外刊精读13 | 网红时代下，Z世代为何对“打工”失去耐心？type
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原文
When you spend hours each day watching influencers get rich without much effort, you forget what it takes to succeed in this world.
After Daniel Hayon, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles, graduated from Claremont McKenna in 2023, he started looking for a job. Interviewing with a fashion start-up, a real estate company, a few tech firms, and marketing agencies, he made it to the final round of 10 different job applications. “I had five or six interviews with each company,” he told me. “I did projects for all of them. It was a 12-week process, and some of the recruiters would ghost me for weeks.”
In the end, none of the companies came through. The night before his final interview for one position, he said, he was told they were “postponing the role for at least six months because the economy is shit.”
Expressions
- what it takes to succeed 成功所需要的真实付出
- a fashion start-up 时尚初创公司
- a real estate company 房地产公司
- a few tech firms 科技公司
- marketing agencies 市场营销机构 / 广告公司
- ghost sb. （面试/合作后）已读不回；突然消失
- postpone verb /pəʊˈspəʊn/ 推迟；延期
Read
“It was a really eye-opening process,” Hayon continued. “I just had to sit down with myself and be like: Is it really my dream to do business development at this random consumer tech company?”
The short answer, he concluded, was no.
Not having anything else constructive to do, Hayon began posting on TikTok. “I was done with corporate America and wanted to start experimenting a bit,” he said. “I had a couple of videos blow up. I got around 5,000 followers.” Maybe, he thought, he could become an influencer. He started to read “strategies on finding your niche” and posted videos, mostly funny ones, commenting on drag queen races. He studied successful influencers, hoping to discern their secret sauce. “I’ve had moments throughout my career where I thought that if I really was just persistent and just started posting, maybe that could be me.”
Expressions
- eye-opening adj. 让人大开眼界的；刷新认知的
- experiment verb 尝试；试水
- niche /niːʃ/ 细分领域；小众赛道
- post videos 发视频；发布视频内容
“Influencers being so open and honest about making four times as much as their old nine-to-fives, and having such flexible lifestyles, has opened my generation’s eyes into what’s possible,” said Daniel Hayon, 23. “It makes you feel completely disillusioned, and it’s made Gen Z nihilistic about working.”
Maybe that could be me. There are thousands—maybe millions—of Gen Zers who watch influencers on Instagram or TikTok and think to themselves: Maybe that could be me. The top influencers make serious money doing things we all do as part of daily life: renovating our apartments, taking a workout class, laughing at videos online, eating dinner with friends, walking in the park. From the viewer’s perspective, they are being paid to exist. The only difference is that they are documenting it.
Expressions
- nine-to-fives 朝九晚五的固定工作制
- disillusioned /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənd/ 幻灭的；理想破灭的
- nihilistic about 对……感到虚无；对工作失去意义感
- Gen Zers Z 世代年轻人
- influencer noun 网红；内容创作者
- renovate verb 翻新；装修
- take a workout class 上健身课
- document verb 记录；拍摄并分享过程
“A lot of young people like me get frustrated seeing influencers making content that isn’t even interesting or funny and earning upward of six figures,” Hayon told me.
“Influencers being so open and honest about making four times as much as their old nine-to-fives, and having such flexible lifestyles, has opened my generation’s eyes into what’s possible,” Hayon said. “It makes you feel completely disillusioned, and it’s made Gen Z nihilistic about working.”
Expressions
- get frustrated 感到挫败；感到烦躁
- earn upward of six figures 年入六位数以上（≥10万美元级别）
- be open and honest about … 对……坦率公开
You’ve no doubt read the stories about how young people can’t get jobs. The stories are true.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Gen Z is around 11 percent, which is more than double the national unemployment rate of 4.3 percent.
Some have blamed AI, arguing that the companies no longer need the paralegal, researcher, and customer service representative positions that young people have always filled because AI does the work faster and better. Others say young people are entering the job market at a time when the labor market is essentially frozen, and no college degree or niche skill can fix that. But here’s the thing: Gen Zers don’t want entry-level jobs. They don’t want middle-management roles either, with nearly 70 percent of my generation dismissing them as “high stress, low reward.”
