The Daily - 'The Interview': Mia Khalifa’s Messy World of Money, Sex and Activism

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

For the OnlyFans star and influencer, navigating the internet is a full-time job.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

David Marquesi, The New York Times From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marquesi. To be influential online today is to be bombarded with all sorts of difficult questions about self-presentation, public judgment, freedom of speech, personal power, and money. Over the last decade or so, Mia Khalifa has been forced to try to find some answers. In 2014, when Khalifa, who was born in Lebanon and raised Catholic in the D.C. area, was 21 years old, she made a decision that changed the rest of her life. Khalifa was working in the adult film industry and performed in an explicit scene while wearing a hijab. The video went viral and the response was harsh.

She even got death threats, including a photoshopped image of her being beheaded by the Islamic State. The vitriol was part of what led Khalifa to leave the adult film industry and try to go back to anonymity. She couldn't. So a few years ago, she decided that rather than try to pretend her past didn't exist, she could try to own it.

She gradually turned herself into a massively popular social media influencer, one with a lingering aura of transgression. Khalifa now has millions following her on X, TikTok, and Instagram, and she's also built a big audience on OnlyFans, which is an online platform where subscribers can directly pay performers for all kinds of content, some of which is fairly innocuous, and much of which, including Khalifa's, is, let's say, risque. I'd been dimly aware of the controversy surrounding Khalifa back in 2014, and was surprised in recent years to see her still popping up here and there,

on unofficial lists of top OnlyFans earners, on the great Hulu show Rami, and in passing coverage of her jewelry brand, Shaytan. on unofficial lists of top OnlyFans earners, on the great Hulu show Rami, and in passing coverage of her jewelry brand, Shaitan. Then last year, I saw her name come up again after she posted inflammatory tweets following Hamas' terrorist attack in Israel on October 7th. How did the person I'd heard about a decade ago

turn into this person, an apparently still controversial influencer with a multi-platform following in the tens of millions. I suspected that the answers might have something to say about the wider world of being famous online. I'd been curious about the influencer corner of the internet for some time, how these people build and rebuild their personal brands, how they handle controversies, and the potential cost to someone's head and heart of choosing to live such a public life.

Here's my conversation with Mia Khalifa. To start, I've seen you online or in other interviews talk about the idea that you're kind of in the middle of a rebranding. But the thing that I haven't seen you talk about is what you think your brand was and what you want your brand to be now. So can you sort of fill that story in for me? I feel like my brand at the beginning wasn't something that was very much in my control. It happened, I kind of became infamous by accident.

I entered the adult industry in October of 2014 and the context was that I was an Arab-failed woman, and that was it. The intent was to exploit the fact that I was Arabic and spoke Arabic, and I went through with it. And not very long after, I would say like maybe a couple hours after it premiered, the avalanche started, and every news outlet picked it up and everybody had an opinion on it and felt like from there on my fate was sealed. And all of a sudden I was completely out of control of my image, my reputation, my intentions.

Every single thing about me was being misunderstood. I feel like a lot of people have slutty phases when they're 20, 21, like in college. And unfortunately, mine was in 4K. So how did it become clear to you that, like, you couldn't really go back to normal life in the way that you wanted? I was working at a law office and I started to feel like a distraction in the office. Anyone who would come in, there would be whispers in the waiting room and if other attorneys came to visit from other firms, there would be whispers within that. And I just started to feel very much like a distraction and uncomfortable.

And that's when I realized like, this isn't gonna change. This isn't gonna go anywhere. This isn't gonna get better. I don't like feeling this way. I don't like, you know, the women that I work with looking at me a certain way. And I especially don't like the men looking at me a certain way.

Cause it's a bit of like a zoo animal. Like it's that type of fascination and those types of whispers. Not necessarily to say that it was abusive or disrespectful, but it was just like, that's not something that I wanted to keep dealing with. So I reopened social media and I decided to actually try to be an influencer

and to be someone who was a public person if that was the fate that I had sealed for myself. So in that sense, when we talk about what your brand was, really we just mean how people knew you publicly. The brand that they formed in their head because there was no intention, there was no purposeful intention behind that brand. And I think that where I am now, mentally, emotionally, just on every level is a complete 180 from who I was.

