Shom Mabaquiao is the Insights Editor for APAC at Canvas8, where he decodes human behaviour across cultures, markets, and moral grey areas. A graduate student in Social Psychology at the University of the Philippines, his research explores stigma, folkways, and the psychology of everyday queer life. His bylines and insights have appeared in the likes of 

Singapore Business Review and Marketing Interactive

, and he’s been quoted in publications like 

. Outside work, he writes personal essays on intimacy, identity, and quiet forms of rebellion, published in 

. He believes pop culture is sacred, rest is radical, and Hozier is better for your soul than any self-help book.

No longer feeling supported by social structures, people increasingly believe it’s up to individuals to take care of themselves within a broken world order.

Life Hackers

Today, audiences are shaping the cultural agenda. Empowered to speak up for the causes they believe in, people are actively calling out brands they see as inauthentic. What are the main drivers of this behavioural shift? And how can brands win the trust of these outspoken advocates?

Assertive Audiences

 emphasise collective wellbeing and relationships with nature, while the Filipino 

 roots a beautiful life in ease of breathing – distinct cultural visions that both invite us to look beyond individual wealth. 

Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

Culture & Psychology

Yet the route to living well feels more and more uncertain today. Across 28 countries, over two-thirds (68%) of citizens do not anticipate better conditions for the next generation, highlighting widespread doubts about the future. 

Edelman Trust Institute

 When familiar routes seem unreliable, which promises of progress remain believable?

Enter the hustler: resourceful, relentless, determined to make things happen. In 

 (2025), Timothée Chalamet’s character – the eponymous Marty, an aspiring table tennis champion – turns that determination into a chaotic pursuit of greatness. His ambition poses an uncomfortable question: What are people willing to do to get ahead? 

El País

Off-screen, the search for a breakthrough creates commercial opportunities. China’s OpenClaw ‘lobster’ craze has attracted people hoping AI agents can help them run shops, build apps or generate retirement income, even as costs and uncertain returns complicate those hopes. 

Reuters

Elsewhere, the boundary between entertainment and earning faces scrutiny. Brazilian consumer prosecutors investigating betting platform Blaze are requesting influencer contracts, including those involving Neymar and Virginia Fonseca, specifically examining promotions referring to ‘extra income’. 

Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios

In Australia, researchers estimate gambling losses exceeding AU$104 billion ($72.43 billion) between July 2023 and July 2026. 

The Australia Institute

 These activities have different motivations and risks but raise a complex dilemma about what makes people invest – sometimes too much – in promises of advancement.

Criminologist Jonathan Ilan offers a framework for understanding that tension. He argues that the promise linking hard work and sacrifice to a decent life has weakened. His cultural analysis describes a ‘hustle society’, where entrepreneurial ambition can blur into grift and exploitation, while insecurity makes exceptional success more compelling. 

The British Journal of Criminology

 Drawing on criminological and sociological research, Canvas8 speaks to Ilan about the alternative routes people place their hopes in, who benefits from that belief and how businesses can respond to the desire beneath it – a life with security, dignity and room to breathe.

Terms in bold are explained in the Decode the Jargon section below.

Why is this topic important to understand?

I started to notice hustling had become mainstream. My entire career, I’d thought to look for that in the inner city, and now I just turn on the internet and here’s hustling. Why is something niche and poverty-driven being represented so widely in our culture?

I would have traditionally been a scholar of 

. My entire academic career, I've been looking at people from areas of urban poverty: how they see the world, how they hold themselves, how they react to things. One of the strategies you find a lot would be known as 

Hustling is essentially doing what you need to do in order to get by, whether that’s just surviving in poverty or building a successful model of self when you’re very deprived. How do you show everybody “I’m successful and thriving” when you’re very excluded?

I was brought up being taught that if you work hard, make the right decisions, the hard choices and the sacrifices, you get your reward.

 has broken down. People are having to reconcile themselves to it. It seems like, “Well, I have to be somewhat exploitative and dishonest. If I’m not, there’s no way for me to have a somewhat decent life.”

What do we already know from existing research?

