Sheffield hip-hop artist Omer Sariceik explains why he shuns mainstream social media

Omer Sariceik describes himself as having come from the ‘socioeconomic dregs’ and worked a number of unfulfilling and low paid jobs – despite having a university education, something that he believes is indicative of a fundamentally broken system and a poor reflection on the job market.

Omer, or OWACE (Omer with a capital E), as he is known to his YouTube subscribers, has big dreams and an unorthodox approach to self-promotion.

He explains: “I tried calling people in America, just calling numbers in New York, in Brooklyn and asking people if they wanted to check out my music (Omer’s target demographic are 18–35-year-old men in New York).

“Recently I went to Manchester with about 100 flyers with a QR code, just going up to people and asking them to just scan it and check it out”.

Omer admits that these methods are unconventional.

But when spending time in his company it is clear that he is a very ambitious young man with interesting and unusual ideas.

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When asked about his intrinsically deep distrust of social media he says: “Social media is systematically set up to create bias. The entire system is set up to increase consumption time while

pretending to be customer serving.”

Indeed, he believes that using social media is ‘a form of deceptive hypocrisy’.

He puts his music out on the internet for free on his YouTube channel and has a Patreon account where people can support him financially so he can keep making music.

He currently makes £53 a month from Patreon and has pledged that 10 per cent of all his earnings will go to charity.

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On this, he says: “The model depends on people rewarding me that aren’t necessarily the consumers of the music, and as such, the story behind the music is the most important thing.

“I sincerely believe that people are well-meaning, yet every business advisor I speak to tells me that my approach is destined to fail because the business model depends on good will.”

You can support Omer by signing up to his Patreon here or listening to his music on YouTube on his channel ‘OWACE’.