I want my brand to represent being a contradiction. That's my brand, just evolution. I think you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million followers on X. 26 million people follow you on Instagram, I think, I think 38 million follow you on TikTok. So how do you sort of reinforce your brand on each of those platforms?

And how is it different on each of those platforms? That's such a good question, because you're not going to succeed if you are the same across all platforms. Not to say that you have to be different, but you have to show different sides of you. We're all multifaceted. And TikTok is more for like my skincare

and like fun music and silly videos. And then my Twitter is, well, Twitter is my favorite app in general. It's where I get all of my news. It's very much about activism and jokes and just what Twitter was made for. So I'm trying to find that balance of hoping that my grand intention gets across on all of them while still being true to what each platform is kind of for.

But my assumption, tell me if I'm wrong, is that your moneymaker is OnlyFans. Yes. Where you're also extremely popular. I mean, I've seen in interviews, you know, I think someone once asked you, like, do you make $10,000 a day? And I don't remember if you said yes, but I think you're like, it's in the neighborhood of that.

Or I've seen stories that suggested like $6 million a month. Like just really, is that not? Oh my God, no. That's insane. No, that's like Goog Oh my God, no. That's insane. No, that's like Googling someone's network. That's never accurate. Those aren't true? No, of course not.

Oh no. Ha ha ha. Uh, um, but do you feel like there's any tension or anything to reconcile in the fact that you make your money on this one platform that I assume is predominantly men, and it seems like sort of your followers on these other platforms are women,

and just like content-wise, there are ways in which they're not in alignment with the stuff that's on OnlyFans. Does that feel like something that you have to reconcile in some way, or how do you understand that gap? It's not necessarily that, because I feel like the way that I'm on the platform is a way that is very true to myself and makes me feel comfortable with being on it.

I do not like catering to the male audience even though it might seem like I do. Just because I look a certain way in a bikini does not necessarily mean it's not for the girls. Like if anyone who goes on my OnlyFans and asks for something crude or something past my boundaries, like I don't do nudity past what I've done in a fashion magazine, which is like a see-through shirt or something like that. So I feel very, very secure. And the audience that I've cultivated on that platform also knows what they're in for. So I don't have trouble with that. I have more trouble with making sure that I'm not promoting it as a platform that is an

answer to women who are looking for quick money or easy money or the life of an influencer that they might see me live. I feel like I have a responsibility to not promote it as something that young women or any woman should join unless they've already been in the sex work industry, unless they're over 25 and their frontal cortex is formed, unless they're coming at it from a place that is,

that's not, I don't wanna use the word desperate, but just from a place of clarity and from a place of good intentions. An agency maybe. Yeah, yeah, exactly, thank you for that. From a place of agency and bodily autonomy. Not from a place of, oh, I need to do this because I want to live this lifestyle, because that's not the case. I am very much an outlier. The reason that I'm able to be so successful

on that platform is because I'm extremely fortunate, but I've also paid the price with a lot of misfortune. So me going onto that platform felt like a reclamation rather than, oh, I want to do this so that I can live like this. And maybe it would just be helpful to pull back for a little and give some broader context about how you got to that reclamation. So there was the experience in the adult film industry that you talked about. When did the decision come to give OnlyFans a try? So initially I was on a platform called Patreon. And it was so much work. It was so much production.

It was really, really difficult to keep up because most people who are on Patreon are like doing podcasts and my tiers are like, oh, if you're on this tier, then you get this photo shoot. And if you're on this tier, you get one live stream of me cooking a week. And it started to feel like I wasn't cut out to be a streamer. And that's what it started to feel like. It started to feel like I had to host a podcast or do something to make it worthwhile for Patreon members. And then in 2020, I decided to join OnlyFans

after the Beirut blast. And I made the decision to join OnlyFans and donate. If I was able to make $100,000, I am donating $100,000. And that's why I'm joining this platform. And I was able to do that. And after that, I realized the community there isn't necessarily as negative as I kind of had written it off to be in my head.

