AEWCH 250: CAITLIN DOUGHTY - WILL YOUR DREAM JOB RUIN YOUR LIFE?

Against Everyone with Conner Habib

Against Everyone With Conner Habib

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 679 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2024

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Friends,

Leftists and progressives more broadly are becoming increasingly aware of the lie of "loving what you do." And we're also becoming more aware of the ways corporations try to ameliorate real reflection and demands for higher wages via "perks" like organic cereal dispensers and "funny hat day" and other forms of glitzy dross.

But conversations about all the above, as important as they are, can sometimes reduce fuller conversations to a political/rights dimension, which don't consider feeling, culture, the individual, or even economy. One of the sites of labor where this is evident is the "dream job." That's a category that includes YouTube "stars," writers, podcasters, adult performers, and more.

My friend - regular AEWCH guest, the bestselling author and mortician and YouTube star of Ask A Mortician - Caitlin Doughty and I have been "making content" for over a decade. We talk about how the landscape has changed, where it's going, but mostly how this particular form of work is emblematic for the "dream job" that is at once elevated and belittled in our society, free and exhausting, life-giving and soul-killing.

My hope is that you'll reflect on your own work and dreams as you listen. And that we'll all talk more about how to make our artistic efforts more free and easier to engage with, while at the same time dissolving the "grind" of it.

Happy 250 episodes to this crazy, exhausting, fun, enlivening thing. Thanks for being along for the ride.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, friends. Welcome to episode 250 of Against Everyone with Connor Veep with my guest, Caitlin Doty.
0:08.9	Caitlin was part of the show from the beginning, which is almost seven years ago now.
0:15.2	Way back when I started, she let me borrow her equipment. And we even shared an editor, Caitlin's friend, my friend, Landis Blair,
0:23.5	who worked with both of us to make our episodes even more interesting and much better and
0:29.3	poppier. The episodes of my show, obviously, against everyone with Connor Abe and her
0:34.1	massive YouTube hit show Ask Mortician.
0:38.6	So I'm still doing this work seven years later and Plenty has evolved and changed.
0:43.7	And in the meantime, Caitlin's been doing it too.
0:46.3	She's been writing bestselling books, running a YouTube channel, running a nonprofit and
0:52.0	a funeral home and doing appearances.
0:57.2	Last year, she finally decided to take a break.
1:02.2	So this is her first real appearance in someone else's media in seven months.
1:09.5	One thing that Caitlin and I have been talking about that whole time, since she didn't take a sabbatical from our friendship,
1:10.8	thankfully, is the decline of the effectiveness of all forms of content-based media to shift narratives
1:22.7	or generate a sense of meaning in people's lives and how that affects our work and what we do and how we
1:28.7	view our role in the world. How do we address and change that? I mean, this might sound silly
1:35.8	to you because, you know, there is total ubiquity of online platform media, of content-based
1:41.0	media, but it does really seem to be unable to mediate or inspire narratives in the same way.
1:46.8	And I also think people are just getting a bit worn out from it, the audience and the
1:50.5	creators.
1:51.3	It's something I'm hearing from lots of my friends who have been in this as long as me or
1:55.9	longer and from some people who are new to it too.
	...

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