Jenna Kaplan: From Montreal Theatre Kid to Full-Time Content Creator

A theatre kid in Montreal turns her constant food pics into a side project in 2016, Foodora slides into the DMs before "influencer" was even a real career path, she grinds through acting, career-flips into marketing during the pandemic, and by 2022 she's posting full-time under @jenna.rachel.kaplan with a McDonald's McValue Meals deal locked in. That's a W — no notes.

Kaplan's "Chaotic-Good" Process

Her self-diagnosis of her method as "chaotic-good" is, honestly, the most relatable thing a mid-tier creator has ever said about their own workflow. The notes app is a warzone of half-formed ideas, she texts friends to come shoot, and her biggest piece of advice to emerging creators is straight-up the anti-perfectionist grind: when the impulse hits, don't stall — just film it and post it before your brain starts workshopping the doubt spiral. For solo creators shipping content at the pace the algorithm wants, that's basically the only viable pace. She's also clear-eyed about her lane — not chasing some mega-audience, she's building trust her community actually acts on. The parasocial sweet spot every platform wants you to chase but rarely helps you protect.

While We Were Watching Kaplan's Glow-Up, Twitch Slid This In

Per PC Gamer, Twitch confirmed that streams, VODs, comments, and other channel content may now be used to train generative-AI models across Amazon — and creators are opted in by default. Not opt-in. Opt-out. The reveal was buried in a Twitch Support X post about the opt-out toggle, not a proper blog announcement, because of course it was. When pressed on the rationale, chief product officer Mike Minton basically admitted the strategy out loud: "If it was opt-in, nobody would opt in." Translation — they knew this would mald the community and shipped it anyway.

If you stream, go to your settings right now — security and privacy tab, scroll to the bottom, flip off "Training for Generative AI." Thirty seconds, tops. But the bigger question isn't whether you can find the toggle. It's why the burden of consent keeps landing on the creator grinding out content like Kaplan — the same folks turning side hustles into careers — while the platform monetizes the output by default.

So here's what we're sitting with: if the next Jenna Kaplan starts posting tomorrow, does she actually own the voice she's building — or is it just another dataset the second it hits the servers?