In my work, I’ve taken quite traditional literature about criminals and started showing how it can explain quite mainstream aspects of our economy.

We have studies of con artists, pimps, hustlers – people who’d do anything they can to make a bit of money in conditions of real poverty. We’ve had this literature for so long, and it’s the sort of literature I gobble up. You don’t think, “I can understand how the internet works now because I understand con artistry.”

The practice of fraud has evolved constantly. It went from something people did very individually, and then, with the Wild West and the gold rush (in 19-century America), there was a possibility to institutionalise fraud much more. People would set up fake banks in gold rush towns, take your money in and they’re gone. As the internet comes, it’s that gold rush thing again. People can establish even more complex forms of fraud.

This is more exploratory, theoretical academia. It didn’t emerge from research questions per se. It’s 

; I would hang out with people for extended periods to learn about their world. We take that lens and look at the culture we spend so much time immersed in, trying to explain what it is saying and why.

I can’t find a difference between these hustles

. I encountered this concept of hustling and discovered it is generally understood in two separate ways.

The first is the one I understand as a criminologist: getting by and even thriving when you come from nothing. Very often that involves exploitation, fraud – any kind of disreputable tactic to make a few quid.

2. Hard work and completely blind dedication

I saw it being used in common culture to denote an entrepreneurial realisation of extreme wealth. People sticking to that second definition said, “No, this is not the bad old hustle. This is the good new hustle.”

On one hand, it’s criminality; on the other, they’re saying it’s highly innovative 

. Rather, this is one group, generally with a bit more power or nous, taking what probably more rightfully belongs to another usually less powerful group.

There are people who can do the ‘good hustle’, as it were. Your classic founder works every hour God gives and ends up with a company they can sell for a huge amount of money. I would say that’s quite a minority case – this idea that entrepreneurial spirit is the solution to all our social problems, that everyone just has to do this. We don’t see that. We see something people do exceptionally or people using it to mask exploitative practices.

My initial theory is around the breakdown of 

: community, the trade union, institutions from the corner shop to the building society (a member-owned savings and mortgage institution) and the church. As that collective element breaks down, we become individuals.

, good pay and job security become something a large group of people could expect. Without that, everyone’s told you can only negotiate for what you individually can. That’s when the significance of the hustle comes in, because it gives hope–

“If I can’t have a decent life, I can have a 

I encountered this looking at drug-dealing, asking why minor drug dealers work for essentially minimum wage. Working at McDonald’s, you actually get paid a little more; it’s not going to rain on you, and nobody’s going to try to shoot or arrest you. But the fantasy sustains people. “I can never become solidly lower middle class like a union job would make you. I might as well dream about becoming a billionaire.”

You see it now. Men in particular are sitting on their phones going, “I’ll never own a house. How am I going to get a girl to go out with me?” This guy on the internet says he can sell me something for £200 that will let me be that guy.

One of my biggest influences, Jock Young (a leading figure in critical criminology), said whenever he was asked what we need to do about crime, his answer was, “Let work pay more.” I’ve yet to find something more elegant. I’d add it’s not just about money: security, longevity, dignity, respect.

Where things are more equal, I’m not saying problems are eliminated, but there’s less acceleration on them. Powerful people shouldn’t feel powerless to change things.

When a decent life feels distant, a dramatic breakthrough can become easier to believe in than gradual progress. Among US Gen Z adults, 80% use or consider high-risk speculative products because they feel financially behind, and expecting a faster route to their goals motivates them. 

PR Newswire

Ilan’s account suggests that these hopes deserve practical answers. Brands can package an achievable next step with a clear commitment, useful support and evidence of where it could lead. Google Career Certificates offers one model: skills training connected to an employer network, with published outcomes showing over seven in ten (70%) US graduates of the programme getting a new job, promotion or raise in 2024. 

Google

 Education providers, financial services and business tools can make their promises similarly concrete. Explain the likely gains, required effort and available help when progress stalls. Let customers define what improvement means for them, whether that is steadier income, a new skill or more control over their time. Give hope a shape people can act on – and a result they can recognise.

 about themselves – ambitions, finances and a willingness to take risks. Businesses can reciprocate by explaining how they benefit from that pursuit. In a CFA Institute study of 48 Indian finfluencers’ 2025 content, 37% inadequately disclosed conflicts of interest. 

