While some aspire to cinching a comfortable 9-5 office job and owning a home, others view such a life as nightmarish. This was made clear after a video from TikTok creator Connor Hubbard going about his daily routine went viral on X. “This is basically selling your soul, it’s so pointless,” wrote the X user responsible for posting Hubbard’s video on Saturday, which has since amassed over 54 million views.
It is understandable that some would find the humdrum of a conventional life – mortgage, office job, daily commute, etc. – mundane and unfulfilling. But the overwhelming majority of those recoiling at Hubbard’s life likely have worse lives, meaning that if there is a deeper critique of the modern world it is to be found elsewhere.
In the video in question, Hubbard gets ready for work, drives to the office, works on his laptop, and eats. He appears lonely, his life empty. But to a perceptive eye there is more going on. While he dresses himself, we see a closet that clearly contains female clothes. And it is true that the food he eats in the video is garbage – donuts and cheeseburgers abound – but he is clearly in shape.
An article on Hubbard published in the Daily Mail reveals more about the TikTok’s influencer’s life. He is in fact married (to his high school sweetheart, no less), who is pregnant. He works at a Fortune 500 company. In other videos he can be seen on vacation in the Turks and Caicos Islands. In his free time, he plays golf and enjoys seeing live music.
All of this suggests that the video was designed to bait people online into doing what they did: denouncing what is undeniably a reasonably good life as soulless and miserable.
But we needn’t speculate. In an interview with the Dallas Observer in 2023, Hubbard had the following to say:
There is a false reality portrayed on today’s social media of what is considered normal and that is in order to be successful, you have to be your own boss, or that you can get rich quick.
And what I’m saying is you can still be successful and still live a happy life with a normal job, working normal hours, and living a normal life.
In other words, Hubbard was pushing back against a negative trend he saw on TikTok: sigma grindset hustle culture. You know, the videos of foreign guys with lamborghinis telling young men that the only path to success is signing up for their paid hustler schools. Noxious stuff, frankly.
On a post with 13,000 likes and 22,000 reposts, it is difficult to survey the socioeconomic status of those who sympathized with its content. That said, the guy responsible for this post is black, as are many of the people engaging with it, which would suggest that Hubbard’s video went viral because black Twitter found it horrifying. And race aside, I don’t see many middle class professionals reacting in this manner. This suggests that most who objected to the video are doing so from below rather than from above.
There is a trichotomy useful to this discussion: subnormal, normal, and supranormal. These terms refer to states of life. Some may experience all of them at different points; others will only experience one or two. Most probably exist on a spectrum between two of the states.
Subnormal refers to someone who cannot get their act together. Such types are commonly described as poorly adjusted. As a result of low intelligence, emotional trauma, vice, or other factors, people living subnormal lives will struggle to hold down jobs, grapple with substance abuse, fail to maintain stable relationships, and often have very little to show for their time on this earth. Calling them losers would be accurate, but it is important to note that many people manage to extricate themselves from subnormality and go on to lead normal, successful lives.
Normal simply refers to people who have overcome the basic challenges of adult life. They can hold down a decent job, typically one requiring a college degree, some level of business knowledge, or a skill. They have friends, perhaps even a family of their own, and are not social outcasts. They probably have constructive hobbies and generally enjoy life. Think Connor Hubbard.
Supranormality is the domain of adventurers, heroes, artists, religious figures and
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