For this week’s Deep Dive Series, we’re interviewing artist and content creator, @LifeofLinna!
@LifeofLinna (or just Linna!) began her Clapper content creation journey by sharing videos of her 100 year old Queenslander house. Overtime, it’s evolved into slice of life and artistic content – including her entries in the #WeDareYou challenge! In this interview we talked with @LifeofLinna about her goals for the year, her next coloring book, her advice for content creators, and more!
Keep reading this Deep Dive to follow this creator’s inspiring story. Make sure to tune in every Thursday at 5pm CT on our @ClapperCreator account to listen to the bonus questions that will only be available on our live radio show: Clapper Talks.
Tell us a little more about yourself! What does a day in your life look like?
For those that don’t know, I was born and raised in Norway. 9 1/2 years ago, I moved to Australia. I’m officially an Australian citizen, although I do still identify as Norwegian, and right now I live in the countryside. My day to day, if I’m not working, is just taking care of my beautiful Bindi puppy, a lot of gardening, and spending time in nature. I’m working on becoming more self-sufficient. That’s kind of why I moved out to the countryside; I wanted to grow my own food. And also I live in a 100 year old house! That’s how I started on Clapper, just posting videos of renovating and, yes, it still needs a lot more work. I love cooking and making food, so sometimes I post food content. And I do creative stuff! I paint and write and make jewelry and small figurines with polymer clay. Recently I made a coloring book about Australian animals and I plan to do more!
You post a wide variety of content. How do you get inspired for your videos? Where do your ideas come from?
First of all, I have to thank Clapper. Because unlike some other social media apps, we have the freedom to post whatever we want and we’re not put into little boxes and niches. I’m the kind of person where I’ll see something and think ” I want to do that!” I get easily inspired by watching other people and I can start 5 new things. But it’s hard for me to actually follow through and finish. That’s why I’m so excited about my coloring book because I finished it! I’m just super easily inspired seeing other people create, and I want to see what it feels like for me, if it’s going to bring me joy. And if I can film it and put it out there and inspire other people, that’s amazing.
What’s one goal you are setting for the year?
I should be better at setting goals because there’s so many things I want to do that I get overwhelmed. I’m a sensitive person (and I use that as a positive) and I get decision freeze. Like, I just do nothing! That has a part to do with perfectionism. When I try something and I’m not good at it, I see my results and I go “this didn’t work out, so I’m going to stop.” Which is a horrible mindset to have. For the rest of the year, my goal is to create another themed coloring book because it really makes me happy to make all the illustrations. It takes a long time, I’m not a quick drawer, and to see a project like that come together again would bring me so much joy.
I want to do one that’s cats in the city, cats in apartments. Cute, cozy little scenes, cats looking out the window seeing the city, and obviously I have a dog so I have to do a dog one too. And I wanted to do one in the country – full-on country bumpkin cats and dogs. I also want to do an enchanted forest one with trees, deer, fairies, mushrooms, and cute stuff like that.
We noticed that you’ve been posting a lot of art content recently. Have you always been an artist, or is this a new interest?
For the first year of my Clapper journey, I was just making this house livable. I spent so much time prepping, priming, and painting these walls that I had no energy or creative flow to actually paint on canvas. I’ve always been a creative person, but I haven’t always acted on it. When I was younger and in school, arts and crafts were always my favorite, however I never identified as an artist. Until 5 years ago I started painting and it brought me so much joy. And just taking videos and making content out of art fueled that creative fire again.
I just had a big break from Clapper, about 2 months. There was too much I wanted to do, I had too many expectations on myself, too many projects, too many things going on. I just logged off, took a break and charged my batteries. And I feel a lot better now. I feel I can get back into my art again because it’s what brings me joy at the end of the day. It gives me that little spark in my life.
So, when did you join Clapper? How did your journey as a creator begin?
I joined Clapper in March 2022 and I just came about it randomly, I think in a forum. Literally the day I downloaded it, I made a video, jumped in a few Lives, and I went Live. Which…I am an introvert, I am shy, I am private; it was embarrassing, but kind of fun. I’m still friends with one of my first few friends. The renovation of this house was all I was doing so I thought I’d just post it.
You were recently involved in the #WeDareYou challenge. How did you hear about this challenge and get involved?
Queenager goes Live and I usually join because she’s British and our timezones line-up well. She told me that they needed an Australian and invited me to join the challenge. I said yes and didn’t really know what it was. And if you’re someone like me who gets embarrassed easily, that challenge is a nightmare! It’s just making a fool out of yourself, really. Once the challenges got into going out in public and doing such and such, like going to a fast-food restaurant and singing your order, I said “uh, my dog ate my homework and I have to go!”
What do you enjoy most about Clapper? In what ways do you feel like Clapper needs improvement?
I’ve already touched on what I like about the app: we’re not boxed into a niche, we can post what we want. It’s just a nice community, we have our friends here, it’s a great app.
There’s improvements to be done, which isn’t a bad thing! It’s still a young app and as people too, we always have things to improve on, that’s just the way life is. I would love to have categories for Lives because I don’t browse Lives anymore. There’s just so many Lives that I’m not interested in. I think it would be awesome if when we decide to go Live, Clapper would ask us what category we were in. Is it chatting, entertaining, karaoke, bingo stuff? So we can filter away the stuff we’re not interested in and go straight into the categories we love watching.
Who would you say has helped you the most on your content creation journey? They can be on Clapper or otherwise!
I don’t know! I made a lot of great friends. As you know we had the Aussie meet up and I met @AussieKass and @Rogue_. I’d definitely say those two, we have a great friendship and talk a lot off-app and cheer each other on. It’s so hard to remember everyone because after the latest surge I’ve made so many more friends. There’s just too many for my brain to remember! @Ashmarliving is amazing; she’s an artist too, so seeing her content is really inspiring. She does the content that I love, which I call “slow-burns”. It’s not quick, snappy, flashy videos that follow a song or trend. What Ashmar does is natural content; there’s no rush, no trend to follow. It’s pure art and creativity.
What advice would you give new creators that want to be successful on Clapper?
Even though they’re not going to take this advice, don’t think about the numbers. Your followers or the number of views don’t matter. I cannot stress this enough, it literally does not matter. You can be a successful, amazing, kind, supportive, inspiring content creator if you have 200 or 200,000 followers. The numbers don’t say anything about you or define you – it’s just pixels on the screen and has nothing to do with you. You’re already an amazing creator and you learn as you go. I would stress not thinking “oh, once I hit 10k, 20k, 30k, then I’ll be successful.” That’s not true. Be yourself, post the content that inspires you, be authentic, upload your own content, make friends, and you’re going to grow. So just focus on what brings you joy and what inspires you. Forget about the numbers!
We hope you enjoyed getting to know @LifeofLinna– if you haven’t already, go give her a follow! To meet @SafariSammie, check out our last Deep Dive.