As stupid as this is going to sound, I think about this quite a bit in terms of writing a blog. I've wanted to do it for a long time and in the past people have been very kind and supportive of my writing. However, when I think about the reality of what it takes to make a successful blog, I get very nervous about it.
I mean, it's dumb because the chances of writing a successful blog is next to nil. And the way to exit the scene is easy: stop writing content. But it's the path that worries me. You need to write a lot of relevant content -- almost certainly more content than you can reasonably think about critically. You will be judged on that content. If you make a mistake or change your mind, then you can be treated very harshly. It seems that the masses have this binary view of their celebrities: genius or moron. The more popular you get, the more people have you in their sights aiming to plonk you firmly in the latter category.
For a long time, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time writing in safe havens like HN comment sections: because I truly love writing. I like thinking about stuff and breaking it down. I like explaining the insights that I find. And most of all, I like the fact that somebody reads what I write. I like thinking that I've connected with somebody else who I don't even know.
I seem to remember a set of rules for writers by Stephen King (although my recollection doesn't seem to match what Google returns to me). In one of them he says to prepare yourself for an unbelievable amount of criticism. It's this that worries me the most. I don't mind criticism, per se, but I don't want to have to deal with a reputation based on ideas formed from my prose.
"He's the dufus who believes that unit tests shouldn't test requirements. What a moron," is fine when I'm dealing with people who know me. It's down right terrifying when dealing with people who are potentially going to interview me for a job :-) A slight miscalculation in how you describe something, a popular misconception arising from rumours of your writing, or even just having a derpy day because you didn't think it through before you put pen to paper... And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
Like I said, it's putting the cart before the horse by a long, long way, but it still stops me from writing, which is a massive shame. Somehow I must overcome it (advice is welcome, BTW!)
I relate to this 100% and at my age I started questioning if I should even continue to be a programmer, but then again, once you had the money and the way of life, it's impossible to toss it away for a very, VERY insecure future where you will be bashed, demeaned, and thrown pennies for stuff you poured your soul into. No thanks. Writing to me should be strictly hobby and no money should be involved because every job eventually burns you out by the mere premise that you are EXPECTED to continue doing it.
Best course of action is probably a pseudonym + random thoughts with an enabled comment section in a new blog. If the comments get toxic, delete/disable the entire comment section and continue writing regardless.
Many writers do the writing just to unload from their heads and souls into paper / electronic documents, and publish 5-10% of what they actually write.
In the end, do what makes your soul feel good, as cliche as it sounds. I am pondering the same thing I suggested and I am sure that I will eventually get to it. Don't forget that very creative and outright genius people "blossomed" past their 35 or even 45 years old mark.
You are not on a schedule. Take your personal development at your own pace.
I relate to this so much. I look up so much to people like Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) and Murat Demirbas (Metadata) and innumerable multitudes of other writers and scholars, I think that I'll never get anywhere nearly as successful with my writing.
But then I realized I very very much don't care about socially-constructed standards of success, and I just stop giving a shit and write what I want, when I want.
Why not write under a pseudonym? If you don't want people to associate you with every little detail of your writing, the easiest thing to do is to disassociate your writing identity with your offline identity.
This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons for why anonymity is so important. Do you know what you call a person who never changes his view, even in rather extreme ways? Somebody who has the worldview of a child.
I give extensive thought and research to most, and I'd like to imagine all, things I believe. Yet because of this my views change somewhat regularly as more evidence comes to light, or past evidence I relied on is shown to be doubtful. And consequently if you took my views over time as a 'blog', I'd seem to contradict myself constantly over the years - which ironically would be quite well on that path to moron categorization.
I think this is yet another reason any form of social media, under actual identity, is just a bad idea. It encourages people to double down even when they know they're wrong for fear of the evolution of their views being used against them. Get sufficiently far into the spotlight and you'll no longer be able to make a single statement without fear of it being scrutinized, analyzed, and ultimately weaponized against you if possible. And it never ends. Did you hear Einstein was a racist? Yeah, totally. Because the media got their hands on a handful of private observations he wrote in his diary in the early 1920s...