Expressions
- the Bureau of Labor Statistics 美国劳工统计局
- unemployment rate 失业率
- paralegal /ˌpærəˈliːɡl/ 律师助理
- entry-level jobs 入门级岗位
- middle-management 中层管理岗位
We know what you think of us Zoomers: We have an attitude problem. But the conversations I had with fellow Gen Zers for this story suggest that it’s not so much an “attitude problem” but an Instagram-induced delusion.
One Zoomer I spoke to, Jessie, spent two years after graduation applying for 200 jobs in her chosen field—communications—with no luck. Not having a full-time job for all that time was financially stressful, she said, but she didn’t want to “suck it up and get a boring corporate job.” In other words, Jessie preferred to not work at all than to be unhappy in her job.
Expressions
- zoomer noun [C] Z 世代成员
- have an attitude problem 态度有问题
- suck it up 忍一忍；硬着头皮扛过去
- get a boring corporate job 去一家无聊的大公司上班
Yes, you boomers and Gen Xers: I can sense your eyes rolling right about now. We know what you think of us Zoomers: We have an attitude problem. But the conversations I had with fellow Gen Zers for this story suggest that it’s not so much an “attitude problem” but an Instagram-induced delusion.
Expressions
- boomer [C] 婴儿潮一代
- Gen Xer [C] X 世代
- eyes rolling 翻白眼（表示不屑/无语）
- an Instagram-induced delusion 被社交媒体制造出来的幻觉
You see, when you spend hours each day watching someone on the other side of your screen making money by seemingly dancing through life without much effort, you start to lose sense of what it takes to succeed in this world. If my generation tends to think that so-called “real jobs” are beneath us, it’s not because we’re lazy or are egomaniacs. (Well, okay, some of us might be.) It’s because “the top” doesn’t look so out of reach. Watching people earn a living with such seeming ease is breaking my generation’s perception of what kind of job—and life—is attainable, normal, and desirable.
Expressions
- egomaniacs /ˌiːɡəʊˈmæniæks/ 自恋狂；极度自我中心的人
- out of reach 遥不可及
- perception /pəˈsepʃn/ 认知；观念
- attainable /əˈteɪnəbl/ 可实现的
- desirable /əˈteɪnəbl/ 可实现的
Sophie Cohen, 27, is one of the people who has turned influencing into a profitable career. She began posting her outfits on Instagram when she was in high school, before influencing was a thing. After graduating college and moving to New York, Cohen worked as a buyer at Bloomingdale’s when she started to feel torn between her nine-to-five and her social media presence.
“My colleagues at Bloomingdale’s had been there for 25 years. It’s their whole career,” she told me. “I was starting to be like, ‘I don’t know if that’s me. I don’t see myself in these people. I don’t know if this is my dream or my goal anymore.’ ”
Cohen started to get “brand deals” (in which companies pay someone to post a photo or video with their product) and decided to take influencing more seriously. She took her savings and poured it into her new pursuit.
Expressions
- a profitable career 有收益的职业
- Bloomingdale’s 美国高端百货公司品牌（类似美国版“高端商场/连锁百货”）
👉 常见语境：在 Bloomingdale’s 工作 / 在 Bloomingdale’s 购物
文化含义：偏中高端消费、城市白领与时尚消费场景
- social media presence 社交媒体影响力 / 账号运营度
- take her savings and pour it into her new pursuit 把积蓄投入新事业
Once Cohen gained enough traction, she turned to influencing full time, paying her rent with the money she’d saved from her first brand deals.
Expressions
- traction 影响力增长；起量；开始跑通
- pay her rent 付房租
- brand deals 品牌合作；商业合作
“It wasn’t until the end of the year when I looked at all my finances, and I was like: ‘Whoa. This is a legit career.’ I’m making more than I did in a good corporate job.” Now, Cohen says she makes thousands of dollars for posting content promoting brands, whether it’s Nordstrom or Aperol or Crocs. “Sometimes it could be an hour of my time for $5,000 to $10,000,” she said. “That’s a month’s rent. That’s a vacation.”
Cohen said she’s now living the life of her dreams. “I make a great living. It’s a dream lifestyle. I fully work for myself.” She used to be embarrassed to admit her job was “content creation,” but not anymore. “It has become this very aspirational career, because there’s all the glamour of it, like the events and the free stuff. But I think the biggest luxury is not having to work a nine-to-five. And I think, in this day and age, for many young people, that’s what they want to be doing.”
