Why Is Every Small Business Like This? | Tyler's Kitschen

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Bakers are now having meltdowns because Walmart has the audacity to offer a >> Welcome to Tyler's Kitchen, the world's first anti- cookooking show where I talk about my interests, which include, but are not limited to feminism, pop culture, history, and random [ __ ] I see on the internet with a few more jokes than is necessary and/or appropriate.

[00:00:17]And if you don't support this channel, I don't know what I'll do. I've invested everything into this channel, and it's all I love in my life. And everyone who chooses to not like, subscribe, and share is praying on my downfall. Am I ready to own a small business or what? I think I nailed the playbook. I low-key love small business drama because it always reminds me of like small town gossip. And it also in a weird way makes me nostalgic for co era. Like, do you remember that? Like during co we were all bored. We were trapped inside our houses and we all got random ass hobbies. So we all decided that we needed to monetize an interest making bread, candles, beading, artwork, crocheting. Basically, everybody got a craft and then decided to make that craft a business. So today, I want to break down why I think social media business owners are so cringe-worthy and kind of bad at it. And like always, the answer is capitalism. But follow me as I walk you through my dissertation here, okay? And I'm also going to be making coconut cake. 2020 business owner Tik Tok was like me and my siblings still send in our group chat like remember when because it was so funny. We still sing that song it costs that much cuz it takes me hours.

[00:01:35]Both my siblings are really talented artists so I think that's part of why they crack up at that because it's always somebody sharing some [ __ ] that they 3D printed. I'm always stunned when I see somebody guilt-t tripping people about not supporting their small business, but then the small business in question is resin jewelry holders. Like, you know that a jewelry holder could be anything? Like, you know what a jewelry holder is? It's something that you put another thing on top of. Essentially, the floor is a jewelry holder. The table is a jewelry holder. A jewelry holder that is made out of resin is garbage. It is garbage that will never go back into the earth or be reused for anything. You just made indisposable new crap that will stay around the earth longer than the remains of your body will. So, I've been thinking a lot about small business Tik Tok and small business drama lately because the recent comeuppins of Tyler Catastrophe. So, if you don't know about this situation, this guy has gone insanely viral. Everybody is stitching his videos making think pieces on this guy. Hi, my name is Tyler and I'm currently in the process of using my beaded jewelry as a means to move all the way from Texas to England.

[00:02:42]>> Join me as I teach you how to wrap up a Technoblade painting. I am a bead worker who is not a recognized member of an indigenous tribe or nation, which is actually why I bead the way that I do.

[00:02:51]It's why I avoid bead work with fringe.

[00:02:53]It's why I avoid the tight, repetitive bead work that is often seen in native work. He's an artist and a jewelry maker from Texas who people are fascinated by because his personality is what many people would consider off-putting.

[00:03:07]He's currently selling beaded necklaces made from Hobby Lobby beads for upwards of $879.

[00:03:14]He also listed a painting at $32,000, which to be fair, this is me when I'm listing my junk on Facebook Marketplace.

[00:03:22]He posted an audition to be a singer for the band Lovejoy. He of course has a GoFundMe. And somehow all of this circles back to this need for him to get to England for a job to go work with an artist, but then the artist came out and was like, "None of this is true." With that Dakota Johnson meme where she's like, "None of it is true, Ellen. I invited you to that party. I think we often all want to ship ourselves away to the United Kingdom, but when I feel that need, I don't make a GoFundMe. I just rewatch the holiday." Basically, people can't stand this guy because he has the energy of when you're 6 years old and you start singing under your breath at a target so you get noticed by a talent agent. Also, I did not sleep last night.

[00:04:03]You know when you have like a meeting in the morning and you're so worried about waking up for it that your brain's just like, "What if we just didn't sleep at all instead of waking up on time?

[00:04:12]That'll be better." So, that's what I did. So, it's safe to say I've broken my caffeine embargo and it doesn't feel great. Half teaspoon salt. All right.

