How to create a django User using DRF's ModelSerializer
It seems like you should be overriding restore_object() in your serializer, not save(). This will allow you to create your object correctly.
However, it looks like you are trying to abuse the framework -- you are trying to make a single create() create two objects (the user and the profile). I am no DRF expert, but I suspect this may cause some problems.
You would probably do better by using a custom user model (which would also include the profile in the same object).
In django, creating a User has a different and unique flow from the usual Model instance creation. You need to call create_user() which is a method of BaseUserManager.
Since django REST framework's flow is to do restore_object() and then save_object(), it's not possible to simply create Users using a ModelSerializer in a generic create API endpoint, without hacking you way through.
What would be a clean way to solve this? or at least get it working using django's built-in piping?
Edit:
Important to note that what's specifically not working is that once you try to authenticate the created user instance using django.contrib.auth.authenticate it fails if the instance was simply created using User.objects.create() and not .create_user().