Expressions
- aspirational /ˌæspəˈreɪʃənl/ 令人向往的
- work a nine-to-five 上朝九晚五的班
Influencers make money in two ways. First, companies pay them to promote products or brands. And second, as influencers accumulate followers—and begin to attract advertising—they are paid a percentage of the ad revenue.
Expressions
- accumulate followers 累积粉丝
Is it any wonder that so many Gen Zers want to be influencers?
Even young people with traditional careers often aspire to be influencers, making videos of themselves at work with captions such as, “She doesn’t know it yet, but in about 10 minutes, she will receive an email asking her to do something she’s literally employed to do, and it’ll ruin her whole day.” Such videos can rack up thousands of views.
Expressions
- rack up thousands of views 累积上千播放量
Gen Z has always had a talent for finessing the system, whether it’s selling custom merchandise on Etsy or telling everyone where their clothes are from. Indeed, roughly four in 10 millennials and Gen Zers have “side hustles,” according to Deloitte. Once upon a time, a singer like Addison Rae would have built her career singing in dives for pennies. Instead, she said her success as a pop star is a direct result of her treating her TikTok posts like a job.
Expressions
- finessing /fɪˈnesɪŋ/ 巧妙钻规则；精明操作
- merchandise on Etsy 在 Etsy 上卖周边 / 手工商品
- side hustles 副业；搞钱副线
Gen Z is not interested in climbing the corporate ladder either, because a senior position at a big corporation doesn’t provide fulfillment or even pride. Going to Pilates at noon does. The aspirational life we dream of feels one viral post away, making traditional jobs seem like a fool’s errand. In other words: It is about doing the least amount of work for the most amount of money.
Expressions
- corporate ladder 职场晋升阶梯
- a senior position at a big corporation 大公司高管岗位
- Pilates /pɪˈlɑːtiːz/ 普拉提
“Watching influencers has changed my perception of what a good job is,” said Suzanne Starzyk, 24.
And when we spend our days scrolling through our social media accounts, we find role models—if that’s the right term—like 32-year-old Hattie Kolp, who worked as a special education teacher before she quit to do what makes her happy: renovating her home. That’s right. She’s getting rich renovating her home.
“I had a blast the first few years I was teaching. But I got burnt out,” Kolp told me. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit and students stopped showing up to class that Kolp decided to put a little more time into her social media account.
“I was making no money. And it kind of just gave me time to really go all-in on my apartment projects and create content around them.”
Expressions
- have a blast 玩得很开心；过得很爽
- get burnt out /bɜːnt aʊt/ 职业倦怠；精疲力竭
Two years later, Kolp was making enough money as an Instagram influencer to quit her teaching job. Her first paid campaign was with Tempur-Pedic pillows, which she said paid her $200 to post a photo with the product. Now, she makes “significantly more” than she did as a teacher, and more than her friend who works as an ob-gyn. “She’s at the hospital every day delivering babies, and I’m here renovating my house.”
“It’s so sad,” she added. “Teaching is so underpaid. I didn’t even have health insurance. I was struggling and working hard and schlepping myself all over the city to make $45,000, in a good year, before taxes. It’s just insane.”
Meanwhile, said Kolp, “I get to be with my cats all day, which is such a dream, and I get to work with my boyfriend. I’d much rather be doing this than having to commute on the subway.”
Expressions
- commute on the subway 地铁通勤
Suzanne Starzyk, 24, is filled with envy when she sees successful influencers like Kolp. Although she is employed, more or less happily, in the healthcare field, she still craves the kind of life she sees on her screen.
“Watching influencers has changed my perception of what a good job is,” she said. “Prior to influencing becoming monetizable, a good job meant a nine-to-five at a good company. Anything other than a service job was a good job. And now I think being an influencer is above a corporate job because the associated financial success is something virtually impossible to achieve in your first 10 to 20 years in a traditional career.”
Expressions
- be filled with envy 充满羡慕
- crave 渴望
- perception 认知；看法；主观印象
- public perception 公众认知
- change the perception 改变看法
- shape one’s perception 塑造某人的认知
👉 常见搭配：
👉 语感说明：
不只是“看到的”，更强调人们“怎么理解、怎么想”一件事
- become monetizable 变现化；开始能赚钱
Like Hayon, Starzyk said, “It’s discouraging and unmotivating when you’re seeing people make 30 times what you make, doing things that you would genuinely enjoy way more than your normal job. Meanwhile, my eyesight is getting worse from staring at a computer, and my butt is getting flat from sitting at a desk, and I’m getting acne because I’m getting blue-light exposure all day.”