[00:04:20]Whatever you say, girl. This is our dry ingredients. Looks good. Now I need to combine wets. I need to do sugar, butter, and oil. See, I've really caught on because I know if you have butter and sugar, they almost always need to be combined first. And if that's not growth, I don't know what is. Okay. And a lot of you guys were like, Tyler, why don't you do a deep dive on Tyler Catastrophe? But personally, I like to think this channel's a little too highbrow for that. And honestly, as somebody who did theater growing up, like I lowkey kind of get it. He reminds me of a stage crew kid. I made a Tik Tok about this and people were so mad at me and I was like, "No, I'm not [ __ ] on stage crew kids. I get it. Lowkey, I get it. I recognize those over the neck headphones anywhere." And to be honest, I think it's kind of sick that even if he's not good at art, he gets to do it full time. That should inspire you to get on your grind because if Tyler Catastrophe is selling his art, that should inspire you. This is like when I go to an open mic to watch sad guys in their 40s make jokes about masturbating so I can be like, you know what, maybe I am funny. But if you look at a lot of Tyler's content, it really has this weird vibe that social media small businesses have where it's like kind of sketchy marketing tactics. And then obviously the way the audience reacts to this with intense push back and vitriol, it just begs the question, what is up with small business owners on TikTok?

[00:05:40]And I'm so excited to unpack this today.

[00:05:42]But I do have to say the bullying of this guy is ridiculous because had he come up in 2020, you guys would have been so far up his ass, it counted as a colonoscopy. So the question isn't really what's wrong with Tyler catastrophe. The question is what happened to us? Why did we go from celebrating every small business owner to being completely fed up with them?

[00:06:02]And I think the answer is more interesting than any one person's drama because I think the answer here is something about the way we relate to capitalism work culture because I think there's something so broken in our culture about the way that we interact with hobbies, with work, and with capitalism in general. So walk with me here. Okay, so in 2020, 59% of Americans picked up a new hobby. But what's even more interesting is among the people who picked up a new hobby, 48% of them turned it into a side hustle. And if you need even more data to illustrate this, Etsy has the stats to back it up. In 2019, there were 2.7 million sellers on Etsy. But by the end of 2020, there were 4.3 million. So they added 2.16 million new sellers in a single year. And a lot of those sellers saw really great results. New Etsy sellers in 2020 received over twice as many orders in their first 30 days compared to sellers who opened shops in 2019. 40% of sellers doubled their sales. 3/4ers of those sellers quadrupled them. And I mean it makes sense. We are all stuck at home with nothing to do except scroll all day and nowhere to spend our money except online. I think we all did things we're not proud of during co I got way too into Tiger King. I gained 10 pounds from Reese's Eggs specifically. I did my first semester of a musical theater BFA remotely in my parents' basement. Do you know how embarrassing it is for your parents to catch you virtually zip zap zapping? Have you guys ever done the mirroring technique? Yeah, I did that [ __ ] virtually. We literally did bar ballet and I was like this on my parents' banister every day. So, I don't want to hear about your tolerance for embarrassment until you've remotely done a BFA. I'll tell you what. But eventually, we acted like co was over, even though it still happens. And we were free. ETS's gross merchandise sales peaked at $13.5 billion in 2021 and have been declining ever since. Stock has dropped nearly 40% since its pandemic high. But there's all these people who changed their lives around this successful business they made and they're going like, "Wait, what the hell happened?" We have all these new people who started businesses, became firsttime business owners during COVID, and now they're navigating the real world of business ownership, and they're like, "Oh, what the hell? Why is nobody buying my Jack Skellington themed Tumblr cups anymore?" And then that's where the content shifted. That's when we started getting the sad Tik Toks.

[00:08:29]Like, when nobody supports your small business, nobody came to my crap fair.

[00:08:33]>> It got to a certain point where the business was no longer the product. The business was the content you made about the business because your business didn't make money, but somehow your social media grift was making money.

[00:08:43]Okay. One teaspoon vanilla extract and coconut extract. I shopped at Aldi's so I did not find vanilla extract, guys.

[00:08:50]Aldi, are they poisoning the food? Like, is this like this cannot be okay food?

