What if everything is just a remix?
How I built my creative identity from five internet icons
What if every creation is merely a remix of the past?
In this remix culture, we’re all just scrappy mixtape artists, pressing a mic against the the world’s dynamic frequencies only we are attuned to. Whether it's a drag queen who turns childhood toys into a business empire or a minimalist filmmaker who redefines success, I’ve found inspiration in unexpected corners and built my own sound from their signals.
I remember holding my tape recorder up against my grandfather’s radio, trying to minimize the distance between the mic and the speakers. He loved playing music from Chinese TV series that never aired in my parents’ house. The language was so different than the ones I grew up in my house with - a blend of Javanese, Indonesian, and Hollywood English - I wanted to take the soundbites with me on our 14-hour drive back to Tangerang.
That action — trying to hold onto a feeling I didn’t yet have the language for — was my first act of remixing.
Such is how I moved through the world. I find something interesting, make a note of it, and eventually it gets remixed into something I write, a video I make, or a practice I start doing, like journaling every morning.
celebrates remixing the world by telling over half a million people to Steal Like An Artist. This works for remixing influences into one piece of art, or remixing the world into a whole body of work.For the longest time, I thought I had to produce something that was 100% me for it to be considered "art." But as I started writing what I thought was "just me" in Google Docs, all I produced were paragraphs that sounded smart but felt hollow. I was trying to write while dodging influence without realising that was an impossible task. It wasn't until I started remixing — quoting references, mimicking styles, lifting formats — that I surprisingly started to sound like myself.
A few days ago,
challenged me to write about “the composite creator I'd like to be”. And while my influences span wide and far, I do have five figures I look up to in my current era of content creation.My Current Creator Cabinet
Trixie Mattel, Multi-hyphenate Drag Queen
Trixie Mattel is a multi-hyphenate entrepreneur and drag artist whose empire includes motels, bars, podcasts, books, TV shows, music, and a cosmetics company. She is most well-known for winning a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and her 2.3M-subscriber YouTube channel.
I feel the same pull to create in different formats and build across different mediums. She’s both an artist and an entrepreneur. I see her and think: truly be that bitch that can do both. So I’ve leaned into learning about the craft (e.g. writing better stories) and business (e.g. putting together a sales page) concurrently.
“You learn over time the balance of too much business not enough art, you get bored. And the balance of too much art and none of business, you get broke,” Trixie on balancing art and business.
Trixie isn’t embarrassed to lean into the things she grew up loving, releasing her make-up in Barbie-esque packaging and including the Powerpuff Girls’ theme song in her DJ sets (did I mention she’s also a DJ?).
She’s also an icon in the LGBTQ+ space. Just her existence is a radical act. In a much smaller magnitude, my being openly gay has already caused murmurs and gossip in my very religious neighbourhood back in Indonesia. But it also has an upside: maybe someone in my orbit sees me and thinks, oh, it’s okay to be themselves too.
Jenn Im, Approachable Older Sister
I basically stole my YouTube intro (“It’s your girl Becky”) from Jenn Im. Her videos ooze approachable cozy older sister energy: natural lighting, candid conversations, and a warm tone that makes you feel like you’re up for some “real talk” with a good friend. Through her, I learned makeup (glam but natural), fashion (a fellow petite Asian girlie), and books (she was my intro to Jonathan Haidt’s work). She once mentioned a book summary template that turned out to be Ali Abdaal’s and sent me down the productivity rabbit hole.
Jenn creates with intention. She feels more grounded than many beauty creators. I've picked up a lot of things, from morning pages to solo travel to therapy, because of her. These now feed directly back into my creative practice.
She is the kind of person I want to be. I gobble her content up always. (It’s a religious day when Jenn uploads).
Kariza Santos, Masterful Storyteller
Kariza took YouTube by storm with her scripted vlogs, inspired by 90s movies. You see it in her colour-grading, pacing, soundtracks, and camera moves.
Her genius is in blending scriptwriting with vlogging - two worlds that don’t typically meet. She describes her videos as “based on a true story”, but says people need something familiar in order to accept something new. That’s a clever way to nudge audiences into new formats.
Kariza also takes inspiration from outside YouTube, like books and films, and filters them back into her work. Her storytelling is next-level, and I want to get to that level of craft.
Earlier this year, I put together a “based on a true story” video of visiting my parents that was directly inspired by Kariza’s style. The format, camera angles, and style was hers - but the story is mine.
Matt D’Avella, Slow Solopreneur Minimalist
Matt D’Avella is synonymous with minimalism. By his definition, it's about living a simple life: intentionally choosing less so that what remains matters more. His videos aren’t rapid-fire. His uploads are rare. But each one is a banger.
When I decided to take YouTube seriously, I bought his Master YouTube course. That’s how I learned about A-roll vs B-roll, colour grading, and how even something like "self-deprecating" can define a creator’s voice.
His videos already got me into various stages of minimalism (I look like a hoarder but I would be much worse off without his influence), but I really started to vibe with his stuff when he downsized his business into a solo operation.