Expressions
- unmotivating 让人没动力的
- get acne 长痘
- get blue-light exposure 长时间接触蓝光
I asked Starzyk about the accusation that Gen Z has an attitude problem about work. She agreed wholeheartedly. “Our attitude problem has to do with seeing all the people doing normal, day-to-day things online and making money from it. It disincentivizes you from working hard. And it definitely disincentivizes you from taking a corporate job when you watch someone earn more money from sharing their morning routine than you do in a month or even more at your nine-to-five.”
Expressions
- accusation /ˌækjuˈzeɪʃn/ 指责；指控
- wholeheartedly 全心全意地；完全认同
- disincentivize 全心全意地；完全认同
When I met August Lamm, she had quit trying to become an art influencer, a story she had recounted in The Free Press in December. To gain followers and sell her art, she had, she acknowledged, sold her soul, pretending to care about other artists on Instagram and making “emotional disclosures,” which prompted her followers to buy more of her art. She finally became so disgusted that she disabled her Instagram account, and, in short order, gave up her computer and smartphone.
“One of my biggest strokes of luck is that I’m not hot enough to be an Instagram model. I always had to develop a skill,” she told me from her flip phone.
Gen Z, she said, is dangerously naive about what it really means to make a living from the internet.
Expressions
- sell her soul 出卖原则；为利益放弃底线
- strokes of luck 运气爆棚的瞬间
Read
“People come to me wanting to know the hacks to become an influencer—disregarding the fact that I’ve completely disavowed that line of work—because they want the easy way out.”
But Lamm said the idea that you live your life, snap a photo, and get compensated just doesn’t happen for the vast majority of people hoping to become influencers.
“I recently had a friend say she was going to start selling her underwear online instead of getting a job in a coffee shop, because it’s easier,” Lamm said. “But as someone who has tried to sell photos of myself online, it’s so much more work. And it’s so much more demeaning, and you can’t imagine the amount of hours you have to put into that for potentially no return.”
Expressions
- snap a photo 随手拍照
- demeaning /dɪˈmiːnɪŋ/ 贬低尊严的；让人感到被侮辱的
The internet, she said, has successfully fooled people. “For every one Pilates influencer who’s living full time off that income, there are thousands of people, if not millions, who have tried and failed.”
Lamm is not surprised that the influencer economy has penetrated Gen Z’s psyche so deeply. “Young people spend so much time on social media. So, of course, they’re going to see that as the way to live. They’re seeing the world as a place to move through and meet your needs and then you return home and you go online again.”
Expressions
- fool sb. 欺骗某人
- Pilates influencer 普拉提博主
The aspirational life we dream of feels one viral post away, making traditional jobs seem like a fool’s errand. In other words: It is about doing the least amount of work for the most amount of money.
She continued: “It probably sounds old-fashioned and conservative, but I do think that there’s a reason why unemployed people get depressed very easily. They feel that they’re not contributing to their lives or to the world. I don’t think that that feeling is going to go away when you find a way to hack the system to make enough money to survive. It feels good when you figure out a way to exist in the world that you know is meaningful and that has momentum.”
When I asked Lamm if her art sales have suffered since going dark, she told me that the exact opposite has happened.
Expressions
- hack （系统/规则）钻空子；走捷径
- momentum 发展势头；正向惯性
“Now that I’m off social media and all of my energy is going toward my work and toward my life, I’m seeing that I have so much more of it,” she said, “because instead of doing art and then figuring out how to present that art, I’m doing art and then doing more art, and then having time to relax and having time to consume art and go to the cinema and read books and hang out with friends, because there isn’t that massive time suck of presenting myself online.”
Expressions
- off social media 远离社交媒体；不上网社交平台
- suck of presenting myself online 受够了在网上“经营人设” / 对线上自我展示感到厌倦
- I’m sick of presenting myself online.
- I’m tired of curating my online persona.