And I was able to reach that goal and I've been on there ever since and I love it. And you have obviously had pretty negative experiences in, I guess we call it the sex work industry. And, I mean, is it fair to categorize OnlyFans as sex work also? Technically it is, and I feel like people who get insulted by that feel ashamed of being lumped in with sex workers.

But no, that is the definition. The adult industry, the sex work industry. And so on OnlyFans, your experience in that industry has been much more positive and it's one of agency and sort of you're in control. And you've also spoken out pretty candidly about what you see as the dangers of the sex work industry.

Do you find it difficult at all to kind of thread the needle between talking about what the potential harms of that industry are, while also not further stigmatizing people who work in that industry? Like it seems like it could be a very difficult needle to thread. Very. I get a lot of backlash from women in the industry for that reason, actually. But to be honest, I care more about the young girls who haven't entered the industry yet and see me and they're like, oh my God, I love her outfits.

She's always traveling. I want that life. And they don't want, like like that's my number one priority. I don't care if another girl is getting mad at me because I'm stigmatizing something. I feel like someone's always going to get mad at you about something and I don't care. It is very contradictory of me to be on something and tell other people, no, don't join.

But I'm not saying don't join. I'm saying don't join. Don't join so young. Don't join as like your first entryway into something. Don't join as like, as it being an answer to all of your problems, because it's so difficult to build an audience on there. It's so hard.

And it could cut, like you could, just don't do something you could regret. The internet is forever, your digital footprint, especially this day and age, is so important. And I wish I took that so much more seriously 10 years ago. And you know, the subject of shame is a complicated one. It's the most powerful human emotion. And I think it's complicated because particularly from the outside looking at your experience,

it can feel like such a cliche and very easy to go like, oh, you went through these things, like they were shameful things, you know? But sex work doesn't have to be shameful. It's not inherently shameful. I'm just wondering if you can talk through as much as you can, like what your relationship with shame is now and sort of, if you feel like you've gotten past it,

or maybe on some level, like we all never get past it. Oh no, no, no, I hope not. I mean, you call people shameless as a negative, like in a derogatory way for a reason. Like I hope that I still have a little bit of shame in me. I feel like they're, in small doses, it's pretty healthy. Why is it healthy? Well, I feel like shame just stops you

from being a complete asshole sometimes. You know, like it stops you from just being completely disrespectful and completely rude. Like, have you no shame? That's something that like you gotta tell, you gotta ask yourself once in a while. Yeah. So there is a healthy amount, but then, you know,

there's also the other side of shame, where even Pixar was like, oh, for Inside Out 2, we wanted that to be one of the emotions, but everybody got too depressed. It was too sad. Like, shame is powerful. Shame can drive you to make decisions that are terrible and look at yourself in a way that is so negative and talk to yourself in a way that just buries you so deep that you feel

like you can't crawl out of it. It's so, it's so heavy. And you really just have to think about why, why do I feel ashamed of this? Do I feel ashamed of it because it goes against my fundamental beliefs, like my core beliefs, or am I feeling ashamed because people are laughing? Because if that's the case, then you're not ashamed, you're embarrassed. And embarrassed is a completely different emotion,

and it requires a completely different set of tools to work through. So do you have a vision of what an ethical adult film industry would look like or would be? What needs to change in that world? I think that the predatory contracts need to change. I think that the production companies who are given impunity to enforce these contracts, no matter the circumstances, like even if a girl was, let's say, drugged or under the

influence or trafficked or all of these awful awful circumstances that does not matter to them and there's nobody to enforce anything and that is a big monster to fight you know, I was just watching the other day there was a talk you gave at the Oxford Union not that long ago and during the sort of audience question and answer portion, a young woman stood up and she prefaced her question to you with, you know, I'm paraphrasing, so maybe I'm not getting the terminology exactly right,

but she referred to you as a feminist icon. Can you talk about how feminism manifests itself in your work? That's a really good question because I feel so much imposter syndrome around being called that. Why? Because I had so much internalized misogyny that I had to work through, and I feel like that didn't start until I started my therapy journey at 26. Like, I am so ashamed of the things that I've said and thought about myself and allowed others to say and jokes that I went along with and contributed to

about myself or about other women or anything like that. I'm extremely ashamed of that, which is why I say there is no being here unless there was change. So it's been an evolution. But on the OnlyFans platform, it's my boundaries. It's the way I enforce them. It's the way that if someone says a word or describes a body part in a way that's more crude than I'll accept, they get blocked.

On Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, all of those platforms, I feel like I hope that it manifests in the work that I do, the people that I platform, the things that I talk about in spotlight, like women's reproductive rights and anti-human and sex trafficking efforts and all of these things. I really, really hope that they come across on those platforms. You referred to internalized misogyny. I mean, really, I think in some ways you're talking about your background and how you grew up.

Can you just talk to me about what you feel like were the most formative aspects of your growing up and like what are things from your youth or the culture you were raised in or your family that you feel like you're still trying to work through? The internalized misogyny actually came more from the American influences. It was, you know, I don't even want to platform the comedians, but it was, it was not being comfortable as a woman in, in brown skin and not being comfortable as an Arab woman. I grew up in DC in a post 9 11 world and there was a lot of just blatant racism and I started to hate myself and I started to very, very much try and,

you know, fit myself into the white category. Like, no, I'm wearing Brooks Brothers and Sperry's. What do you mean? I'm not brown. I'm not Arab. Like, I would join in on jokes like that. I would join in on jokes against women. I would put myself down to hope that I can fit into to places I shouldn't even have been trying to fit into. And I carry a lot of shame about that, but growing up culturally as an Arab woman, the formative things that kind of like messed me up psychologically was more so the guilt,

the Catholic guilt, the expectations, all of those things. And this is maybe connected, maybe it's not, but you were estranged from your family for a while, but have recently reconciled or come close to reconciling. So can you tell me about why the estrangement happened and how you've been able to heal that? Everyone healed through shame. I don't talk about my family a lot for their privacy.

They did not choose the life in the public eye. And out of respect for them, I do not talk about them. But I will say that there was a lot of radical empathy that was practiced within the family that made that possible. And I'm really, really, really grateful for that. I'm really glad you've gotten there with them. Thank you.

And so you're Lebanese. Yeah, I am. This is a very difficult moment for Lebanese people. The violence there is escalating. Do you have friends there? Do you have family there? I do. I do.

Thankfully, they're in the position where they're taking in refugees and people who aren't able to cross the borders right now, or at least having to flee their homes. They're able to open their doors and give them a place to stay. And that's the best you can hope for for the situation in Lebanon right now. You know, I saw you say in a relatively recent interview that, you know, you're talking about the idea of politics

and what your platform is. And you've also talked in this context, or just to be specific, like the context of politics and political beliefs about wanting to make a difference in some way. So how do you think you're able to make a difference, or how might you be able to make a difference or how might you be able to make a difference? It's really just normalizing it, making people see that it's not taboo to talk about it. It's not- To talk about what specifically?

To talk about ending the genocide, to talk about a ceasefire, to talk about anti-abortion, to talk about any of these things. It's not taboo. It's not a, oh, you're an influencer, just do your job. Oh, you're an athlete, keep politics out. Oh, you're this. No, stick to that. It's not taboo to have an opinion.

In fact, you're an NPC if you don't have an opinion. You're a non-playable character. You're a robot. You literally do not exist. If you have no interest in contributing to the fight for human rights, or basic rights domestically or internationally, what are you good for?

What are you good for? Like Pharrell coming out and saying, I don't think celebrities should have opinions on politics, please. This is obviously a very difficult subject or set of subjects to talk about. I don't feel like my role here is to condone ideas that you might have about it or to rebut them. Her points of view are not mine.

I want to be clear about that from the outset. And here I'm thinking about, you know, I think it was either on October 7th of last year or maybe right after October 7th. Like two days after. Right, you know what I'm going to ask you. Yeah, yeah, of course. Right, so you posted on X, there was one post that was, you know, I'm going to paraphrase, but you were suggesting the freedom fighters in Gaza should flip their phones to horizontal in order to better film it.

