when joy demands a paycheck: the toxic pressure to monetize everything.

Unless you’re making money off something, posting it, or turning it into profit, what you do seems worthless. It doesn’t matter if you genuinely enjoy it. No money, no point.

This sentiment is deafeningly clear in a capitalist society, where we’re constantly fed the message that every part of our lives should be productive. Had a long day at work? If you head home to rest, you’re just lazy. You should have found time to work on your next side hustle.

The pressure to monetize joy ignores the vast differences in individual capacity and circumstance. Some may have the strength to work full days of physical labor. Others might be mentally drained from demanding white-collar jobs. And if you find a moment for a hobby after work, you’re questioned why it isn’t a business. Work on anything too long without success, and people assume you must not be good enough to make money from it. Find enjoyment from streaming? You should feel ashamed that you only have two followers. Stick to the day job!

Maybe it has something to do with the “I” mentality that’s so common in the West. We’re raised to think about success in individual terms: what I achieve, what I make, how I prove my worth. This idea reflects what many refer to as Western individualism, the notion that people are primarily responsible for their own success and that independence, uniqueness, and personal achievement are key indicators of value.

In contrast, many Eastern cultures place a greater emphasis on the collective, on “we.” This is known as Eastern collectivism, where identity is often tied to one’s role within a group, and meaning is derived from contributing to the collective whole. There, success might be measured not by how much you stand out, but by how well you support those around you. It doesn’t mean either way is perfect, but it does make you wonder how much our culture pushes us to be exceptional at the cost of being present. For example, Western individualism pushes self-branding and personal profit. Eastern collectivism, as seen in Japan, values group harmony and corporate loyalty, where personal time is often sacrificed for the collective good. While both systems have pressures, they reflect different ideas of what makes life meaningful.

I wonder when society shifted into this mindset where everything in life had to serve a purpose beyond just being enjoyed. Maybe it started with social media, when simply existing wasn’t enough. You had to be seen. But I think there’s more to it than that. We’re told to optimize, monetize, or market ourselves in every possible way. Even activities like resting or taking up a hobby come with the pressure to turn them into something productive.

Social media made that worse. The way platforms are built, it’s not the quiet or honest stuff that gets rewarded; it’s whatever grabs the most attention. So people start tying their worth to numbers. If something doesn’t get likes or views, it must not matter. And that kind of thinking gets under your skin fast. People would do ‘follow4follow’ to boost their follower count, unfollowing afterward just to appear more significant.  Some Instagram users even paid for likes on their photos.

And I get it. I played the numbers game too when I was younger, growing up as a teenager who didn’t really have friends. But over time, you realize how hollow it starts to feel, especially when the engagement never quite matches the effort.

There’s also the reality that a lot of people are just trying to survive. Jobs don’t feel as secure as they once did. Pay doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. I was recently paid $16.50 an hour for a full-time contact center job. The work was tolerable, and I liked most of the people I worked with, but there wasn’t room for growth. I mostly felt like I was still there because I was surviving during a mental and physical low.

With an underlying condition not yet diagnosed, I had extremely low energy. Each eight-hour shift would leave me going straight to bed, only to wake up and do it all again. For a short period, I even took a second job at Chipotle, but I left after a couple of months because it became overwhelming for my mental health.

So it’s not always about chasing clout or trying to go viral. Sometimes people hope that what they enjoy might also help them make ends meet. It’s not always about wanting to be seen; sometimes it’s about needing a way to keep going.

And now, in 2025, more people than ever want to be influencers. It isn’t necessarily difficult as long as the individual is likable. The audiences are already there, constantly scrolling. As we dive deeper into the digital age, more generations are active online, each with a potential audience waiting to be captured. All you have to do is grab their attention.

So people try. And try. And try again, only to feel completely invisible when what they’re working on doesn’t immediately click.

That mindset leads to a deeper kind of distortion, where narcissism creeps into everyday life. Not necessarily in the clinical sense, but in how we evaluate one another. We start asking, “What are you doing for me? What do you contribute that benefits me?”

People begin treating others like tools for their own advancement. Worse, they see someone living quietly, pursuing their own joy, and decide that person must be lazy or irrelevant.

A while back, someone on Facebook looked at my Chatpastel page, which I had launched just a couple of months earlier, and told me I was going nowhere. I had around 20 likes. At the time, I was finishing up my spring classes, starting a new office job after working remotely for five years, and had taken a short break from my brand-new venture. But none of that tempered his criticism. In his eyes, low numbers meant low worth, the kind of person who sees a seedling and says, “That’s not a tree.”

Ironically, this man had been posting ‘relatable’ content for years on a page with around 2,000 followers, proudly calling himself a content creator. His 2,000 followers compared to my 20 probably fueled his ego, making him feel justified in his condescension.

However, the reality is that things take time. Growth doesn’t happen overnight. We all start with zero followers, zero views, zero recognition. And even if something stays small, so what? Why is it only valid if it makes money or gathers attention? Why can’t we keep creating just because we enjoy it?

Despite how it looks online, most of us aren’t chasing fame. We’re just trying to stay connected to what feels genuine and honest.

Still, people often claim they want to be rich or famous. That they want to be great. But if everyone was huge, nobody would be. If “exceptional” becomes the norm, the concept loses its meaning. That constant need for external validation, for worth that depends on being seen, feeds a quiet panic:

If I’m not visible, I’m not real.

If I’m not known, then what I do doesn’t matter.

But what if it did?

What if the act of doing something, even if no one claps, no one pays, or no one follows, still meant something?

What if joy didn’t need a paycheck to count?