Raven Smith wants you to sweat the small stuff

Known for his laugh out loud one-liners on Instagram, Raven Smith has gone from meme savant to one of our best-known cultural critics in the past few years. Used to capturing and commenting on the zeitgeist, he’s translated this cultural savvy into debut book Trivial Pursuits: an ode to the millennials who, like him, craft and broadcast their identity through conspicuous consumption and Instagram. Mimicking the non-stop flow of information and effortless interchange between “high” and “low” culture that the Internet has facilitated, his mile-a-minute writing has predictably landed on the best-seller list. But despite its straight off the bat popularity, Trivial Pursuits has fallen into an existential predicament. Entering onto the market in an era of crisis, the book arrives a time when the modes of thinking and consumption that define the generation it profiles are all being subject to a brutal overhaul.

We caught up with the author to chat about how things have changed post-COVID-19 and why, when things get tough, it pays to sweat the small stuff.

Lovely to meet you! So, first thing’s first, I know you haven’t had the most traditional entry into writing; do you think that has helped or harmed your career so far?

It’s been a help to my writing that I haven’t had years of dreaming about being a writer; it makes me freer as I don’t properly know the rules. I’ve always had a big gob and I’ve always had an opinion but it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve put that on paper. It’s all just felt like a very natural progression.

So let’s talk about your book, Trivial Pursuits, which hit the best-seller list last week. The COVID-19 crisis has put paid to a traditional book tour but that doesn’t seem to have done you any harm, right?

I’m lucky in that I’m so used to communicating from sitting at home and creating that way, being in lockdown hasn’t really changed the way I chat about my work.

As a writer that’s used to working from home, then, what are your WFH tips for everybody climbing the walls trying to do their 9 to 5 right now?

You should really try to leave the house before 10 am because that means you have to get washed and out of bed. When I was working on the book, some days I would just do that by going out into my garden.

Besides trips to the garden, what was the process of writing Trivial Pursuits like?

I moved to Berlin to write the first draft. I thought I would be locked inside and miserable but climate change was kind that winter; I ended up walking around Berlin a lot in the day and writing from the heart, really digging deep on how I feel about stuff, at night.

Have you learnt anything about yourself after reading the final book?

I realised that the most niche, true and brutally honest thing I can say about myself is what resonates the loudest with other people.

There definitely is universality in specificity. And what I love about the book is that it really goes against the whole “don’t sweat the small stuff” mantra.

You have to sweat the small stuff, you know! You’re in trouble if you don’t. You need to achieve some kind of balance where you’re not completely devastated by world events but you’re not completely shallow either. Like we can all agree that famine is fucking awful but we’re also all trying to buy the right jeans or work out how many carbs are in a mango. I don’t think you should feel ashamed or feel bad for caring about aesthetics, either, we need to work to find an equilibrium.

Do you think that the COVID-19 crisis challenges the book’s worldview in any way? We’re definitely not able to distract ourselves in the same way as we were before; we really can’t escape all the awful things in the news.

With COVID-19, the cycles that I describe in the book of how we have all been consuming and then projecting and broadcasting our lives have ground to halt. Suddenly it’s like my book is some relic of what we were all doing a month ago; that unthinking consumption of culture, of food, and of content. Without all that, Trivial Pursuits has become a reflection of a time we are all now reflecting on.

Now that we can’t really go outside thanks to lockdowns, it feels like our digital existence has become our entire existence. For you personally, is there a difference between who you are online and who you are IRL?

I would say the only difference is, like everyone else, I am my best self online. But I think my superpower if that’s what you want to call it, is my ability to get on with people. It’s been true in the flesh my whole life and it’s also been true on Instagram. Now, the next endeavour with the book is to ask; “Can I get on with people from the written page?” That was part of the challenge of writing Trivial Pursuits; to see if I could still be completely myself when written down, without the manic laugh.

Trivial Pursuits is out now. If you don’t already, you can follow Raven on Instagram at @raven__smith