[00:08:55]These prices are ridiculous. I love it.

[00:08:57]This is the best thing in the world. But are they putting like tracking chips in the food? Because I bought blackberries for $4 in California. That's not what blackberries cost. This is amazing.

[00:09:07]Okay, maybe I'll do almond extract instead of coconut cuz it's sort of similar low key, right? Let's see. Over the past few years, there have been so many arcs of crazy delusional business owners on TikTok. Like, let's just talk about a few even though it's already been exploited by 100 commentary channels 100 times. So, let's talk about the mug scandal. So, there was this girl who bought a homemade mug at a farmers market and she posted a video about it kind of complaining about her weird experience, >> which is silly because it's ceramic. So if they drop it, it'll smash. But I didn't say that. I thought it just had one handle. I was like, "Oh, that's such a cute mug. Like I'm just going to get it." Like I was like, "Whatever. Like I'll just get it."

[00:09:40]>> But then the seller responds with a 3inut video about her laborious process and how much craft and care goes into each piece, which like I get it. I just wanted to say thank you so so much for supporting my small business. Every single time someone purchases a piece that I make, I have literally spent hours and hours finessing, glazing. I hand paint every single one. And that's not including how much money goes towards tax, how much goes towards GST, how much outgoings I have, all my supplies that have also increased in value. It also includes my staff's wages. It's also deeply upsetting to have someone not only question you as a business owner and lie about how I interacted with you, but to also have you question my pricing when you two also run a small business. And you know how much goes into every single little thing that small business does. But the funny part is that Tik Tok found out she was using pre-made molds she bought online and then when she was talking about like this takes 50 hours to make each one that she was working in the curing process time into that total number. So that's basically like me saying guys this video took 8 days because I slept in between every night that I worked on it. I'm curing myself in 2020. Like I know a lot of the local businesses in my community that I had grown up with were going under. Like brickandmortar businesses were struggling so hard during the pandemic.

[00:11:09]So I think we were really kind of like softened towards small businesses. But then they kind of learned like oh this is a great way to get sales. Maybe I should keep repeating it cuz at the end of the day it's like nobody's holding a gun to your head making you sell mugs.

[00:11:23]Ooh. And then there was the Walmart cake gate. Guys, you know about this one.

[00:11:27]Those cheap Walmart cakes absolutely disgust me. The fact that poor people even have the option to purchase a vintage heart cake.

[00:11:34]>> All right, the Tik Tok cake drama is getting out of hand. And it is giving the most latestage capitalism to the point where these small bakeries are telling people that if they're poor, they just shouldn't be able to have a birthday cake.

[00:11:45]>> Walmart vintage heartcake drama and why it really upsets and affects me as a home baker and business owner.

[00:11:49]>> I just find that highly disrespectful to everybody who puts so much time and effort into their cake, >> especially when having a birthday cake is a luxury. As a baker who charges $2,000 for a tiny cake that feeds one and a half people, those cheap Walmart cakes absolutely disgusted me. In early 2025, Walmart started selling these vintage heartstyle cakes. And honestly, they looked really good. As a professional baker, I was like, "Okay, game recognizes game." But the home baker community lost theiring minds over it. Like, everybody was posting baking videos with their hot takes. These bakers were like, "You know what? Having a birthday is a luxury." And not everybody deserves that. I mean, even Harry Potter got a shitty birthday cake from Hagrid. The baker community got so nasty. They were like, "And it's nasty."

[00:12:33]And it's shitty lazy Walmart employees making it. You don't want a Walmart employee making your cake. And it's like, why are you being so mean? They were fully on a crash out, like a stage five full crash out. And I just got to say, do you know how royally up how bad and lethal your take is for people to side with Walmart? The home baker community is so intense. It's like, do you want them to stop selling cake mix, too? Should we hang Batty Crocker?

[00:13:00]What's the goal here? Okay, so now we need coconut milk. And I think this is going to work. I love Vitco. Vit Coco sponsor the show show. It is pink and I don't know if this is actually what you're supposed to use, but I thought it looked fun. So, that's what matters to me. So, I'm combining the wet and the dry ingredients and I apologize that I haven't narrated this process very well.

