[keiferski]

The idea of art being purely a non-monetary activity, and that it is somehow "made dirty" by the introduction of money, is largely a 20th century thing. Most of the people you would likely consider "artists" throughout history created most of their art as commissions, for money, to people paying them to create that work. For example - virtually everything Michelangelo created was paid for by a rich benefactor – and yet I certainly wouldn't suggest that he disliked painting/sculpting or wasn't skilled at it.

[safety1st]

No problem with artists getting paid. I do have a problem with people who are specifically paid to advertise a product calling themselves anything other than marketers!

Michaelangelo got paid to produce art, "creators" get paid to flog a VPN. The difference in quality between what the two produce is notable!

[keiferski]

This is a pretty simplistic understanding of how modern art/content markets work. Michelangelo got paid to produce images that promoted certain power structures and individuals (the Medici, the Catholic Church, etc.) and not just because his benefactors wanted to create beautiful objects.

Creators get paid for drawing attention to something via the content they create. No one watches them because they are promoting VPN ads. This is not substantially different from a Renaissance artist creating a painting that promotes Catholicism.

If anything, the fact that modern creators are funded in ways explicitly and obviously "separate" from their creative work would imply that the work itself is less bound by patron requirements and more by the (more pure) currency of attention.

In other words, if a creator today made a video in the same manner as a Renaissance painter did, we would likely interpret it as "shilling" or somehow lacking in artistic authenticity.