The neoliberal condition is in part characterized by the entrepreneurialization of everything, the penetration of Michel Foucault's homo economicus (entrepreneur of the self) into more and more spheres of production, consumption, and everyday life. Increasingly, you're an "entrepreneur" no matter what, whether you're a food truck owner, a freelance designer, an Uber driver, an Airbnb host, a YouTube star. Entrepreneur means a blurring of boundaries, working from home, homing from work.
In my possibly-naive opinion, it wouldn't be such a problem, if only we didn't tie value and self-worth so much on work, both culturally and politically. This entrepreneurialization goes hand-in-hand with the condition of precarity, feeling like you have to work your ass off, have to stay at the top of your game, to keep making a living, because you have no other way to live. It is incredibly dangerous, and it's increasingly defining us, the millennial and post-millennial generations.
As a clarification, Foucault did not define the term Homo Economicus [1]. He used the concept from Economics to describe the atomization of the individual inside the capitalist state structure, in contest with the "State" as a push-pull with that power structure.
This is true, but I mostly know of the concept from Foucault's lectures in The Birth of Biopolitics (in particular the "atomization" aspect you mentioned), which I think is slightly different from those other definitions (which is also why I said "Foucault's").
The BBC made a brilliant spoof series on becoming a YouTube vlogger called 'Pls Like'. The whole thing is available on YouTube to watch (not geo-blocked as far I know). It's 6 episodes of 15 mins each.
No matter which country you're from, you'll recognise all the vlogger types in the series: the lifestyle vlogger, the fashion vlogger, the prankster etc. It actually touches on a lot of the issues in the Guardian article: the need for views, the pressure to make content 'viral', sponsored content, rivalry between vloggers. It's all done with a lot of humour while highlighting these issues.
I thoroughly recommend it (and in case you are wondering, the vloggers are all actors, not real vloggers):
Who knew hard work can be hard, this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid.
>‘invisible’ labour such as interacting with fans is ‘a major contributor to occupational stress. In many cases it can contribute to PTSD’.
Are you kidding me? they are not fans they are your "customers" or at least your "consumers" public and customer relations are a key part of nearly every business out there that doesn't rely on accidental walk-ins for the majority of their business.
If you can't handle it then hire someone who can or find another business, PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma, what you have here it just a lazy person that realized that omg running a business that serves tens of thousands of people daily is hard.
To be fair to the Youtube stars, this is exactly why famous authors and actors have publicity agents. The notion of celebrities interacting with the hoi polloi on a daily basis is a brand-new artifact of the Internet age.
What's happening is that today's celebrities are learning why their predecessors locked themselves away in secluded Hollywood mansions and rode around wearing sunglasses in heavily-tinted limousines.
So do "YouTube stars" most of the large channels are run by media companies either established one or one that was set up to support the channel.
All the people they interviewed are relatively no-body they are small fish if anything their "mistake" wasn't taking it as a business they thought they can record a few videos on their phone edit them in FCP and make a metric ton of money hence the "winning the lottery" analogy that went through the article.
There aren't shortcuts in life people shouldn't expect to get paid for little to no effort put in, and yes if you are reaching 50,000 people by selling yourself you need to be willing to well whore yourself out because you are the product, if you are running a tech channel or something similar then you often run it closer to say how a TV channel would be run with different shows/segments, you can and do hire additional hosts/anchors and eventually build a whole media production group.
But even the "vlog" channels aren't a solo gig all the large ones did a behind the scenes videos which they showed just how many people are involved in producing those videos, if you have a revenue of say $500,000 you can't expect to be able to do on your own, even on half of that you can easily hire multiple people and still make a more than enough money.
Cameramen/crew, editors people to handle PR and out reach can be hired for $50K even with experience and in reality much less especially considering that given the production scope you can afford to hire people straight out of college or even high school.
I respect people who have the ability to entertain thousands of viewers, I really do. At the same time I’m really happy that wasn’t even an option when I was young. I’m sure I would have spent even more time playing video games if esports, twitch and YouTube had been a thing in the 90ies.
I know, I know, not everyone is alike, but at age 35 I’m really happy that my job involves serious adult challenges, and that my success in life isn’t depending on thousands of teenagers pushing a like button.
> my success in life isn’t depending on thousands of teenagers pushing a like button
In a certain sense, though, most serious adult business still boils down to people seeing an ad, installing an app, buying a product, attracting investors, or teenagers clicking a like button.
