me, that would feel like so boring. So boring. I don't want to be like in an echo chamber of like validation in the same way that I think brand partnerships, like just the financial logistics, you really do have to like speak to some kind of corporate idea that as a writer, as someone whose job it is to consume and critique something, I think it's like more natural to me. Tell me about the transition off YouTube and kind of how you find your way to different platforms. I didn't start making money off the internet until I was 31 and I'm 33. My transition from being like a receptionist to going to YouTube was different for me because I wasn't 21. I knew who I was. I knew what I didn't want to do. And while being like an influencer or a content creator is a new job, it had been around for enough time that I saw how people did it in a way that I didn't want to do. I came on there liking who I was and I wasn't scared of being canceled because I know I'm not a hateful person. So I kind of just went like fully into it. I feel like the comments on YouTube are the most hateful, horrible. And then on TikTok, I found like a nicer community. So I feel like I was more willing to like be myself. So during quarantine and going from YouTube to TikTok because I had a show and I didn't want to lose that audience because I thought I was only going to be away for like two weeks. Oh yeah, that point in the pandemic. I started to find like a corner of the internet that I really, really liked. Pop culture, I realized now looking back, it was a way for me to talk about myself without talking about myself. Totally. How do you choose which culture you're going to focus on? Is it about what you like or what your audience likes or maybe neither likes, but is broadly popular? That's a big one. Yeah, I think the latter is definitely not for me. Once I start chasing something trending, that's like kind of the death knell, I think, of everything I do. It feels fake. Yeah, and people like my stuff because it's like authentic or it's like what I actually feel and believe. Hunter, people love your stuff. No, but I'm just saying I felt bad that I wasn't like talking about Selling Sunset or Pump Rules except that I don't really watch, which is because I don't want to, but because I just don't have time. Everyone was like, if you don't want to talk about the Kardashians, don't talk about the Kardashians. We want to hear you go super long on. On what you want. On something that's like so specific and so niche and so random, like what tabs you can see that Gwyneth Paltrow has open on her computer. That stuff I can go for hours on that, but I really only have like four opinions about like skims. Those are like kind of the bets that I place and I appreciate that my audience trusts me. People can tell when you're not excited to talk about something. Yeah, they can tell. If I don't have fun making it, no one's gonna have fun reading it. How has Twitter or X changed since you started? I mean, where to begin? I know, like how much time do you have? It's so much less fun now and I think because people are taking it more seriously, it doesn't feel like the same town square space. It feels like a lot more serious and a lot more like womp, womp. The Flat Earthers have a grip in it too. Yeah, yeah. It's not a place where I like want to start a conversation but it is a place where like, oh, if I have like a passing thought about like something looking crazy, yes, fine, that can be a tweet and like whatever. Same question for you, how has TikTok changed? I really just loved long form content from the beginning. As you can probably tell from this interview, I cannot shut the fuck up for the life of me. You have the gift of Gab. I'm a Gabber. When I started, I remember my team being like, have you tried? I can't even say it. Doing a dance, I'm like, I'm 30. I'm 30. Now on TikTok, it's a place where people want to know you, not just see you. I feel like TikTok is a place where you can get to know me but it's also where I make money. It's my brand deals, like that segue. You like that? How do you feel about brand deals? Do they feel natural to you or are they still something extra? They're only extra. They do not feel natural to me at all. I recorded one TikTok for a brand deal and it was rejected. They were like, wait, this is not good. Shut up. No, literally. And I was like, oh, oops. And they're like, you have to like re-record it. That's the bane of my fricking existence. I had never heard of that before. I felt so bad about myself. Oh my God, no. Turning on a front-facing camera, I wanted to die. It was so bad. So I think in that way, because I think of myself first as a writer, when I try to do something on TikTok or something on Reels, God forbid, it doesn't feel so personal to me when it flops because I'm like, oh, I'm not panning in my normal canvas. How do you think about seeking validation? Because I think seeking validation, even though I can say a lot of things about how I don't let people who read me dictate what I do, I ultimately need them to appreciate something about it because that's how I make money. So how does that work for you? Anybody that says that they don't care about the validation online is a liar. They're a liar. I think there are some things where the validation is important and when it comes to doing brand deals, especially like you don't wanna come off as like some kind of like grifter, do you think that people will keep subscribing via Patreon, Substack, or are we at the beginning of the end of the subscription abrah? If we are, I'm in trouble. I was gonna say, scary, scary, spooky, spooky. I think that it is kind of like a mind shift, a culture shift that I like this, first time I like this thing so I should be willing to pay for it. I don't think it's going away. The thing with TikTok, with Instagram, maybe was the start of it, is liking someone's content enough that you are willing to like support it and want to support it is like a very important mind shift that's only happened like the last 10 years. I think everything is just a vehicle for that idea. Before it was YouTube, then it was Instagram, now it's TikTok, now it's Patreon, Substack, all those things. They're always like another version of that. I send emails for a living and that's like the oldest tech we have, basically. Literally. The fact that there's just a vehicle for receiving money, for like writing 1,500 words a week and sending it to someone's email, that's the newest part of it, but that's not the most trendy part of it. Which puts me more on like creator space than writer space, but what I'm doing is writing. Okay, so this is the big question. So after TikTok goes away, what's the next thing? What's the next platform? What should we be looking toward? I don't think it's even about the next. It's like, I'll see you on the YouTube. I always tell people, you've known what you wanted to do as a little kid, but society got in the way. Or like, maybe even capitalism got in the way. And you always find yourself back to where you started. It's whatever you need, safety-wise, or whatever you feel in your spirit to feel whole, it always manifests in some way. As a kid, I wanted to be seen and heard and I wondered if people liked me. Now look at me. How about my baby? At the end of the day, a lot of people online want to be known. And that is what I love about today's generation. I'm just like you, but I'm also me and I like you for you. That's the internet and that the earth is flat. You know, you know. I do think that what you're saying is the most perceptive part. What we're doing is not new. We're not creating, having opinions and sharing them. The internet is what it is. And now we can support ourselves from this in a different way. But I definitely think if we were 30 years earlier, you would be like an it girl. I would be like a dilettante. That's how it is. No, I would aspire a dilettante. I think that's kind of like what we're doing. It's just now we can support ourselves through a different way. The internet can be a scary house to live in, but I wouldn't know you without the internet. You know what I mean? So many good things in my life have come. I'm just being very online. And that is upsetting, but true. Exactly. This is the best first date I've ever been on. I think that you would eat up the gilded age. You'd be like the number one it girl like you and Mrs. Aster. And I just want to thank you for your time and your presence. Oh my God, thank you so much. This was such a delight. Such a treat. Let's go internet.