Why Connor Hubbard’s Mundane Daily Routine Is Driving the Internet Insane

Kate Lindsay
·9 min read

Photographs: Connor Hubbard; Collage: Gabe Conte

In a sea of hot takes and horrifying headlines, you might not expect a video of a man eating lunch at Chili’s to cause an internet uproar. But Connor Hubbard’s day-in-the-life videos—in which he wakes, carefully packs his laptop, drives to his cubicle job, steps out for lunch at 11 a.m., and returns home to pet his dog and work out—have viewers responding with comments like “horrifying” and “one of the most disturbing videos I've ever watched” and questioning whether it's all an irony-poisoned act. In reality, the videos are the 29-year-old’s earnest effort to “normalize the norm,” and have earned him 800,000 followers on Instagram and another 433,000 on TikTok.

Hubbard, who lives in Texas, lives a life that is familiar to many people in America. He gets up, goes to work, grabs food, and recharges at home. He documents all this quietly and with time-stamped details. His lifestyle is not flashy or affluent, but it’s good enough for him—and that attitude, he says, is one he did not see represented online.

“It just seemed to get a lot of traction,” he tells GQ, “because I think most of the world is working. They have to work for a living. They can't all be influencers.”

And while Hubbard is now sort of an influencer, he is mainly an office worker with a girlfriend and goldendoodle. He spends time with his family on his days off, and drinks a beer on the couch to wind down. For people who come online to escape the mundanities of their daily existence, Hubbard’s content may hit a little too close to home. For others, it’s given them some much-needed reassurance that their own regular lives are worthy of appreciation.

Hubbard chatted with GQ about why he started making these videos, what it’s been like to weather the internet’s divided reactions, and if he’d ever abandon his 9 to 5 to create content full-time.

GQ: How did you get started posting videos?

Connor Hubbard: I just did it for fun and it was always a hobby and passion of mine. A few years went by, I left the 9 to 5 to go do video full-time. I tried to pursue it full-time because it was my passion—I wanted to get away from the desk job. I worked for a start-up company doing videography and social media management for a year. I took that company's account and grew it to 50,000 followers and learned the ins and outs of how to grow an audience within a certain niche and whatnot. After doing that for a year, I was traveling three weekends a month, not making a lot of money, getting burnt out on what I used to love to do. And so I made the decision to go back to the career I was building before. And that's when I got the job I'm at now [and decided] I'm just gonna make a new TikTok account and start filming my everyday life just as my creative outlet.

At the beginning of 2023, I was like, I'm gonna post every single day for 365 days and just see how it goes. And so that was just me filming my everyday normal life, adding some cool music to it, adding some cool edits to it, and before a month went by I had a couple videos do really well. And then I started incorporating my job and stuff like that. And it just turned out to be really relatable, because I guess there hadn't been a lot of this shown on social media. A lot of what you see today is, you know, these luxurious lifestyles, people traveling here and there, and selling get rich quick schemes, and things like that. And I hadn't seen a guy posting his normal, ordinary life. It just seemed to get a lot of traction. Because I think most of the world is working, they have to work for a living. They can't all be influencers.

As you mentioned, this is not normally what you see men post online. Did you feel any pressure to post more like an influencer when you started?

I could see that, but I didn't feel that way. I try to tune out a lot of that “comparing my life to others” thing. But I think that's the big problem on social media. You see other guys posting on social media and they're in perfect shape, they look perfect. And so I think that's the fear for guys: I don't wanna post because I'm not perfect like these guys I see on the internet. And so it's a comparison game. People are scared to post because they don't wanna look less than. It's a masculine thing. But in reality it doesn't matter.

Yes, I feel like if men express that other side they get dismissed.

Yeah. For being sensitive. You don't wanna come off as a sensitive guy. Guys wanna come off as tough and that they don't have any issues, but in reality we do too. And it's okay to share that.

Did you grow up using social media?

Yeah. When I was like 10 or 12, me and my buddy started a YouTube account just making funny, dumb videos. I think I've always had some sort of passion for capturing a moment, if you will. In high school, I was obsessed with Vine. And I loved the idea of like, you could go viral! And so from that time on I was trying to become Vine famous. I had no idea what I was doing. And then college came around and Snapchat was really big, so I'd film everything that we're doing. And then my girlfriend got me the GoPro and it just kind of escalated. And then TikTok came out and I was like, there's something here.

Did you start posting with this emphasis on normality?

It was literally me just filming my everyday life. I had no intentions of [making it about] I'm a normal guy and this hasn't been shown on social media. But I made a couple videos where I said, like, “Normalize the 9 to 5” or “Normalize a normal life” and those did really well, just with that title at the beginning. It turned out that that “normal” concept hadn't been around as much, or if it had, it wasn't very popular.

What has the reaction been like to your videos?

It's pretty crazy. It's kind of like a house divided. On one hand, in TikTok I think I have a younger generation of people, 18- to 25-year-olds, that have grown up on social media. And so they believe everything they've seen on social media to be life. They see my content as depressing or sad because I'm not their typical guy that became a millionaire at age 22. But then I started posting the same content on Instagram, and I have a lot more people that are in my similar spot in life. And they really appreciate the content because they're also living similar lives and they understand that what I'm doing is just real life. Some people view it as sad and depressing, and some people view it as a peaceful, happy life in which you can just appreciate what you have. I definitely feel more support than I do negativity, but you kind of get both perspectives in my comments, and I think that's driven a lot of engagement.

You're right that when you grow up on social media—especially with only one version of influencer—that is going to change what success looks like to you. And I feel like what you're doing is more a way of expressing gratitude.

Yeah. It is. At this point now, I just wanna create a safe space for people to know that what you're doing is completely fine. Stop comparing yourself to what you've seen on 90% of social media.

Especially for men, a lot of what’s shown on social media is very specific, and sometimes harmful.

I totally get it. For males, I feel like the content's more geared around your masculinity stuff, like not just the women and sex and stuff, but fitness and motivation and all of it. I feel like guys go on social media and they think like, I need to be in the gym grinding. And I think that is the problem with TikTok—it persuades you to think one way when that's not your original thought process going in. That's the algorithm for you.

Where do you like to spend time online?

I spend so much time creating that I don't scroll too much. I mean, I love seeing the day-in-the-life logs of people working different jobs. When I do scroll, it's mainly just to get inspiration. I love pet accounts. There's some good Doodle accounts out there.

Would you ever consider going back to content creation full-time?

I get that question all the time. No, because I've tried it before. When the hobby became a job, it was not as fun. I really do believe and appreciate the stability of my job, and like just having a job and building practical résumé experience, because we don't know what's gonna happen with social media. I'd rather build a sustainable career and do this for fun. My goal is just really to try to create a safe space for men and women to know that what they're doing is just fine.

Originally Appeared on GQ

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