Edit: The YouTubers who go on to do it at a more serious capacity will also learn valuable first-hand lessons in dealing with partnerships, sponsors, public relations, release cycles, etc. All of which are useful depending on what it is that you want to do in your career.
You have a point. I work in the public sector though. Last week I facilitated workshops to analyze how the administration can better implement an IT system as well as the organizational change-management for thousands of employees. If they listen and actually spend the necessary resources (they won’t), it’ll mean better quality for patients and a better work environment for our employees. For me that’s worth a lot more, but like I said, everyone should find their own path.
I just worry about the longer prospects of getting in to social media content creation, and where it leaves you if you want to change paths. I’ve been on quite a few hiring boards and I’ve never seen social media followers benefit anyone. We’re not the most obvious sector where it would benefit you, but I have a friend in journalism and when I discussed this with him, he said they looked at it, but also that the platforms make it so easy that success on YouTube doesn’t necessarily teach you anything useful.
I think I’m more in agreement with you. I personally think some educational youtubers would make good teachers. I also think they’d never get hired, however, because they don’t have the right education and because they are competing with people who have actual teaching experience.
Like I said, everyone should do their own thing, and I respect youtubers for following their dreams and succeeding. I’m just worried about the longevity of it, and I’m mostly worried because I don’t want my own children to get trapped in something that might not last them. I loved video games in my teens and my early twenties, today I haven’t played one in years. Of course not everyone will burn out on their young adult hobbies like I have.
>In a certain sense, though, most serious adult business still boils down to people seeing an ad, installing an app, buying a product, attracting investors, or teenagers clicking a like button.
I mean, yes, I'm part of the machine, and the machine does sell advertising. But I'm a little cog in a big machine, and there are a lot of other cogs between me and the teenagers and their like buttons.
A long time ago, I wrote a technical book. One of the weirdest things to me was just how much reading the amazon reviews hurt. Like, they were mostly positive, but the negative ones, even negative reviews that as a buyer I would dismiss as 'clearly nutso' really hurt in a deeply irrational way.
At my dayjob? not only is it someone else's job to worry about that sort of thing, the volume involved would make it almost impossible for me to consume the feedback in anything other than a statistically sampled sort of way, even if it was my job.
If you think this is problematic, say, providing for teenagers to click like buttons rather than confronting global warming or extreme wealth inequality, the question then is why do things have to be this way?
Ads drive less than 10% of all revenue. Ads make a difference in competitor market share, when saturated, tipping swing votes in a deadlock. In many other scenarios, ad exposure has no measurable effect of success or failure.
I have an YouTube channel, mostly for personal stuff. I did some effort to record some videos about several subjects, none had more than a hundred viewers. Then, in a sudden, a very shaky and short video with a Mallet steam locomotive punctured the Algorithm Wall and had thousands of views per day... I was even making $20/mo off YouTube until the early 2018 changes took place.
And the fact is, divisive content is king these days. Nobody, humans or algorithms, are interested in balanced opinions these days.
How many of the Nazis and other super divisive youtubers do you think are faking it or hamming it up for clicks? I do sometimes wonder "do these people actually believe this crap?" Same goes for totally outlandish conspiracy theories.
Controversy has always sold, but never before has the feedback loop been so tight.
Not believing what you speak is a huge enthusiasm killer, and enthusiasm is most of what makes a good video. I'd guess almost all of the people with growing channels believe what they speak, and anyone on the fence might even subconsciously start believe what their audience wants.
Except I can fake enthusiasm easily. I don't because it's deceptive. I feel like I am lying to someone when I fake enthusiasm. Doesn't go over all that well in most settings, since most people do fake it.
I think OP means more personal enthusiasm, as in being driven to make videos at all. No benefit in being able to fake a smile if you never end up recording yourself in the first place.
...at the same time though, a ton of money and attention might be enough to get over making personally uninteresting content. I guess that's pretty much how careers are for most people.
This [1] is anecdotal only but I thought it was interesting:
"i know from some behind-the-scenes youtuber talk that a few of the softer antifem/rightwing channels don't like how extreme a lot of their audience have become, and are scared of putting anything out that causes them to get ditched. they have bills to pay, after all"
I won't lie im right wing but the only Nazi I can think of who manages to get around on youtube would be eric striker.
