[oj2828]

“ The creator economy, once hailed as the solution to economic inequality and the savior of the middle class, is facing challenges that threaten its very existence.”

Not to nitpick, but did anyone really believe that becoming a tik tok influencer was a reasonable career path for more than a couple hundred people? I don’t see how most middle class people would’ve been helped by the creator economy

[toomuchtodo]

> but did anyone really believe that becoming a tik tok influencer was a reasonable career path for more than a couple hundred people?

Yes, there are huge swaths of the population that are, to put it politely, low information and unsophisticated. Everyone comes around to the disappointment of the situation at their own pace.

[bell-cot]

THIS. Just how far into can’t-do-arithmetic self-delusion do you need to be, to believe that “you need X thousand followers to succeed financially” jobs could actually be available to more than a few people out of every X thousand???

[auggierose]

From a theoretical point of view, that is not a problem. Given a population of Y people, each of which are following X other people, you can get X as high as Y-1. Fan bases are not mutually exclusive, just like I can shop both at place A and B and sell stuff at my own store C.

[danbruc]

Sure, everyone can follow everyone, 8 billion people can each have 8 billion followers, but that also means that everyone can spend about 4 milliseconds per year on each one they are following. What really matters is the time and money you are spending and that is essentially a fixed amount which you can split into a few larger or many smaller contributions. If there are many evenly spread small contributions, then no one can make a living on that, if there are a few big and concentrated contributions, then only a few can make a living.

[theK]

Yeah but the size of those fan bases does have some practical upper bounds. Usually accounts follow a set of x people where x is in the hundreds whereas creators need to get to Y followers where Y is typically measured in a size orders of magnitude bigger than x. So you have a, practical, hard asymetry

[nlitened]

But you can’t reasonably shop at Y shops.

[ralusek]

It's actually a problem of time. Everyone on earth could follow everyone else. But you have 24hr in a day to fight for. You probably have about 5 hours of a heavy user's attention to fight for.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Yeah but not everyone's trying to be an influencer, most people are still doctors, engineers, etc

[giraffe_lady]

Most people are still low wage or "gig economy" service workers. Which is a big part of why these escape-the-grind fantasies are popular and have been for generations. The problem is the world we've made not how people are trying to navigate it with hope in their hearts.

[metadat]

Perhaps you haven't already heard: Becoming an influencer is what a large portion of kids today dream of and fully expect to succeed at.

"The importance of school is secondary because I am easily going to become a rich and famous YouTuber or TikTokker."

Source: Many school teachers.

[fullshark]

I think a massive number of 15-25 year olds think it's not only a reasonable career path, but their preferred career path. They don't expect to become middle class though, they expect to become rich and famous.

[NickC25]

What people forget is that when everyone is an influencer or a creator, nobody is.

When a youngster tells me they want to be an influencer for their profession, I simply ask them "who are you influencing, and what sort of credibility do you have in order to influence them?"....seems to get the kids every time - they haven't put 2 and 2 together. The credibility needed to influence comes before everything else, and people really don't understand that, for some strange reason.

The original influencers were people who were already doing cool stuff and just decided to film it and post it on Youtube 10+ years ago. Shit, the electronic musician, deadmau5, was streaming his production sessions online in like 2007 or 2008. To me, that's a creator - someone who creates for a profession and would be doing so regardless if social media existed or not. The guy was also an early influencer in the music tech space because he would talk on his streams "hey yeah I've been using this plugin or that piece of gear in my latest tracks, here's what it sounds like, and here's how I use it". I dig that, that's legitimate - you have a professional talking about tools used in a professional environment and how to use them.

Nowadays everyone seems to think that because a few hundred bots have followed their Instagram account, they are entitled to make millions of dollars by posting stupid dance videos or copying the latest trend.

[fullshark]

Heh, this echos my life somewhat, I wanted to be a writer in high school and then I realized I had absolutely nothing interesting to say as I had no life experiences or expertise. So I decided to acquire both and by the time I did that I had no interest in writing.

Maybe it's just part of being a teenager, but it's amplified dramatically I think by the fact that there are countless successful teenagers / early adults on the platform and these kids have parasocial relationships with them.

[ebiester]

There are also a massive number of 15-25 year olds that think fine art is a reasonable career path. Or sports. Or music. Or acting in Hollywood. Or writing books.

Art and entertainment has had more supply than demand for at least a century because it is a great life for self-directed creators.

[fleddr]

I was about to say the same thing. The article's premise is based on nothing. I've never heard a serious person say or believe that content creation would be a viable and stable career for the masses.

Even the 1%'s success is shaky. It's based on fashion, hysteria, playing engagement games and algorithms snowballing them into power. It cannot and will not ever work for a huge group, that's just not how attention is distributed. It's by definition winner-takes-all.

[JonChesterfield]

Definitely. Back when I was young something like half my school wanted to be a professional footballer. There was a period after that where lots of people wanted to be esports gamers. Tiktok is currently _the thing_ which has taken that spot, as far as I can tell.

I think there was a trend towards "I want to be a programmer, cos they get paid loads and have free food", but don't know whether that's still with us.

I'd blame this on a mixture of unfounded optimism and, for my generation at least, literally everyone offering the career advice of "Do what you love and it'll all work out great". Nonsense but sounded plausible at the time.

[candiddevmike]

Even a hundred tik tok influencers is too many. They're like a capitalist version of judas cows.

[Invictus0]

Yes? I'd imagine there are tens of thousands of people who are credible social media influencers and content creators.

[d-us-vb]

Even a few tens of thousands of people is less than 1% of the people making an attempt.

He’s right in being skeptical that “people” (who?) thought that “being a creator” was a viable career path, as the article suggests was the case.

[Invictus0]

It's like saying being a professional basketball player is not a viable career path because most people don't make it. The mere fact of it's exclusivity is besides the point.

Being a content creator/influencer is a viable career path. There are creators with disabilities, creators that never speak, creators that never show their face. Not everyone makes great money but for many people the money is enough.