I had always conflated success with more: more money, more team, more growth. But Matt went the other direction and still creates high-quality work, while still claiming that he is enough and has enough. Watching him live out “enough” cast a new lens on the life choices I’ve made since, including quitting a “stable” corporate job at a bank.
Ali Abdaal, Encourages Action
Ah, how could I forget my boss?
Ali has a superpower: turning scientific insights into actionable steps. He’s infectiously enthusiastic, deeply authentic, and proudly nerdy.
Nearly everyone in his orbit ends up building something - a side hustle, a business, a course. That’s his influence. He believes in spending time better through productivity, in financial freedom through entrepreneurship, and lives those beliefs out loud.
I may be biased because I have the proximity to work closely with him, but I’ve looked up to Ali since 2021. He was the reason I uploaded my first YouTube video (about watercolour paints!), which eventually snowballed into this whole creator journey.
I’ll take any action that can help stack the deck in my favour.
How I remix their influence
The point isn't to become a carbon copy of my heroes. That’s not a remix. That’s a cover. A remix needs my wild ad libs layered over the original synths. It needs my bold beats breaking the baroque baseline.
Even RuPaul keeps hammering this feedback to Drag Race contestants: “You need to bring yourself into everything you do.”
So how do I remix? I’ve started to think of it in three parts: lean in, inject, apply.
Lean in to what I love
This looks like:
Leaning into childhood influences like Trixie. For me, that’s Disney, Totally Spies, Friends, That’s So Raven, Lizzie McGuire, The Cheetah Girls.
Searching for inspiration from outside the space like Kariza. For me: historical fiction books, sci-fi stories, photography, painting en plein air.
Being cozy and candid like Jenn. Just being my real self on screen.
Being slow and intentional like Matt. Asking: What do I really need to be happy? How do I want to spend my time? What are the things I can let go of?
Inspiring people to take action like Ali. This looks like being the encouraging friend (psst if you wanna write on Substack, I’ll edit your drafts for you) while also making content that’s useful.
Inject my own sauce
This could be done by shedding any of the above templates when something more “me” feels right. Maybe it’s a rant instead of a How-to. Maybe it’s a heartfelt essay and not a framework.
The question I always ask: How do I make this more me? What would make it so unmistakably mine that no one else’s byline would fit?
(In the onslaught of AI slop, personal sauce is the new baseline to stand out in the “collective flattening” of the internet, h/t
).Fair warning: personal sauce may be the opposite of algo-maxxing, aka optimizing your content to maximise algorithmic reach. Algorithms love predictability. If you’re showing up as your weird, non-trending self… being authentic might work against you.
Apply it across mediums
Once you figure out your “sauce”, carry that hot sauce in your bag (swag).
One epiphany I had recently was that I could bring everything I know about writing into YouTube.
I had been approaching my new YouTube producer role like I knew nothing. But what I could have done (and what I will do now) is treat each video as if it was a student essay I’m editing, just with some visual elements and some quirky YouTube-specific stuff (e.g. having a hook in the first 30-45 seconds, the importance of a thumbnail). But the bones are the same.
Good storytelling is medium-agnostic: find ideas that energetically spark something in the writer, double down on personal stories and specific detail, and create a tension point that the readers want answers to.
Since I started viewing videos this way, I’ve been able to develop stronger takes on scripts that I otherwise wouldn’t have.
Be the scrappy mixtape artist you want to see in the world
So that’s my current creator cabinet. I take what I love from each, remix it, and send it back out into the world.
What better way to live than as a scrappy mixtape artist: tuning in, mixing tracks, and crafting something unmistakably mine?
Thank you for the suggestion, Charlie Becker :) May have been thinking about this “ideal” combo since April. Can’t wait to see the other essays on his wish list, too.
This essay was written in part with ’s Essay Architecture software and Voicepal, a ghostwriter-in-your-pocket app that is developing with his team. (Disclaimer: He’s my boss).
Update log:
🎙️ New
episode on whether or not you should start a second channel/account/publication.📖 Reading The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (13% completed). His first book really stayed with me. Still forming thoughts on this one, though his writing is as beautiful as ever.
🛋️ Watched KPop Demon Hunters twice in the past week and I totally get it. This is bringing me back to my KPop fangirl days. Golden.
☎️ Talked to Tony Santos, Thomas Frank's former editor. Kinda crazy how I just plopped into this world of people that I only watched from afar. Now they’re like actual people I can ask advice from.
⚙️ Published my July log of stuff I’ve consumed (so far).
🏋️♀️ Have been making some new friends in the gym - fellow girlies who lift. We don’t hang outside the gym but it’s nice to see their faces when I walk in. It’s like Bumble BFF but IRL (haven’t tried Bumble BFF before but I imagine this would be it).
Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://www.beckyisj.com/consulting
Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.
I like this article, I might have to do a remix with the icons I've looked up to!
“Be the scrappy mixtape artist you want to see in the world” - love it