When I’m hiring for a social role, I look for one thing before almost anything else: Is this person terminally online? Sounds ridiculous, but I genuinely mean it. If your job is covering gaming, creators, entertainment, sports, or internet culture, you need to actually live in those worlds. You need to know what’s happening before someone sends it to you. You need to understand why a story matters before the numbers tell you it does. You need to spot trends, memes, creators, controversies, and conversations as they’re happening, not three days later. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that it’s much easier to teach someone how to write, edit, package content, or analyze performance than it is to teach them internet culture. You can teach the craft. It’s much harder to teach curiosity and genuine obsession with what’s happening online. That’s one of the biggest advantages we’ve had at Dexerto. A lot of our best people came in already immersed in the spaces we cover. We helped them develop the skills around that knowledge, rather than trying to force someone to care about an industry they weren’t already part of. The people who thrive are usually the ones who can’t help but know what’s happening. What’s the one quality you look for when hiring?
…why would you want anybody active in 4chan or kiwi farms?
I'm not so fond of the phrase terminally online. In my experience (especially in gaming, and as someone who grew up as a silent observer of 4Chan 💀), the people most deeply immersed in internet culture are often the hardest to turn into effective and objective marketers precisely *because* of that immersion. If you're hiring for that kind of unicorn, that's great, but I would argue that the above is a specific role within a social function and not something every member of the social team needs to be.
Saw this in gaming marketing too. The people who already lived in the community always outperformed those who needed to be briefed on what happened over the weekend. You can teach someone analytics or campaign structure. You can't teach them to care about patch notes at 2am.
Curiosity, is a big one but also a drive and ambition for knowledge. I like to say that I am always a student learning new things and never stop learning. When you stop learning, you stop growing. It's also great to see people wear terminology that was once thought as a negative as a badge of honor. Shows you are in tune with the vocal stims, nuances, and frankly the jokes in a communities niche.
being terminally online in the gaming subculture actually helps me land gigs i believe i couldnt get without. i thought im an outsider - then i realized i just need to find the environment where its an advantage! 🤣
Massive red flag tbh. They’ll demand you to be reachable 24/7 most likely, without paying extra for it. People have offline lives. And if they don’t, that’s not the best situation.
Hi, from the deep end 👋
Disappointment for my parents I am more than terminally online bad luck follows me everywhere Even to job applications
Have you considered something like personal offline life for your hire? Sounds wild, I know, but I’ve heard they intend to have one