Jordan Firstman: Capitalising Cringe

This TV writer’s online career started on platforms such as Vimeo, where he produced short films for indie film aficionados, before moving on to Instagram as his main creative outlet at the start of the pandemic in 2020. His short videos about relatable everyday situations suddenly reached an audience of millions overnight and offered a moment of cheer amidst all the gloom. His signature approach is to give inanimate objects a voice or to poke fun at something through exaggerated imitation. SLEEK had the opportunity to talk to one of the pioneers of viral short video content and an unapologetic, ingenious creative. Meet the King of Cringe, Jordan Firstman.

SLEEK: After all this exposure on the internet, how has your now very public profile changed your private life?

Jordan Firstman: After four years of being in the limelight, I find it’s especially hard with boys and hookups. You start inviting fewer people into your inner circle because you don’t know what their intentions are. A lot of guys would never have considered hooking up with me before I had any clout. The upside of it is that once you’re famous, people who want to have sex with you tend to be of a higher calibre, so to speak. Also, the good part about fame is that there are a lot of people you don’t need to talk to anymore. You can simply avoid certain acquaintances that you would usually feel obliged to keep in your life. At the end of the day, it is not my business what people’s intentions are.

S:  Might as well not question it too much and simply enjoy it, right? Would you describe yourself as a hedonist?

JF: At times – absolutely! I am both a neurotic, depressive intellectual and a hedonist. Fun has always been a driving force in my life. Even in middle school, I was the class clown. I always put fun before all the serious stuff. It has gotten me far, but it has also gotten me in trouble. I dove into drugs, partying, and sex a couple of years ago, but it is not as fun as it used to be. Right now, I am looking for my next version of what fun really is because the parties aren’t hitting like they used to.

S:  I assume that a lot has also changed financially since then. What was your relationship with money like before, and what is it like now?

JF:  When I look back on my twenties, I remember that I often wasn’t able to go out for dinner. However, I never felt like I couldn’t have the things that I wanted. I was definitely pretty broke, and I had these horrible jobs in LA: I was a photobooth operator for events full of rich Beverly Hills women, worked in daycare, and was a barista for about one second. I got my first writing job at 23, and since then I have been able to make ends meet. I made a surplus of money during the pandemic when brands shifted their budgets to digital. The landscape has changed dramatically since then. Now TikTokers reign, and the golden days are over. They are young, quick, don’t seem to have any sense of shame, and work for pretty low fees. Jobs that I would do for 100,000 dollars, they would do for 4,000 instead, so why would brands still consider me? The quality of those TikTok videos is so low – spiritually, artistically, and visually. Even a really bad movie has more to offer than these videos. I don’t want to contribute to that. It’s the easiest thing ever to get a brand to pay you for a post. It’s roughly the same money that I would earn by spending eight months on a screenplay. I am back doing writing and acting jobs that don’t pay as much as brand deals.

S: In the movie Rotting in the Sun, you play a version of yourself as one of the main characters. What was it like to play yourself?

JF: It was easy and hard at the same time. Playing the worst version of yourself is weird because it affects your public image. When people meet me in real life, they are surprised that I am actually nice and normal. They expect me to be wild, crazy, and narcissistic. I absolutely do have those sides to me, but I believe that the movie shows my younger self rather than who I am now. A lot of Jordan’s quirks that I make fun of in the movie are lofty ideals such as reaching for the light, thinking positively, and manifesting. The movie calls out the toxic positivity in all of that. Sebastián’s character, however, has even worse character traits than my character, but he’s outwardly a little more subtle with them. People find his character more palatable, while my character comes across as annoying and narcissistic. In the end, Jordan is perceptive and has a good heart though – something that the other characters in the movie don’t have at all. 

S: In the movie, Sebastián also confronts Jordan with a few character flaws that influencers are often said to have. As you are playing a version of yourself, did that affect you personally?

JF: He gave me glasses to see myself where I might have had astigmatism before. It definitely made me more self-critical in regards to the content that I am putting out. I could never be as free or as cringe now as I was at a certain point. Honestly, to be successful on the internet, you do just have to go balls-to-the-wall. I am trying to find a balance – I don’t want to be the person who just finds everything cringe because I am afraid of other people’s judgement.

S: Exactly. We need entertainers whom we love to watch as a guilty pleasure. The movie shows very explicit erotic scenes and clearly sexual acts. How comfortable were you with that?

JF:  I was always very comfortable with doing them, though it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Getting and staying hard has been the most challenging thing, considering there are a million things happening and a dozen people around you. The scene on the beach where the guy sucks my dick was a little easier because we had good sexual chemistry going on. In between takes, we’d go and make out behind the rocks and get me a little hard – that was fun. However, the orgy scene was really tough. Luckily, a lot of the guys in the scene were experienced porn actors, which helped a lot.

S: Do you feel that the movie paints an authentic picture of the gay scene?

JF: It’s one facet of it. Many gays can relate to it – potentially not in the most positive way, but still, it feels nice to be seen and acknowledged. Everyone wants the depiction of the queer community to be very positive so that straight people don’t hate us, but we do need outlets to talk about the things that are actually going on.

S: Are you working on any new projects at the moment?

JF:  I’m working on a movie right now, and then I’m going to shoot a TV show in Atlanta. The movie is about when to quit partying. It’s about an ageing party boy who is forced to grow up due to a sudden incident. 

Credits

Photography & Concept: Chessa Subbiondo @lighthouse management + media
Talent: Jordan Firstman
Talent Manager: Theo @All My Friends Inc
Creative direction: Lorenzo L Pradelli, Oliver Dickson
Fashion Direction: Joana Zibat
Styling: Britton Litow
Grooming: Saida Staudmeier
Photography Assistant: Damon Rush
Styling Assistant: David Gomez.

As featured in SLEEK 80 – FORTUNE. Available in print and digital here.