On October 3, a little over a month ago, @rayomcqueer uploaded another video to his TikTok channel. Until that date she was Carmen Merina (24 years old), a graduate in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia with a few hundred followers “and hospitality meat.” However, with this video – based on the viral trend #thingsthatmedanigual– has received offers from the main agencies influencersnegotiates her first advertising campaigns on her profile and, ultimately, faces the possibility of stopping being a waitress through content creation.
Merina is from Córdoba, although she works and lives in Granada. Since she was 16, she has had all kinds of “precarious jobs as a waitress.” These experiences, from London to Paris, have allowed him “to have languages, because the guiris “In Spain they talk to you without considering the possibility of even greeting you in your language.” What he considers an “innate talent for socializing” has allowed him a recent promotion, curiously, after his criticism became the video that many X users have used to share this work trauma: everything that you may be indifferent about what happens in your company when you charge 5 euros an hour. This viral has been followed by others, and these, the first community of haters with which he deals.
Ask. Did Fine Arts give you any performative knowledge to make you feel so comfortable in front of the camera?
Answer. I don’t think so. I feel this comfortable because I have been recording myself all my life, being a motherfucker and criticizing. I love talking to people. That’s why I say I’m hospitality meat. In addition, a lot of mental quickness is required because there are clients who want to take a chance on you, managers who need to put a knife to your neck and, of course, your skills come to the fore. But come on, what performing In the networks I am in my element.
Q. Until a few weeks ago, what was your relationship with the networks like?
R. A toxic relationship. Often more damaging than anything else, because the comparison ‘of you with everything’ is inevitable. But I also have to say that if I hadn’t been on Twitter [X, ahora] since I was 16, really, I don’t know what kind of person or what political thoughts I would have now. I just don’t know who it would be. It has allowed me to follow people from whom I have been organizing myself mentally and in the world, I suppose. If not, how?
Q. What did your university education give you?
R. Fine Arts was, simply, a not very complicated career, in a city with an ideal size and social and cultural life to spend four years… socializing.
Q. His first viral has a structure of sketch perfect. It introduces the character, you, then creates an escalating climate of situations and resolves it with an unexpected twist. Did you prepare it?
R. Not at all. Zero percent. I was having breakfast and I saw that a girl had raised the ‘things I don’t care about’ about working at McDonald’s and I said to myself, here I go, for one. I’m thinking all day about the things I say in that video, so I talk like that and I love to criticize. And then I guess having watched millions of videos influences me. I don’t know if I have internalized the formula, but today I think like this and speak like this.
Q. That video You are one month old and you have already signed with a representation agency and have gone to a training program. prime time in TV. How are you managing it?
R. Well, wonderful! Nice to meet you. Maybe this lasts a while, four days. The only drawback is that I have just been promoted in the cafeteria. But the last thing I could complain about is finally earning more than a thousand euros for spending hours there.
Q. How does it fit that some influencers Do you insist on how demanding your job is?
R. Look, it can be tedious. Yesterday I sat down for the first time in front of a calendar to organize my creation, and well, it takes its toll. But now I am receiving my first campaigns and, being nobody, they offer me 600 euros for a post. 600 euros! Until four days ago, literally four days, working for a whole month I didn’t earn that much. They should not have worked part-time for 500 euros. If they have, I can’t understand how they forgot.
Q. Although he has already achieved good numbers with other videos, he seems to have gained a certain community of haters by the viral of precariousness. How do you manage it?
R. The CEO of any company knows that my work is more valid for him than his company is for me. I know perfectly well that it is not the masters of any multinational that have dedicated themselves to criticizing me. I recognize that type of profile, I know the opinions they have and at least they call you “lazy and a thug.” It’s definitely not my audience niche and, furthermore, everything is in here [señala el móvil]. Maybe he silences himself by not looking at it.
Q. He recently posted on [sic]. What scares you about fame on networks?
R. Well, just that, street harassment. The harassment of the networks, which is reaching me with all the homophobia, transphobia and whatever you imagine, does not worry me much. But being followed physically scares me. Well, it’s one thing, women are scared all the time, so I guess what scares me is being more scared because of it.
Q. Among other topics, he has dedicated a video to job search pages [interrumpe].
R. Well, of course! It’s one of the things I’ve always been dedicating my life to. And what material is there! The offers I read are always a little worse than the previous month. They always surprise you. They are very clever in evil. When they ask me, what social network would you leave? I always say, well, I don’t know if LinkedIn or InfoJobs. But I’m still there, entering, like masocaanother girl who is a slave to the system.
Q. Maybe you won’t need to use them again. Would you like to make a living from content creation?
R. Have I taken this seriously? If i say. Because? Because I would like to live from the story. I don’t know if living off a story is offensive to anyone, but not to me. AND punch [y punto, en su jerga].
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