how i interviewed nyc's biggest content house
explaining my thought process for this piece and its volatile changes throughout
Welcome to ‘I Made This,’ a special edition of it’s steffi, where I show you how I wrote a story, and the many stories behind it.
Content houses are one of the creator economy’s most confusing developments. I have no idea why they’re so popular, and if they actually work or not.
The biggest advantage, of course, is the audience growth. One creator might have 1 million subscribers, while another has 5 million. Surely, some of those 5 million might start following the former creator, while the former audience may not have heard of the latter creator. There’s symbiosis in your visibility, which is great.
Creating is also a notoriously lonely job. Living together in a house, or feeling like you belong to a team, can be comforting as you work with other creators. You can edit together, ideate together, find solace in having the same haters.
Above all, the most visible advantage is that a content house provides a wealth of new content for you. Another house member is another character you can add into the mix. And as fans grow to love the others, they become a hook for your own platform. As I wrote, it’s like watching your favorite ensemble cast sitcom from multiple points of view.
I find content houses to be confusing because there are several disadvantages. First, it requires people finding a house together. Not just any old, 800-square-foot apartment. You need a huge space you can film in, do stupid shit in, flex in. That’s expensive as fuck. You might not like everyone in your house, which could mean that you’re forced to live with people you hate for your social media career. And when someone in your house gets embroiled in scandal, guess what? You get sucked along with it.
There was something else that confused me about a content house’s disadvantages, and this piece was going to find out why.
Perhaps it’s a bit cynical, but that’s the interest I had when going in to interview New York City’s newest content house. Four Asian-American YouTubers, they all individually grew on college YouTube content before jumping into this house postgrad. I was a very active fan of one particular influencer, so I was interested to see their journey into a content house; when they first announced it, I didn’t think it was something they’d ever consider.
The house was the biggest one I’d ever seen in New York. Rent was $21,500 total — $5,375 per person, if you theoretically split that in four — and the ceilings were so high I could not believe there was a floor above it. The evidence of their attempts at entertaining you were littered everywhere. Toy cars, soju bottles, lighting equipment, a skate ramp, rollerblades, gag toys, cameras, all the scattered traces of trying to create fun.
They were perfectly nice, good people in the two separate interviews we did together, albeit when I probed about their strategy, they seemed taken aback, as if they could possibly have one one beyond “being friends and staying authentic to our fans.” In the middle of the apartment, they had a big whiteboard entitled “CHAPTER,” where they planned out the next week’s coordinated video releases in their faux-sorority meeting (I was told it was a joke based on college Greek life).
Sink or swim? The only squad of vloggers I ever remembered as making an impact was David Dobrik’s Vlog Squad, which has been in the process of upending its dark and ugly underbelly. Content houses live in my mind from clippings of scandal headlines. This content house was certainly friends. That felt clear. But can you have faith in the strategy of being friends to confidently sustain such high rent?
At the beginning of pitching this piece, I tried to ask myself why I thought this house was different, worth profiling and spending my time on. After a month of writing and rewriting, I came to a weird conclusion: they’re not different from anyone else, despite their convictions that they are. And no other house should really claim to be so different, either.
Let me explain by bending the timeline backwards first. The morning the piece went live, I received a text from one of the house members asking me to change the opening sentence of the piece. Not because of safety issues or identification errors or it was grammatically incorrect. It didn’t fit the brand they were trying to build. That’s what they told me.
I politely declined, thanking them for their concern but explaining that my priority is pursuing the truth and the execution of the story, both of which I did my job on. They texted me again, saying they would really appreciate me changing that sentence. It just was not how they wanted to be represented. I once again declined. Moments later, they called me on the phone, unannounced. On a Saturday! They asked once again if I could change the opening sentence. I asked if they would like to speak with my editor. They said yes, they’d like to take a call with my editor.
Earlier in the month, I had been included in one member’s vlog. I didn’t necessarily care, since I wore a mask and remained unnamed, but I was not asked permission for my face to be in their vlog. I was not told the footage would be included in any final video. I was not given a heads up, before or after it published. And I was not credited for my unchecked appearance on a video which now has over 400,000 views.
I can’t say I was necessarily surprised by their actions, nor do I necessarily care enough to try and get angry about it. The job of influencers involves being hyper-focused on your own image, and creators are not used to someone else telling their story, outside of their platform’s control. Of course, the inclusion of someone else onto their own platforms does not deserve that same thought process. They’re so cool and fun! Why would anyone not want to be a part of their YouTube channel?
Insider’s Kat Tenbarge, who first revealed the sexual assault allegations against Dobrik, said something similar about his Vlog Squad:
“This is what it’s really like going into a situation involving an incredibly famous YouTuber ... Hannah was uncomfortable, and from the moment she walked in the door there were cameras in her face,” Tenbarge told BuzzFeed News. “There were no consent forms, no professionalism, no structure. It wasn’t operating like a business, even though that’s what it was. It was operating like a frat house, but bringing in millions of dollars.”
I thought back to that “CHAPTER” whiteboard. This is my final ick about content houses. Since the dawn of these collaborations, there has been little to no difference between content houses. Sure, you have ones that are platform-specific, or community-specific, like the Black creator houses in Atlanta. But content houses have historically just been a group of young people with cameras, pulling stunts on each other, trying to go viral. There is little variation in their intention and final product. And with so much more saturation, so many more houses with so many weird names, I wonder how truly lucrative it could be for one’s career.
At best, it can just mean a group of overconfident social media stars thinking that their following is an upper hand (or that they’re better than a Pulitzer-winning newsroom, but I didn’t want to like, laugh in front of them). At worst, it can mean corporations funneling money into a rickety venture of people who could irreparably harm each other in the name of content.
We have watched the birth and the expansion of an entire industry based on attention. It’s an economy that hinges on hoping someone will like you. With that, some creators have really been able to fracture the strongholds of old-guard industries to create great things. But as it stands now, content houses are an attempt at maximizing potential favor in the competition to capture your eyes. We have yet to see it successfully work without being corny. Will it ever?
You can read my interview with New York City’s biggest content house here.