Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Since then, I've discovered that these vanity projects are much like our reptilian overlords: hidden everywhere in plain sight. If you live in a big city, you've probably frequented many of these for-fun businesses without noticing that they don't need to turn a profit to survive. Think of that artisan coffee shop that made you grind your own beans, or the gallery that contained nothing but impressionist portraits of the artist's own dick. The cash support behind vanity projects is not always quite as obvious: The writer across the street might technically be living off the money he makes writing free-form poetry about Nicolas Cage, but his parents are probably still buying his health insurance and chipping in money whenever he gets hit with another stalking charge.

Why It's Ruining Everything

There's nothing inherently wrong with a business or career being financially supported by another person. It's the fact that nobody admits to this that does the damage. In our society, financial help of any kind is treated like an embarrassing groin rash to be kept to ourselves and the necessary professionals. But this means that many of us who don't have that outside support see people like the Nicolas Cage poet getting by just fine, and we conclude that Nicolas Cage poetry is a viable career for anyone.

Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images

Even for Nicolas Cage.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Everyone laughs at Joe Graduate Student, who spent $50,000 on a useless master's degree in fan fiction studies or whatever. But maybe Joe, and many students like him, grew up seeing other people with similarly useless degrees who seemed to be doing just fine. No one mentioned to Joe that these other uselessly degreed people had parents who were quietly paying off their credit cards every month. So Joe followed his dream and got the degree, and today he is selling his body to supplement his fan fiction income.

Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com

You don't want to know what's in that cup.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that anyone without rich parents should resign themselves to working 16-hour shifts in the potato factory until they die (well, unless they're in Idaho. I'm pretty sure they don't let anyone out of Idaho). But lacking a hidden safety net woven from your parents' hundred-dollar bills means that you'll have to work harder, accept more risks, and recognize that if you fail, you will fail harder. Instead of acknowledging this, though, we've created a fantasy world in which we pretend that anyone can afford a condo in New York with the profits from their homemade cat jewelry startup.