Conspiracy theories sure, plenty of those around but nazis? Maybe there are hundreds of accounts out there with 100s of views between them i've never seen before.
you can call it by the new buzzword if you want - "the alt-right".share the common trait with nazi that they believe/invent pseudo-science that PROVES that they are superior & moral/societal degeneration occurs as a result of the left's policies/actions. also some of them hate jews/minorities. intersectional nazi?
I dont think it matters what they belive or dont. They are one person. What matters is that some portion of thier viewers do and take action upon those beliefs. Changing your vote because of some ranting youtube clip is one thing, picking up a gun and going to a pizza joint another. Infowars was a start, but youtube needs to get on top of this asap.
(Something changed for me last month. Youtube started suggesting very bad vids. I watched a series about german castles, some of which were used in WW2 by you know who. I guess that made me a skinhead according to youtubed robots. I deleted all those cookies asafp.)
This article is really relatable. Personal story time. I recently had a mini hit on Reddit where I started a community that's about 2800 people who come to me for marketing tips every day. It's both exhilarating and terrifying. Having a community, making content about my passion, and being able to perform is really all I've ever wanted. On the other hand I'm insanely cognizant of losing it at any time. There is no break and I know even a slight lull can stop it before it ever really even gets close to its potential. God forbid I give bad advice, or someone 1 ups me in the comments and I'm no longer the expert. That combined with the fact that most marketing isn't all that interesting has me increasingly searching for more and more all the time ever cognizant I don't want to bore and lose my audience. I've been mitigating this by filming 3 videos a day and embracing an intentionally raw style, but it still requires daily upkeep in addition to my agency which demands 10 to 12 hours anyways. Don't get me wrong I love it and I'm insanely grateful, but there is a lot of stress that surrounds this sort of thing.
In my experience the frustrating part about YouTube is when the crowd wants content that you're not interested in making.
For instance, I've made a few videos about building clusters from Raspberry Pi's, which I did just for kicks and to have something to play around with. They get more attention than my (imo more interesting) videos about programming or various other electronics topics, to the point that it dwarfs my other views.
So I have to choose between disappointing the majority of my subscribers or making content that I don't actually enjoy or stand by just for the views.
PS: I also learned very quickly that the YouTube comments section is chaotic and is not a recommended place for someone looking for thoughtful critique on their material.
Unless you're relying on your YouTube channel for money, who cares what subscribers want? What's the worst they can do? Unsubscribe. No big deal--you're not trying to make money.
I've put up a few YouTube videos, I've got a few GitHub repos, etc. I don't even care how many likes or views or stars they get. I almost never even go back to the pages. When I publish something on the web I do it because I already finished it, and I think maybe someone else might like it or find it useful. But I'm not going to change what I like to do based on likes or stars. That sounds backwards.
I've never once in my life did something as a hobby and asked myself "How can I optimize for how many people will like/use this?"
Which is the right attitude if you're not trying to make a living off of youtube. For those who are, they have to care about what the subscribers want.
Yes, and if you want to make pizza for yourself then you don't need to worry about what toppings you put on it.
But if you want to sell your pizzas (even if just for a bit of extra cash and as an experiment to see if the pizza business is right for you) then you need to ask what kind of pizza the people want.
"I also learned very quickly that the YouTube comments section is chaotic and is not a recommended place for someone looking for thoughtful critique on their material."
YouTube's comments are some of the absolute worst I've seen on the web. It's interesting that YouTube has made no effective efforts to improve their quality.
You'd think the site as a whole could benefit tremendously from quality comments, but apparently that is not a priority.
> YouTube's comments are some of the absolute worst I've seen on the web. It's interesting that YouTube has made no effective efforts to improve their quality.
For lowest common denominator kind of content, I absolutely agree.
However, as soon as you step even a little bit off the beaten path, comments become a lot more reasonable and often interesting/useful. On all the videos on all of the channels I actually subscribe to, the comments are not bad. There are random assholes here and there, but they seem to be mostly shunned by the rest.
> It's interesting that YouTube has made no effective efforts to improve their quality. //
You imply it, but it's worth noting that they have made efforts but failed/stopped. Google can't/won't fix it. I suspect as someone else mentioned they realised that fixing comment quality reduces "engagement"; like tabloid news.