[00:13:21]I've got a lot of irons in the mental fire right now. So, this pan is what I'm using. I think it's probably going to be too thin, and there's basically nothing I can do about it, so whatever. the way that small businesses have this culture of acting so unhinged and unprofessional and entitled. There's memes everywhere about it. But I've noticed there's something all of these stories have in common. I don't think any of these people are bad people. I think these are people who have had artistic hobbies like baking, ceramics, jewelry, but then they felt the pressure from the culture, the economy to turn those hobbies into businesses. And that's the problem because the second you do that, you lose the fun part. And suddenly you have to become a money person, a tax person, a customer service representative, a checking your email person. And when I think of all my friends I know who are talented artists, they're on the left side of the brain, baby. They are not responding to your emails. So, let's zoom out and talk about this because this isn't just a Tik Tok thing. It's not just a 2020 thing. It's not just a Tyler catastrophe thing. I think there's really something specifically American that makes it almost psychologically impossible to enjoy something without turning it into a side hustle. Wow, look at this. This did fill up the pan correctly. Let's throw this bad boy in.

[00:14:36]Okay, now we've got to make the frosting. I famously hate making frosting. I think it is such an exhausting rigomearroll. Do I even want to bother with this? This sounds miserable. So, I think the first issue we're facing as Americans is that work has become our religion. There's a writer at the Atlantic, his name is Derek Thompson, and he wrote an essay in 2019 called Workism is making Americans miserable. His argument is that Americans have been leaving behind traditional religions, but what they are doing is they're working more and more.

[00:15:06]But we didn't stop worshiping. Now we just worship work. I mean there's so many things that humans traditionally got from organized religion like community, a belief system, meaning transcendence, higher power, and now we get it from our 9 to5s. So he calls this workism. It's the belief that work is not just a means of economic production, but the actual centerpiece of your identity and your reason for being. Hey, this one's for people who tagged their place of work in their Instagram bio. Or when I see people talking about what it's like to be a finance bro and they're like, >> "Yeah, I used to take naps in the bathroom and just told everybody I had IBS so I could be away from my desk. Oh my god, that's so scary. I didn't know that was happening. I didn't even know what investment banking was. That's so scary." In 2022, only 30% of Americans went to church or synagogue in a given week. But 76% of Americans work. Did you know that Americans outwork Germans by 12 weeks a year? And you wonder why you can't get into Burger, babe. You of sweet green and espresso. And then another piece of this, I think, is that most of us, I think especially millennials and Gen Z, were told if you do what you love, you won't work a day in your life. There was actually an author named Maya Tokomitsu who wrote the book Do What You Love and Other Lies About Success and Happiness where she argues that this quote is one of the most effective anti-worker ideologies ever invented. Basically, her point is that if you tell workers that their job should be their passion, that they should love what they do, you're basically laying the groundwork to exploit them. If you tell people work is love, it's no longer labor. And that is not something you should be compensated for. This whole framing totally evaporates any negotiating power that a worker would have. This is why like fun jobs pay less. This is why like anything competitive, even if it does bring in more money, they can just pay less cuz they feel like it. Cuz like you're getting to do what you love regardless of what you're actually barely producing. So I think the small business hobbyist is the most pure version of this. And it's even worse because you don't have a boss to fight with or blame things on. You're doing it to yourself.

[00:17:21]You're working 18 hours on a custom cake, then you're charging $40 for it.

[00:17:25]And so then when somebody says they don't want to spend that much, it's a personal attack. But these people are existing in a mind prison of their own design. Well, of capitalism's design.

[00:17:35]These people have internalized do what you love so thoroughly that they've built an entire business model out of being a martyr to their own passion.

[00:17:42]Like, bro, nobody is forcing you to have a treat maker business. And if you thought that was the end of my thesis, it's not because we were going deep.

[00:17:52]Because it's always that deep if you're crazy, and I'm crazy. In 1905, sociologist Max Weaver wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. And he makes the argument that American capitalism was built on the specifically Calvinist Protestant idea that hard work is morally virtuous.

