The Thinking Behind the Theme 💭
Inside the exploratory motif of our next season
blog.fifty-five // Last Sunday, we shared our reasoning for opening Creator Mag up to guest submissions, both for this next edition and the foreseeable future.
Today, we wanted to go inside the why. As in, why we decided on our season-long theme: “WHERE DID YOU GO?”
Read on for more of the reasoning. And if you’d like to submit a story idea, note that you have six more days—you can pitch us by filling out this form.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we talked with Rachel Nguyen about “untethering” her life and finding clarity on the road. You can read it here.
One :: I think embracing vagueness is necessary for producing good creative writing. In high school, I had the same English teacher for three years in a row. And that English teacher was a big proponent of a simple idea: No five-paragraph essays allowed.*
He could be polarizing among me and my fellow students. Some celebrated the humor he brought to analyzing old books, all while he pushed us to become better writers. Others bristled at his strict adherence to proper grammar and oddly-specific pop quizzes on our reading assignments.
I was a math kid up until his class, yet I found something within the creative freedom of those essays, away from the formulaic structure we’d been taught our whole lives. The vagueness bothered some classmates, but to me, that became the whole point of writing: to explore ideas and embrace our unique voices.
That doesn’t mean I always received good grades—I tended to lean into the voice thing a little too much…instead of, you know, answering the actual prompt we were given.** Nevertheless, as the team talked through our slate of stories for our upcoming season of Creator Mag, we realized that leaving the theme up to interpretation meant good pitches would take our open-ended question (“WHERE DID YOU GO?”) and come back with all sorts of interesting creative directions.
So far, it’s been really cool seeing that thesis proven correct. Which leads into my second thought on the theme…
Two :: I think self-exploration makes for my favorite kind of storytelling. Last Sunday, I wrote this:
We don’t aim to limit the very essence of what makes fourth wall-breaking, creator-centric formats like vlogging so magical…where the storyteller is on their own (oftentimes imperfect) journey of self-discovery.
If you’ve read my longform writing over the years, you know that my focus falls on particular people or overarching subjects—such as Hollywood’s collision course with YouTube, or the wide-ranging impact of Hank and John Green. But you also have probably picked up on my tendency to write from a first-person, narrative lens, saving room to tie my own experience into the storyline.
This is just as influenced by journalists like Rembert Browne, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, or Hunter S. Thompson as it is by filmmakers and creators I grew up watching.*** Curiously, I don’t believe this registered with me until Casey Neistat went on the Flagrant podcast in 2023, which saw host Andrew Schulz compare Neistat to the late Thompson, who is arguably the founder of “gonzo journalism.”
Schulz: “Making yourself the forefront of what you're writing about and experiencing...I think that's what you've done with vlogging so brilliantly.”
Neistat: “Yeah, using your experience as the catalyst for the story.”
To me, the question (“WHERE DID YOU GO?”) might be about where one physically went this season, but also the depths to which one mined their own consciousness, too. Because our perspective shapes how we view our lived experiences—and might even become the reason why we tell our stories in the first place.
And those internal tug-of-wars are, selfishly, the stories I connect with the most on a human-to-human level.
Three :: I think cities and physical spaces make for fascinating characters in their own right. While I just spent nearly three hundred words writing about how internal exploration is a worthwhile path to answering this season’s question, I also don’t want to underscore the role of actual travel—especially at a time when media outlets and online commentators are investing less in original, on-the-ground reporting.
My college roommate Peter is one of the best journalists and editors I’ve ever been fortunate enough to work with (check out his great reporting at The Houston Chronicle here). I’ll never forget when he gave me this feedback on my profile of music podcaster Cole Cuchna, which saw me travel to Cole’s hometown of Sacramento, California:
“My one thing about the structure is that you make Sacramento to be this main character, but it ends with a little bit of an editorial disconnect between Cole and the city.”
Upon reading Peter’s comment then and now, I’ve realized that the places I travel to need to be more than just interesting backdrops for my stories. If I invest all this time (and airline miles), cities and physical spaces should be woven into the fabric of each story in their own right, requiring research and intention before ever stepping on a plane.
Four :: I think we should be proud of where we went—especially how it relates to where we started. As the barrier to entry for producing creative work lowers, all sorts of incredible opportunities are available to you and I. Simultaneously, the competition (and replaceability factor) has increased.
It’s easy to get swept up in the present (how many views did my last video get?) and the future (how do I make this thing sustainable?), but when I hear the question “WHERE DID YOU GO?”, I think about celebrating our origin stories.
The question isn’t forward-looking, after all. It’s asking where we’ve been.
Five :: I think we have a lot of production work ahead of us, but we can’t wait to share our new season with you soon enough. As a token of our appreciation for making it this far in today’s blog, here’s an early teaser of our upcoming slate:
We’re driving to Grand Rapids, Michigan to profile a filmmaker whose wide-ranging journey through the creator world saw him leave New York City—and wind up with a show on the streaming service Peacock.
We went behind-the-scenes with a twenty-six-year-old misinformation reporter and progressive TikToker who traded her presumably set path with a run for Congress…right here in the Windy City.
With the restaurant industry’s prestigious James Beard Awards coming up in Chicago this June, we knew it was only right to pursue a gastronomical tour of the city with one of our favorite food creators.****
And more!
Each of these stories took the season-long theme and ran with it. Our next print edition releases July 19; you can expect new video episodes out starting in June.
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
* If you’re reading this, hi Ferg!
** I had a recurring bit where the subtitle of every essay I turned in would read “or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).” I promise that it wasn’t that deep—High School Nate just really liked Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 Oscar-winning film Birdman.
*** I’ve written about this before, but I believe that if I ever reach a point where my writing is half as good as Browne’s is in his 2017 profile on Colin Kaepernick, I’ll believe I’ve made it. Also just as good: the story behind the story, as told to the Columbia Journalism Review.
**** It doesn’t hurt that Season Four of The Bear is dropping next month, either.