I’ll admit to occasionally scrolling through the comments looking for the batshit crazy ones, if only because they tend to be funny and interesting in the totally unexpected way they managed to get offended about something.
The problem is that 1 in 1000 of them are actually thoughtful questions or genuinely grateful feedback that you don't want to miss. You just have to dig through 999 comments saying "you suck" or "send me something for free".
YouTube comments do not scale for moderation; its such a huge platform that it's likely not profitable to pay people to put a dent in it. Instead they expect the content creators to do it if they care to shape their own image.
I like writing about math and physics, but the views on my Ethereum articles are 500x higher, I measured. But that's how the world works. If you want money or attention, you have to serve people.
Matthew Innman (the author of the TheOatmeal) is nothing short of amazing. I have read all of his stuff and he is absolutely on point whatever he addresses.
I don't find this surprising. When I started podcasting in 2005, even doing a weekly 'cast with my friend and co-host was a lot of work. We also had day jobs. But the pressure to create content was still there. These full time youtubers must feel in 100x more, particularly if they have Patreon people to keep happy. We derived no income from our show, and in fact it cost us money to produce.
In some ways I wish some of these monetizing platforms existed when we were around. It would have been fun to see if we could have gone anywhere with it. But then we might have succumb to these issues, as well.
I guess it all comes back to "Be careful what you wish for..."
Reminds me of when I briefly accepted donations from users of my forum. Suddenly it was like my life was beholden to people that had once given me $5. At least when they'd given me $0, it was pretty straightforward to dismiss their complaints and they'd looked silly when they'd demanded more of my free time. But once they gave >$0, the water got murky.
I ended up refunding everyone a few months later and I generally roll my eyes when I see posts like "um why not just take donations?" on HN.
It's just not no-strings-attached money like people seem to think it is. It's more akin to selling a service for peanuts, it rears the same issues.
This makes me think of how moot (creator of 4chan) was against receiving donations from 4chan users, presumably because of this type of issue. He later started selling "4chan passes" which added certain specific features to the site. I think that was a very clever way to go about it: the people who bought them couldn't demand moot's attention. They got a very specific thing out of their money and everyone knew that.
Considering these cases, I think it makes sense to make sure that whenever one accepts donations, they make it very explicit what the donator can rightfully expect. That could be as little as a token set of extra features, a badge on their user profile, or just warm fuzzy feelings without extra attention.
Perhaps a different mentality for donations helps too. People who solicit donations should somehow communicate that you are not buying a service of some kind, they are donating to you, so you're free to take the money and do whatever. It's a strange thing however when people donate a pittance (five dollars or ten dollars or something) and then expect so much for it. When you pay five dollars for a coffee, you are at least paying for something. But the word "donation" never seemed to me like it carried any serious commitment on the part of the recipient.
Perhaps the only thing the donor can expect is the recipient is to continue whatever they were doing. Beyond that it's ridiculous.
A podcast I know of has a "membership" concept which gives extra content. Once, an angry member sent an email deriding changes in the show that the rest of us enjoyed (specifically, antics by one of the co-hosts). The main host derided their email on air, saying that they'd gladly let go of the donor's membership[0]. I know you can't really do that if everyone is complaining about the same thing--in which the situation reaches a different regime, but for one off complaints, you'd be surprised how much people will recognize the bullshit and welcome your explanations how you can't please every one-off suggestion.
[0] Of course, they kindly did not identify the angry member.
I have the same issue. A partial solution is to only accept anonymous donations (eg. on Liberapay). Even better if you have multiple projects and don't know which one is getting you the donations.
If my friend wanted to start producing content again, I'd do it in a second. Getting together for a few hours a week to create a ~45 minute podcast was tons of fun, and the conversation was very therapeutic.
I enjoyed the conversation. The back and forth. Many people have suggested I do something on my own, but I have no idea what that would be. And with stories like these, I'm less likely to dive in.
I'm an audio engineer so I enjoy the production end of things, but I enjoy video editing less than straight up audio editing. But people are suggesting I do some sort of youtube channel.
This is an interesting story, definitely worth a click, but isn't it sort of also just the fundamental issues humans face in all pursuits that are based on interest?
I feel like you'd get the same spirit of complaint from a disenchanted musician, actor, chef, or even entrepreneur.
