An Honest Living

By Rebecca Green

Lately, my TikTok algorithm has been feeding me the latest in digital get-rich-quick schemes. Video after video, I’m told to go all in on building a dropshipping business, or creating Etsy templates or courses to sell online, or becoming a UGC creator for big brands. Day trading is also an option where I could make thousands of dollars before I even have breakfast. Alternatively, and most popular, I could create a faceless AI YouTube channel that runs while I sleep and I’ll wake up a wealthier woman. The pitch is always the same: passive income, financial freedom, and most importantly, little to no skills required. No particular perspective, no particular voice, no particular you. Just a system optimized to generate lots of cash.

There’s now a name for what’s driving my algorithm: money dysmorphia. It’s exactly what it sounds like, the financial version of never being thin enough or successful enough. You look at your bank account and no matter what’s actually there, it doesn’t feel like enough. You’re convinced you’re broke even when you’re not, or you’re certain the rug is about to be pulled out from under you at any moment. Which, if you work in Hollywood, you know that feeling all too well.

Money dysmorphia is hitting Gen Z and Millennials the hardest. According to a study conducted by Qualtrics on behalf of Credit Karma, nearly half of Gen Z (44%) and almost half of millennials (46%) say they are obsessed with the idea of being rich. At the same time, 48% of Gen Z and 59% of millennials say they feel behind financially, even when in many cases, they aren’t. And into that psychological gap between where you are and where you believe you should be, the digital hustle economy has been very happy to sell a solution. It all reminds me of the family I babysat for in high school and the mom who sold Herbalife supplements thinking she was going to be a millionaire rather than seeing the company for what it was, a pyramid scheme.

I understand the anxiety that makes these get-rich-quick schemes so appealing. Obviously, if they’re showing up in my algorithm, it means I’m watching them. Deloitte’s 2025 survey of Gen Z found that 48% of respondents don’t feel financially secure, up significantly from 30% in 2024. More than half are living paycheck to paycheck and the cost of housing in cities where the creative industries thrive has made pursuing a life as an artist feel like something only certain people can afford.

In pondering all of this as I strive to find meaning in my own work, while also keeping an eye on my nearly empty retirement account, I keep coming back to the phrase “an honest living” and wonder if it means anything anymore? I think about Jake Gittes in Chinatown who says, “Listen, pal. I make an honest living. People only come to me when they’re in a desperate situation. I help ‘em out. I don’t kick families out of their houses like you bums down at the bank do.” He’s drawing a line in how far he’ll go to make money. The word “honest” comes from the Latin honestus, honorable, worthy of respect. An honest living then is one you can stand behind. One that says something about who you are.

As a creative person, an honest living can be translated to work that is identifiably yours. Work where your name on it means something. Work where a human being with a specific life experience and passion put a story into the world and stood behind it. That kind of work does something that no algorithm can replicate: it creates a relationship between the maker and the person on the other end. It says, I made this, and I made it for you, and somewhere in it you can find me.

Now, I’m not here to pretend that meaningful work is a substitute for a paycheck. It isn’t. I have friends who are working corporate jobs during the day and writing their screenplays at night despite being exhausted. I have other friends who left LA because they couldn’t justify the rent anymore, who are now trying to convince themselves that leaving wasn’t giving up. I have friends who are still here, still grinding, wondering how much longer they can do this. Questioning at what point does perseverance become delusion.

When it feels like the industry has stopped rewarding the creative integrity that used to lead to a stable career, the appeal of a faceless AI YouTube channel isn’t hard to understand. If the system isn’t going to reward your carefully crafted, soul-searching work anyway, why not just build a machine and let it run? Why not take the shortcut when the long road doesn’t seem to lead anywhere anymore? The financial fear is real, and anyone who tells a young person to just “follow their dream” without acknowledging the industry they’re entering - corporate consolidation, algorithmic dominance, stockholders being prioritized over creatives - is being dishonest in a different way. An honest living has to be a living.

But there’s a version of financial pragmatism that slips into something else, which is a willingness to remove yourself from your own work so completely that the work stops being yours at all. I do think there’s a difference between doing whatever it takes to keep the lights on while you make your work versus letting something meaningless fill the space where your real work used to be. One is surviving, the other is letting go of your creative identity, and that’s the harder loss to come back from. I’m not saying the choice is easy. I’m not even saying it’s always clear which one you’re doing. But I do think it matters.

In the end, an honest living is not about sacrifice. It’s not a rejection of money or a refusal to engage with the realities of the industry. It is simply the choice to make work that is yours. Work that is driven by your specific way of seeing the world. By your voice. That choice is harder right now than it has been in a while. But it is still a choice. And I’d argue it’s the only one that compounds (financial pun intended), the only one where the work you did five years ago is still working for you, not because an algorithm is running in the background, but because somewhere out there, someone still thinks about it.