And then there was another post, I think it was on X probably right around the same time where there were, it's hard to know for sure, but it looks like there were Hamas militants shooting into an Israeli police car. As a result of those posts, some companies that you were in business with decided to stop doing business with you. And I also want to add, you've said while you're anti-Zionist, you're in no way anti-Judaism. No, and it's very important to not say Jewish people when talking about Zionists. But to my mind, those posts didn't meet the moral tenor of the moment.

And I'm not asking you to defend or explain those posts, But the question I have is whether your experience with those posts and the reaction that they engendered made you think differently about the kinds of posts you wanna make about Gaza or about politics or sort of really what the value and use that you can bring to these conversations might be. Of course. If you'll allow me, I would like a chance to talk about those tweets.

The first one was not the reason I had said that was because there was a scene that was really poetic and symbolic and beautiful. And it was a fence was being broken down and it was civilians, it was children, it felt like the Berlin Wall coming down. And that's what I was talking about. And that's why I said freedom fighters, because every Palestinian who, you know, still has a will to live is a freedom fighter. So that's what it was in reference to. And the other one, the photo, it just felt so baroque.

Like it looked- I do refer to it as looking like a Renaissance painting. Yes, exactly. Like there was the composition, everything about it. And I feel like, I feel like that's not, at the time, it was too soon, but I feel like that's not a, you know, a radical thing to say about something that looks so, I mean, it really did. It looked, it looked crazy.

But yeah, the timing was not, was not, it was too soon. And that's where I stand on that. And all of the business that I lost because of it was extremely welcomed. Because if we really disagree at that level, we shouldn't be working together in the first place. So I'm not angry about it. I'm actually grateful for it. Unfortunately, it had to play out like that.

Unfortunately, very, like this was the part that I regret the most. And it was my intention being so misconstrued that people who were close to me reached out and were deeply, deeply hurt by what I had said. How did they explain their hurt? The same as other people. I cannot believe that you would say something this violently fueled and having to go back

and explaining to them my intention and apologizing for hurting them and really, really just making sure that they understand who I am as a person. And did that experience incur any changes about how you think about what to post or when to post it? Yes, completely. Yes, tell me about that. Because that was a distraction. That was not my intention.

That's not how I want any of my activism to be. I don't want it, that focused it on me, not about, and also as people of color, and I'm talking about whether we're fighting for Black Lives Matter here, stateside or a free Palestine or a free Congo, whatever it may be, we have no room for error. We are given no grace. So it takes a lot more,

I personally, I can only speak for myself, I have to put a lot more thought into what I say and I have to make sure that context is always there now. I do move differently with the things I say online and it's not in a way to censor myself, it's in a way to make sure that anything I'm doing isn't deterring from the big picture. You know, on your platforms, the content can be so, just different is the term, you know, you can post like sort of a playful food video on TikTok and then have, you know, a pretty strident set of tweets about Gaza. Like how do you think the people who follow you across these platforms take in those disparate types of content?

Like do you have a sense of whether or not the person who is following you on TikTok because they like your dance videos or food videos is like paying attention to the political tweets? Or are they seeing one and ignoring the other? Is it like a mishmash in people's head? Is it a mishmash in your head? How do you...

It seems so... Yeah, it just seems like such sort of a... Like it would induce almost like psychological vertigo. Oh my God. Thank you so much for being able to see that that is very representative of the chaos in my head It's pure it like it's it's absolutely chaos Is it sort of just like yelling into the into the void or is it? If you look at but then I run into people on the street and they're like, thank you so much for sharing that and I was

like Like that it really it really hits me that these things do have impact, and they are reaching people. And if other people see it and feel the same way I did, then that is the best that I can hope for. Do you feel like there are things that you don't want to talk about or feel like, it could be too dangerous to the brand if you talked about?