CFA Institute

 That gap aligns with Ilan’s hustle society, where entrepreneurial language can make exploitation difficult to recognise. 

 offers a useful counter-reference. It explains its 5% platform fee on successfully funded projects, additional processing costs and the distinction between backing a project, shopping and investing. Platforms, learning providers and financial brands can go further by showing typical returns after costs and paid affiliations, as well as whether their earnings depend on customers’ spending, activity or success. Put those explanations where people decide to commit alongside the appealing promise; this gives customers a better chance to judge the bargain and makes the brand’s role easier to scrutinise. Trust has firmer foundations when both parties can see what is at stake.

The freedom to work for yourself can lose its appeal when every risk becomes yours to manage. Among side hustlers, almost seven in ten (69%) would prefer one main income source if given the opportunity. 

LendingTree

 Ilan connects hustling’s appeal to weakened collective security, suggesting an opportunity for businesses to make participation deliver dependable shared advantages. Worker-owned cleaning platform 

 illustrates what this can look like: Cleaners co-own the business, while five cents of each customer dollar supports the booking service. Marketplaces and membership businesses can apply that principle through pooled purchasing, affordable protections, shared equipment or member influence over fees and terms. For people seeking something reliable to belong to, the value lies in what becomes more attainable together. Measure that value in the costs reduced, risks shared and decisions members can influence. A community becomes worth believing in when joining it changes what people can reasonably expect from their lives.

 – Workers negotiating pay and working conditions together, usually through a trade union, rather than each person negotiating alone.

 – A way of organising life around shared interests, mutual responsibilities and institutions that help people meet challenges together.

 – Examining everyday practices, media and shared meanings to understand what they reveal about society and the forces shaping people’s lives.

 – The belief in, and pursuit of, creating opportunities through individual initiative, risk-taking and business activity; here, it becomes a wider expectation for how people should get ahead.

 – A researcher who spends extended time with people, observing and participating in everyday life to understand their world from within.

 – Finding ways to get by or get ahead with the opportunities available; Ilan examines how this can blur boundaries between resourcefulness, hard work, deception and exploitation.

 – The largely unwritten promise that working hard and making sacrifices will earn you security, respect and a decent standard of living.

 – Ways of seeing, behaving and gaining respect that develop in marginalised urban settings, shaped by experiences of poverty and exclusion.

of people do not anticipate better conditions for the next generation, highlighting widespread doubts about the future

side hustlers in the US would prefer one main income source if given the opportunity, revealing the appeal of dependable earnings

use or consider high-risk speculative products because they feel financially behind and expect a faster route to their goals

Promises of exceptional success can become compelling when familiar routes to a secure, dignified life feel unreliable, making hope a commercial opportunity

Entrepreneurial language can blur the line between opportunity and exploitation, making businesses’ incentives as important to explain as the benefits they promise

Brands can give people firmer foundations for belief through achievable progress, transparent commercial arrangements and communities that deliver shared protections and practical advantages

Jonathan Ilan is an assistant professor of criminology at University College Dublin’s Sutherland School of Law. His research explores how culture, inequality and everyday experience shape crime and justice, with particular interests in street culture and urban ethnography. His 2026 paper ‘The Hustle Society’ examines how entrepreneurial ambition, grift and exploitation intersect in contemporary economic and digital life.

Gen Z (born 1997-2010)

Australia

Brazil

China

India

Philippines

United Kingdom

United States

Global

Work

Entrepreneurship and freelancers

Education

Community and grassroots

Savings and investments

Banking and payments

Resale and online marketplaces

Personal tech

Gambling

When hard work no longer promises a decent life, where do people place their hopes? Drawing from research on con artists and street hustlers, criminologist Jonathan Ilan explores get-rich promises – and how brands can earn trust through credible progress, transparent incentives and shared security.

Analysis

Shom Mabaquiao

Jonathan Ilan

Related Macro Behaviours

Life Hackers

Assertive Audiences