- sick of = 对某事感到厌烦、受够了（情绪很强）
- presenting myself online 指：
原句常见更地道说法：
我真的受够了在网上展示自己 / 经营形象
我厌倦了精心打造自己的网络人设
👉 语感说明：
在社交媒体上“包装自己 / 表现成某种形象”，
不完全是真实的自己，偏向“人设管理”
表达积累
求职与职场现实
- what it takes to succeed 成功所需要的真实付出
- a fashion start-up 时尚初创公司
- a real estate company 房地产公司
- a few tech firms 科技公司
- marketing agencies 市场营销机构 / 广告公司
- ghost sb. （面试/合作后）已读不回；突然消失
- postpone /pəʊˈspəʊn/ 推迟；延期
- eye-opening 让人大开眼界的；刷新认知
- experiment 尝试；试水
- niche /niːʃ/ 细分领域；小众赛道
- post videos 发视频；发布视频内容
网红经济与收入想象
- nine-to-fives 朝九晚五的固定工作制
- disillusioned /ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒənd/ 幻灭的；理想破灭的
- nihilistic about 对……感到虚无；对工作失去意义感
- Gen Zers Z 世代年轻人
- influencer 网红；内容创作者
- renovate 翻新；装修
- take a workout class 上健身课
- document 记录；拍摄并分享过程
- get frustrated 感到挫败；烦躁
- earn upward of six figures 年入六位数以上（≥10 万美元级）
- be open and honest about … 对……坦率公开
- rack up thousands of views 累积上千播放量
就业环境与结构性问题
- the Bureau of Labor Statistics 美国劳工统计局
- unemployment rate 失业率
- paralegal /ˌpærəˈliːɡl/ 律师助理
- entry-level jobs 入门级岗位
- middle-management 中层管理岗位
代际与态度
- Zoomer Z 世代成员
- boomer 婴儿潮一代
- Gen Xer X 世代
- have an attitude problem 态度有问题
- eyes rolling 翻白眼（不屑/无语）
- an Instagram-induced delusion 被社交媒体制造的幻觉
- egomaniacs /ˌiːɡəʊˈmæniæks/ 自恋狂；极度自我中心的人
- out of reach 遥不可及
- perception /pəˈsepʃn/ 认知；观念
- attainable /əˈteɪnəbl/ 可实现的
- desirable 令人向往的；值得追求的
职业选择与路径
- a profitable career 有收益的职业
- Bloomingdale’s 美国中高端连锁百货
- social media presence 社交媒体影响力 / 账号运营度
- take one’s savings and pour it into … 把积蓄投入到……
- traction 起量；影响力开始增长
- pay one’s rent 付房租
- brand deals 品牌合作
- aspirational /ˌæspəˈreɪʃənl/ 令人向往的
- work a nine-to-five 上朝九晚五的班
- accumulate followers 累积粉丝
副业与“搞钱文化”
- finesse /fɪˈnes/ 巧妙操作；精明钻规则
- merchandise on Etsy 在 Etsy 上卖周边/手工商品
- side hustles 副业
- corporate ladder 职场晋升阶梯
- a senior position at a big corporation 大公司高管/高阶岗位
- Pilates /pɪˈlɑːtiːz/ 普拉提
情绪与职业倦怠
- have a blast 玩得很开心
- get burnt out /bɜːnt aʊt/ 职业倦怠
- commute on the subway 地铁通勤
- be filled with envy 充满羡慕
- crave 渴望
- become monetizable 变现化；开始能赚钱
- unmotivating 让人没动力的
- get acne 长痘
- get blue-light exposure 长时间接触蓝光
道德、系统与“走捷径”
- accusation /ˌækjuˈzeɪʃn/ 指责；指控
- wholeheartedly 全心全意地；完全认同
- disincentivize 使失去动力；削弱激励
- sell one’s soul 出卖原则；为利益放弃底线
- strokes of luck 运气爆棚的时刻
- snap a photo 随手拍照
- demeaning /dɪˈmiːnɪŋ/ 贬低尊严的
- fool sb. 欺骗某人
- Pilates influencer 普拉提博主
- hack（系统/规则）钻空子；走捷径
- momentum 发展势头；正向惯性
社交媒体退出与“人设疲劳”
- off social media 远离社交媒体
- sick of presenting myself online 受够了在网上经营人设
- curate one’s online persona 精心打造网络人设
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- Author:Active Reading
- URL:https://clairelind.top/article/active-reading-why-genz-hates-work
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