Issue 29: The Paradox of Niche
To niche or not to niche?
A question as old as the concept of career, and one that I’ve personally confronted, both obliquely and head-on throughout my life.
Throughout my childhood and my adolescence, I permitted myself (and, perhaps more importantly, was permitted by my teachers, parents, and mentors) to explore all of my curiosities and see where they may lead. As I entered the latter half of my teen years, I, along with all of my peers, was encouraged to define myself: academically, socially, and ultimately, (pre-)professionally.
I avoided a declaration of who I was or the work I did until my sophomore year of college at least. Even then, the topics of my interest were wide-ranging — “interdisciplinary” they were called in the language of the Academy. People I know would tell me I had the personality of a Renaissance Man, which felt like a compliment, but which also, at times, felt like a contingency I was to be warned away from by the collective wisdom of those in the business of dispensing advice.
Even still, I struggle to accurately select a moniker that feels appropriate. With the invention of the multi-hyphenate came a variation of professional language that someone without a niche could use to describe oneself, but even that terminology felt at times incoherent or disingenuous.
In this week’s issue, Lea Zikmund tackles the question of the “Paradox of Niche.” An oral historian at StoryCorps, Lea spends a lot of time with people telling their stories and has observed in intimate ways the anxiety of feeling without a niche. In the spirit of eschewing pure personal definition, Lea is also a writer, a painter, and a polymer clay jeweler, among many other things. Her jewelry line Castel celebrates the concept of creating on purpose.
Enjoy this week’s issue and see you at Noon! 🌞
xxSCREMES (Shawn)
The Roundup
Links to things you should be reading this week
Angelo Urrutia wants to create an entirely new type of style universe. • When it comes to luxury watches, the brand > a single product, no matter how popular that product may be. • Creative Director Patrick Li’s evolved view of luxury. • Weather, timer, and calculator apps that push the envelope. • A Duchess’ tales of stewardship and aristocratic camaraderie. • How the Internet is the opium for our times.
The Long Read
The week’s keynote story
Only going to read one thing? Read me.
The Paradox of Niche | Lea Zikmund | High Noon Original
Often I resist trends, only to hop on the bandwagon when it feels almost ironic to do so. Recently, I did this with TikTok and it’s opened a new world for me.
TikTok has become a place where, with the right video and timing, a small business can blow up overnight and change someone’s life. Independent business owners striving to reach an audience on TikTok, and any social media platform for that matter, have been well advised time and again to carve out a niche. There are hundreds of articles about why it’s important to have a niche if you are a small business owner. Niche allows business owners to stand out, be memorable, and cater to their targeted audience. On TikTok, however, the impact and relevance of niche stretch beyond business.
Many creators on TikTok have no feasible business at all. Perhaps they have a future business endeavor in mind, or a reason behind the desire for visibility, but without knowing that, any viewer only sees someone creating comedy, cooking videos, makeup tutorials and the like.
Scrolling through my For You Page, I often see videos from people claiming that they have no “niche.” They aren’t strictly flipping furniture, harmonizing their voice with other singers/songwriters, or posting comedy videos — but they might be doing all three! In their own ways, these creators beg of you, the viewer, to still follow them because they’re creating and expressing themselves in more than one way.
Due to the way the algorithm works, creators who bake variety into their content notice when their engagement is astronomically lower than other times. For example, Mr. Williams, a preschool teacher with a large following on TikTok spoke about the lower engagement he receives when he advocates for LGBTQ+ rights instead of his normal content about teaching.
What this indicates to me is that people, at least within a social media context, are pigeon-holed into a specific identity. If you are known for your identity as a teacher but you also care deeply about advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, you lose engagement in your advocacy because it strays from your perceived identity. The pressure to create a niche that is so specific and catered to not only your interests, but gaps in the “market” leave little to no wiggle room for exploration of identity, or even current events.
In “Tik Tok and Cultural Criticism: The democratization of social commentary,” Brian Britt talks about the buffet of culture, humor, and politics that is available within Tik Tok.
Cultural critics can no longer expect a mass audience for one big idea. Meanwhile, with staggering variety, TikTok stages debates within and across religious groups, from Muslims discussing the taste of bacon and demonstrating basketball skills to Christians quarreling over daily life, politics, and the culture wars… its dizzying variety of playful and challenging content defies generalization.
Britt complicates the idea of niche when it comes to TikTok because he shows how multi-dimensional identity is, not just right now but especially as it is displayed on TikTok. In order to succeed, creators hoping to gain a large following need to search for ultra-specificity in their identity and how they present it in their videos. Some call this the Personal Brand. For instance, Jaz posts videos of herself applying make-up while talking about Planned Parenthood, the prison system, and women who have come forward about sexual assault. Jaz visually pulls in the audience typically geared towards beauty tutorials, while also integrating social theory. She maintains her platform by constantly creating new make-up looks that will pair with her discussions of social injustice.
As a professional in the oral history field, I am personally interested in reflecting on the norms of niche and attempting to understand how they integrate themselves in the ways that people learn how to tell stories, reflect on their identities, and archive their lives. If social media algorithms and "best practices" influence us to create specific narratives and engage publicly with only certain elements of our identity over and over, how do we expand our digital selves to share more nuanced, complex versions of our experiences? How do we ensure that the nuances enhance our shared understanding rather than shadow-ban our shared truths?
When I meet new people who are choosing to record their stories with a loved one, I will first ask them what they plan on discussing. Some have a clear narrative path they plan on traveling, but every once in a while I encounter those who tell me they have no story, nothing spectacular to share. I am most saddened by this response. In my experience, those who have been convinced they have no story to tell are the ones with stories that become engrained in my memory. I believe these people think they have no story to tell because their stories don't match those that they hear in the news, movies, or radio — ones with a particular narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Personally, I am drawn to learning the little things about people that make up who they are rather than a large story they've told hundreds of times about one specific event or moment in time.
Niche can be powerful, allowing a creator, business owner, or thinker, to find an audience that will stay highly engaged in their content. At the same time, it can be limiting. Forming a niche, in a friend group or on social media, can perpetuate a shared vision that allows for little to no exploration. Having a niche is wonderful, but perhaps only if it exists on a continuum. We should all be encouraged to be specific about ourselves and what we believe, what we are passionate about, and how we view the world. But if we cannot change those things and bring our people with us, who do we become? What if you are, as Britt mentions, a Muslim who shares basketball skills, only to find that one day you no longer like basketball or can't play anymore? Who do you become, to yourself and to the community you've created?
My advice to people who say they have no story is often simply: tell me who were and who you have become. While I cannot fix the algorithm of TikTok, I can encourage individuals to take a birds-eye view of their identity and see that it is so much more complex and multi-layered than something that could be compressed into a category, a video, or a matter of seconds.
Listen
“Slow content, meaningful content, non-soundbite editing just to sort of be in the zeitgeist is okay because I say it’s okay. Instead of adapting to the pace the world is existing, someone has to turn the page.” Virgil Abloh talks about Off White’s new venture of “Imaginary” TV, opening the doors of fashion to young, non-traditional creators, and his approach to engaging with current events. If you’d rather, you can watch the conversation here.
Cheers
Inspired by an Argentinian classic, the Fernet Fantasy blends bitter Fernet with sweet cherries. Having studied in Argentina, Lea shared how tasting this drink was a nostalgic experience for her, reminiscent of a period in which every day was novel.