Like, how do you think of- Oh, no, I'm so, so, so grateful that my brand as a public figure is completely different from my actual brand as a business owner and a designer. Is it though? Aren't they kind of one and the same? It's blended, but at the same time, it is very, the lines are very blurred. Me as a brand is the same person as me as a person. Of course, you know, it's a lot more glamorous and all of that, but me as a brand, actually, no.

No, it's not. The more I tried to answer it, the more my own mind changed about it, because that's actually something I'm very, very, very proud of. My brand, Chetan, is first and foremost a jewelry brand, and then a bodywear brand. And the thing that I love about it so much is that we have no investors. It's all me. It's self-funded, which means I answer to nobody. If I want to donate a portion of proceeds

to wherever I want to donate, no one is going to tell me no. No one is going to take it away from me because they disagree with my opinions. And same with the production company that I've started. People can choose not to work with me. That's everybody's right. But no one can take it away from me because they disagree with my opinions.

What kind of stuff is the production company gonna work on? Well, for now unscripted, but I'm not against entering the world of scripted. I've kind of dabbled in it a little bit with a show called- You were in Rami. I was.

Yeah. Yeah, I love Rami so much. The work that he does is I love Rami so much. The work that he does is also so inspirational and so incredible. And just that show alone, oh my God, it makes me want to cry thinking about it. If I had had a show like that when I was a teenager growing up, I really think that things would have been different. It's really hard not to see yourself in people. And having someone that you identify with,

having representation in seats, at tables that you never thought were possible makes such a big difference, which is why it's important to put myself in those positions because people need representation. And I'm not just talking about Arab girls, I'm talking about girls who have made decisions that they regret that the world

might have written them off for. After the break, Mia shares how she handles the emotional ups and downs of life online. I feel like I'm really good at compartmentalizing. Like I'm having this beautiful conversation with you, but I have Al Jazeera muted with my eyes glued to it. I have two more meetings after this today, and then I'm allowed my allotted time to cry.

Hey Mia, how are you? I'm good, how are you David? Good, good. Just as a point of clarification, you know, for people who might not be familiar with all the platforms that we're talking about, can you explain sort of what's different from a business standpoint about being a creator on OnlyFans as opposed to being an adult industry performer in a more traditional way? No contract. You own all of your own content, which is imperative and so important. The reason that I am in the situation that I'm in

is because I have no legal standing whatsoever to any of the content that was created during the time with the production company. They own all of that, they own the rights, they own everything. It's such an exploitative standard contract that gets put in front of every single girl that steps foot into those offices.

And I, yeah, that's the difference. That's the reason why I, if someone is joining the sex work industry, I implore them to do it on a site like OnlyFans where if they actually want to go off, they can delete all of their content. Granted, people leaking it and people redistributing it, but it's watermarked, the metadata is there and you have full control over your page. If you want to take it down, OnlyFans has no claim whatsoever to any of that content. You know, a big recurring theme in some of the things you've talked about

is sort of agency and autonomy, and that includes bodily autonomy. And you've been open online about sort of having surgery to augment your appearance and being on Ozempic. And do the choices, do those types of things also feel like they're coming from a place of agency and bodily autonomy? Or do you feel pressure to have made those choices?

Is there any internal conflict there? Not at all. And the reason that I talk about it is because I kind of like showing the dichotomy behind changing yourself. When I, when I got my, my rhinoplasty, I needed to make a point of, of making sure that my nose stays ethnic. I, I want to tweak what I don't like about it, but I still want like a strong, beautiful Arabic nose. And it took me a long time to find the right surgeon who understood the nuance of that

and understood that plastic surgery isn't about changing yourself. It's about, it's about improving what you want to improve. Um, same with my breast augmentation. I had lost 60, 75 pounds very naturally when I was in my early 20s. And my breasts completely changed. I didn't feel like a young woman. I felt, it was just a lot of excess skin. I had to have a lift before I could even have my implants put in.