[00:18:11]That being successful is God's will and that being lazy or unsuccessful is your fault and it's some sinful moral failing. Also guys, I am about to get so deep in my Puritan fixation. I am on pilgrim Mayflower Girl summer. Call me a pilgrim the way I'm docking this boat.

[00:18:30]Anyway, Weaver's point was that even after most people stopped being religious, the framework is still so deeply ingrained in our society and culture that we can't escape it. Now, we live in a country where you don't have to be a Puritan to feel guilty for resting. It's why we live 76 million paid vacation days on the table every single year. It's why 28 million Americans have zero paid vacation. And we're not freaking out about it. I know I'm the worst about this. It's like my brain literally cannot turn off. I do not know how to relax. I'm horrible at it. Instead of just taking a break from work, I will invent errands that I need to do to make it feel like I'm doing something productive. It's probably one of my worst traits. Like, I'll be like, I can't look at my laptop for another second. Well, I guess I better come up with four things to buy at TJ Maxx.

[00:19:20]That's just my huntergatherer instinct.

[00:19:22]So that's why I think we've become so obsessed with turning our hobbies that should just be like personal artistic pursuits into a bread maker. Because if you're spending three hours a day making a needle point pillow, unless you can monetize it, you're failing. We've literally built a system where people are now going into debt to monetize their passion. So, underneath all these bad business owners and tacky videos, there's something even more tragic, which is just this weird capitalistic puritanical culture we've built for people. Okay, this is really chunky thick. And I added more powdered sugar cuz it was looking kind of weird, but I think I obviously overdid it because I just shook the tub out and you're not supposed to do that. I'm going to add lots of vanilla. And then maybe if I add a little bit of coconut in it, it will be delicious. Maybe. Again, I don't have coconut extract. I'm going to add a little bit of almond extract. That's really good in frosting. Okay, this looks really delish. It's kind of chunky, but whatever. Let's check on that. Gang, look at this cake. Tell me I didn't absolutely this.

[00:20:22]>> Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:20:24]>> So, now I'm just going to spread this frosting on. And I think this is going to be a win. I mean, should you wait for your cake to cool down before you put frosting on it? Yeah, but I think it actually might help because this frosting is really hard and not spreading. So, I think if the cake melts the frosting just a little bit, it might work out in my favor. Oh, was the cake not finished. It's like burnt on some sides and it's kind of squishy. I just Oh, that shit's not cooked. Oh, it's like molten lava. But it was kind of brown, so I just assumed I didn't even check it. All right, so I don't know how I'm going to put this back in the oven, but I'm going to. Gang, this isn't even freaking funny. Why is it slop on the inside? Look at that. And the frosting's burnt. It's burnt and yet it's undercooked. Why is this always happening to me? Don't answer that. In my community, on a day-to-day basis, I love small businesses. I love going to my eyebrow lady and seeing her every week. I love going to my local coffee shops and being a regular. I feel like that's such like a sweet, wholesome experience. I love supporting people in my community. So, I'm not saying don't open a small business. Don't be a business owner if that's what you're passionate about. But if you are somebody who's a creative person who just got into sewing, embroidery, knitting, jewelry making, maybe just let it be a hobby. Overcome the the validation that you need from the capitalism of it all. So the hobby was never the problem. The problem is that we live in a country that taught us that if you're not making money, you're wasting time. You're morally failing and corrupt and sinful. But I think maybe you should just enjoy your beating for the love of the game. All right, this looks horrible. I'm going to grab a photo of this. This is bad.

[00:22:05]Yikes. Let's see what we got here. What are we working with, baby? Okay, I went a little too liberal with the almond extract and the frosting. I got a little too excited. And I did dump like probably a tablespoon of almond extract in there, which is crazy. So, that's really coming through. But this is overall, considering every part of it was done wrong, it's okay. I'll recommend this recipe to y'all. Go ahead. Yeah, that looks like a good cake. Great texture, okay flavor, poor execution on my