"It's a lot harder than I thought. The market's tastes are fickle, I've got to make stuff to please them instead of things that creatively satisfy me. If I stop relentlessly competing I can't pay my bills"
I'm older than the average youtube star, but I don't begrudge their success or view them as trivial people like a lot of my peers. That said, perhaps it's the _initial_ grand slam success and money that is the aberration (like app store hits at their peak), and the "bad side" is simply a sort of market correction where you've got to do unenjoyable things roughly commensurate with the payoff.
Over the last several years I gradually changed from being very salty and grumpy -- "FFS, these goofy kids get to squeal on air and get rich and buy a house I won't likely have at 50, WTF is that!!!" -- to basically accepting how most of our current world's economy works and I moved to the milder attitude of "hey, if you can make it work then more power to you, and good job!".
I think the only bad thing in this picture is their initial huge success, like you seem to believe as well. This produces very unrealistic future expectations and the cognitive dissonance becomes nigh-impossible to face in the aftermath.
This leads to articles such as this one.
In my eyes everybody should learn to work hard and the value of money but some are skipping these steps with a big initial success and when reality finally kicks in, they are much less prepared to face it.
Sad, but it's part of one's own personal development. Can't be avoided.
I guess any activity that requires repetition becomes bleak sooner or later because brain craves variety. I guess it can be the inner voice telling that by getting obsessed over only one thing, you can miss out the chance to explore other aspects of life.
But as it has been said, everything sucks, most of the time we're simply choosing what sucks less.
> I guess any activity that requires repetition becomes bleak sooner or later because brain craves variety.
You nailed it.
And that's a huge problem for the current economical state of affairs; people start enthusiastically but eventually want to move on. By that time however, they have a family to care for, mortgage where they cannot miss a single installment, are generally tired, and cannot afford to make a decisive U-turn in their lives.
It's extremely saddening, I watched many bright and smiley people turn into grumpy drones because of that tendency. One of the worst things you could see in life. :(
As with everything else there is always a spectrum and this represents the dark end of the spectrum. I follow a bunch of tech youtubers (like MKBHD) who represent the happy side of the spectrum.
The main problem is it's self-managed work. Given lack of advisory and guidance, or the structure of conventional workplaces and school, many people will mismanage their work-life balance. Even with structure I have problems sometimes managing my overall workload and side projects.
It's certainly not Youtube at fault here, but it's definitely a valid issue every independent worker has to face. Discussion and exchanging solutions is a good thing.
> Like all YouTubers, Morton also feels the financial pressure of the system, which typically pays between £1.50 and £3 for every 1,000 views.
Based on this, creators have to be close to the 1 million views per month mark to be making over $24,000 per year.
It's no secret that YouTube is wildly unprofitable, from every angle. In a way, it's a transfer of wealth from AdWords, so our society is paying for YouTube through ads; just mostly not through the ads on YouTube.
YouTube is unprofitable if you look at direct compensation alone, if you have even 1M views per year not to mention a month you can find partnerships and sponsorships.
I don't understand why people think YouTube should pay more, the vast majority of YT content doesn't cost anything to create nor does it generate any revenue for YT.
Besides the really large channels the best thing one can do is to run a channel is parallel to their business and in support of it which is what many of the smaller DYI/Maker/Professional/Vocational channels do you run a machine shop you make a few videos per month and you draw more business rather than rely on ad revenue.
I wonder if this is specific to YouTube in any way. E.g., I'd stop visiting xkcd if Randall didn't keep uploading regularly. Most open source projects (including mine) turn into GitHub graveyard because we can't provide even the most basic maintenance and support.
Lots of traditional-media pop stars have also famously burnt out.
In general, it is hard work to cultivate a proper institution that spreads out the load and makes this sustainable. And the skill for managing that is never really taught anywhere. Most "lone artists" don't even realize it's needed until it's too late. And that's where most of this frustration stems from. Culturally we focus too much on that one "big break", or the "eureka moment".
How is this different than any other prestigious high performance job? Okay great, you busted your ass and you made it to the top, and now you have to bust your ass to stay there. I also don’t really think it’s fair to attach YouTube to the title. This article can be applied to all social media celebrities in all their various platforms.
Well it's all phases, is it not? Who says you will have a perfect idea at 16 about what will make you happy until you die? That's definitely not how humans work.