So that was my reasoning behind that. And then Ozempic was, honestly, it was such a big trend and I wanted to try it. And then it completely took so much pressure off of me when I was traveling and the food options were ordering Uber Eats at 11 o'clock at night and then feeling bloated for a shoot the next day and all of these things and going on it, it also changed my relationship with a lot of things. Just my negative mindset and outlook and relationship with food, it completely changed that. And then I was able to eat anything I wanted to, but it would just fill me up

faster. So I started to speak openly about that because I was getting a lot of compliments about how good I looked and my workout routine, I felt very guilty perpetuating or selling something that wasn't real, even though it's kind of weird to promote something that's for diabetes that people don't have access to. So I struggled with talking about it a little bit. But at the end of the day, there was a teenage girl who I knew who messaged me and was like, oh my God, what's your workout routine? And I had to tell her, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That was what made me be more open about that. And are generally people supportive when you sort of pull the curtain back on these sorts of things? Or are people critical? What's the response been? Honestly, I don't know. I don't really care. I'm open about it because I feel a sense of guilt about getting complimented when it's not a natural thing.

I think gatekeeping or lying about what you've had done is the biggest sign of maybe you shouldn't have that procedure. And you know, I think it's a normal sort of human experience with technology to, you know, you get older and then you just start feeling like you don't have a natural aptitude or facility with different technologies or social media platforms. Like I'm not on TikTok. It's, it's not, I don't feel like I would really enjoy being on TikTok. That might just be like, oh, this is not for me. Like I missed my window. Um, do you have, uh, any of those concerns for yourself? Like your, your livelihood is tied to social media. Do you ever think, oh, well, maybe some new thing will come and I won't quite know how to adapt to it.

Oh, completely be real. That was the worst three months of my entire life. I, I hated be real. Um, Wait, I'm not going to pretend to know what be real is. Oh my God. Be real with this app that came out where you would get, you would get two notifications a day and you had three minutes to open the app and take a photo and you only get three chances a day and you had three minutes to open the app and take a photo and you only get three chances to take the photo.

And it takes a photo with your front facing camera and the back camera at the same time. So people, like it was the only way to organic flex, if that makes sense. Like obviously Instagram, you can post old photos, you can edit things. This was the test to like prove that you're actually cool and out and doing things. And I hated that app.

And do you ever feel with creating content about avoiding burnout? What does that mean? Well, I'm thinking of where you feel like, oh, I just have to constantly be making stuff or because if I go away for a week, like it's going to hurt me in the algorithm. Not at all. My mental health is more important than anything. Like I, I'm never going to push myself to do things that I don't want to ever again.

And how does your mental health feel now? Do you feel like you're in a good sustainable place with what you're doing? I feel like I'm really good at compartmentalizing. Like I'm having this beautiful conversation with you and my tone is light, but I have Al Jazeera muted with my eyes glued to it. And I was like to this call, honestly, because I was checking in with my friends and all of this is playing out in real time.

But I've just, I've learned to compartmentalize. Like I have two more meetings after this today and then I'm allowed my allotted time to cry. Shame is another thing that's come up a couple times in the conversation. Do you have any advice for people about how to deal with shame? Oh my god, everybody is so different, but my best piece of advice is to be kind to yourself and be compassionate to yourself and give yourself the same grace that you would give a friend that you're talking to, because you're never going to tell them, that you're talking to because you're never gonna tell them,

grow up, be stronger. You're never gonna talk to someone that you love that way. So if you talk to yourself with the same grace that you would give other people, that starts to go a long way. It's also very much easier said than done. Completely, completely. And my second piece of advice is, is fine is paying someone to do that for you once a week. A therapist, you mean?

Because that's really how it works. Exactly. Exactly. That's Mia Khalifa. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orm. It was edited by Annabel Bacon, mixing by Afim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. Our senior booker is Priya Mathew and Seth Kelly is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Burelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Nick Pittman, Matty Masiello, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolnick.

If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. And to read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview and you can email us anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com. Next week, Lulu talks with Senator John Fetterman. You said that Trump has a special connection with the people of Pennsylvania. Why? There's a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And it's like something very special exists there.

And that doesn't mean that I admire it. It's just like it's real. I'm David Marchese and this is the Interview from the New York Times. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music