All of us know people who did U-turns in their lives at 30+. Some even at 50 or 60.
I'd watched a few videos talking about the old-time YouTube content generators in the "Wild West" of the site, compared with the current grind. They tweaked things so it only seems to make sense - monetization-wise - to be a content generator if you're able to keep up with posting high-quality content daily. Myself, I'd want to post great videos that people enjoy, and if the following grows, great! If not, I would just do what I want to do. If something else is more fun, I'll do that. But I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to make YouTube videos a work-from-home paying gig unless you really enjoy whatever content you're generating. And making regular, high-quality videos is a lot of work, not to mention regular, meaningful content that people with engage with. Otherwise, you're just screaming into the void.
I don't like how youtubers feel obligated to produce a certain amount of videos per week. I would prefer one or two videos per month with good quality than three or four per week with clickbait titles.
> Divisive content is the king of online media today, and YouTube heavily boosts anything that riles people up [...]
I look upon this idea skeptically. In my experience, the content delivered to me is as divisive as the videos I've already watched. If someone is getting divisive content, that's probably the content that they want to watch. Is it really up to YouTube to determine if a person has been watching content that's too divisive, like a bartender who cuts off a someone who's had too many drinks?
When I log out of my YouTube account or open YouTube in incognito mode, all I see are viral videos and nothing that's "divisive". For example, the YouTube homepage without being logged in shows prank videos, Rube Goldberg type fascination videos, educational videos, Mexican music, daytime TV crap, SNL skits, and pop music.
So basically, in order to get to the divisive stuff, you have to already be using search queries that will bring one to political commentators.
But then what should be done? If someone is watching a lot of videos by the far left, should the recommended videos proportionally include more videos by right wing commentators? Is this really what people want?
Sorry that this is tangental from the actual point of the article, but I've read of this idea multiple times before and it's always asserted as if it's a matter of fact, but I'm not sure I buy it.
>I look upon this idea skeptically. In my experience, the content delivered to me is as divisive as the videos I've already watched. If someone is getting divisive content, that's probably the content that they want to watch.
Just a counterpoint, I think it depends largely on the subject matter. my 'disengage the brain' videos are mostly tool teardowns and slow-motion videos of milling machines, or reviews of '90s luxury cars.
If I let youtube pick the next video a few times in a row while I'm watching car videos, I end up in supercar land, (which is not very much fun for me, but not divisive or anything.)
If I let youtube pick the next video a few times while watching tool teardowns, I sometimes end up with more interesting tool talk, but I often get survivalist stuff, and sometimes 'sovereign citizen' stuff starts to creep in.
> If someone is getting divisive content, that's probably the content that they want to watch.
I recently used YouTube on a brand new browser installation to watch some clips from various adult cartoons. That was all. No other search terms, no interest in politics. Soon after, the Recommendations on the right side of the page started to be filled with – besides other cartoon clips – all kinds of polemic culture-war videos, on both sides of those wars. That really impressed on me just how funneled towards these videos people can be even if they show no overt interest in those topics.
I find that once Youtube thinks you want divisive content, it serves it up to you pretty regularly.
As an example, I have plenty of "X riles up SJWs" type videos and also their counterpart "X angers sexist Gamergaters" despite not watching these and trying to actively say "don't show me these things". Unfortunately, one bad click from Reddit and Youtube thinks I want this tripe.
It's not solely related to "divisive" content though - the same is true of content related to Fortnite, Buzzfeed, and anything else that mostly consists of clickbait content. Youtube is just optimising for engagement, regardless of how that engagement affects the viewer.
Are you sure about this? Often times, I find yt recommends videos in a manner to keep me on yt (like previous songs I've watched on repeat). And you bet divisive content gets people on their site.
May be in 2010 it gave related content. That was what I found most useful and I discovered a lot of content that way, that is, it did work in the way you suggest: showing me what I want. Now, it definitely shows me what I don't really but will probably cause me to load another page.
The anxieties are tied up with the relentless nature of their work. Tyler Blevins, AKA Ninja, makes an estimated $500,000 (£384,000) every month via live broadcasts of him playing the video game Fortnite on Twitch, a service for livestreaming video games that is owned by Amazon. Most of Blevins’ revenue comes from Twitch subscribers or viewers who provide one-off donations (often in the hope that he will thank them by name “on air”). Blevins recently took to Twitter to complain that he didn’t feel he could stop streaming. “Wanna know the struggles of streaming over other jobs?” he wrote, perhaps ill-advisedly for someone with such a stratospheric income. “I left for less than 48 hours and lost 40,000 subscribers on Twitch. I’ll be back today… grinding again.”
This fits into the stereotype of Millennials as entitled. He makes 500k a month, but can't get off the hamster wheel? Poor soul.
Oddly enough it is more like addicts rather than millennials. The money is a dopamine hit, I've seen day traders with the same obsession trying to make their 'nut' every day. And getting so pumped when they do and so depressed when they don't. All while constantly complaining they would rather be doing anything else. It sounded like an addict saying they hated being an addict but they needed getting high to survive.
500K a month is 6 million a year. Lets say the taxes are 50% so you take two years to bank 6 million. It is pretty straight forward to live off six million dollars pretty much anywhere in the world. Even at 2% that is a monthly check of $10K. If you've got it in t-bills that is tax free.
But you don't get the dopamine hits from living off the interest.
And this fits the stereotype of older generations, and indeed Americans in general, failing to read or do even superficial research. This guy streams his life to tens of thousands of people... yeah, he's gonna be a little self-obsessed. It's all but mandatory for streamers to fuel the performance.
The guy streams 70 hours per week minimum[1]. That two day -more like one day- break cost him over $100,000, and cut his following (and salary, I guess? No clue how Twitch works.) by almost 20%[2]. There's no option to pick more PTO and trade off salary. He's stuck with this. Even as a "temporary" solution, that shit will take years off your life, and there are people who do this to just scrape by.
It's illustrative of how shitty a "profession" it is that the top streamers have to put in such an insane amount of work with no compromise ever.
Making $500k a month would allow you to save enough in a few years to jump off the hamster wheel and live completely off passive income. Not luxuriously, but better than most, and have all his time for his own.
To put some real numbers to this: $500k a month is $6M a year, or maybe $3M post-tax (assuming there's no way to shelter that income).
At a very conservative 3.33% annual withdrawal rate, which all but guarantees that your capital will grow faster than you spend it in the long term, after one year of work he could live on an annual income of $100k, forever, without working another day.
I guess it depends on your definition of "luxurious", but $100k free-and-clear annually buys you a much nicer lifestyle than most people have!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but any kind of stardom that nets you $3MM post-tax per year will also open the door to great investment opportunities AND a sort of residual income.
By residual income I mean things like being paid to appear at events and sponsor brands. Very low effort work. To be fair, that'll eventually dwindle away, but if he plays his chips right then he could coast on that kind of stuff for a long time.
Sure it would. But these things don't happen in a vacuum. If someone like Ninja just quit streaming one day, there would be a ton of pressure on him. His followers would constantly be asking him why he did it, when he's coming back. They'd speak rumors about him, comment publicly on his health (mental and physical).
I'm sure your answer is to just ignore it all. No problem, if you're a robot. Then there's the pressure that comes along with quitting a super-high income job. There's a voice in the back of your head saying "You are incredibly lucky to be here. Quitting is crazy. You'll never get a chance like this again."
This isn't a job that comes with a lot of security. If someone like Ninja left the scene for 1-2 years, there's no guarantees he'd ever be able to come back and have the same impact again. The odds are he couldn't.
there would be a ton of pressure on him. His followers would constantly be asking him why he did it, when he's coming back. They'd speak rumors about him, comment publicly on his health (mental and physical).
What pressure? Don’t want to feel pressure from thousands of anonymous people on Twitch? Don’t go on Twitch. Problem solved.
Similarly, know how to avoid all the negative social aspects of Twitter that so many celebs whine about? Don’t go on Twitter!
It’s the internet. It’s not real life. Why is this so hard?
If they care about some of their fans and their fans care about them, everyone should be understanding if they want to cut back on their hours to something sane. (And if not, they're not friends so who cares?)
I feel this way at first glance too. Then I remember that one could substitute Ninja for me, and his income for mine, and from the comparison of, say, a third-world trash-heap scavenger, I have similarly little reason to ever utter a peep of complaint about how my life is going. Yet I don't feel guilty saying negative things about my life or being depressed on occasion. And that helps me to feel sympathy for him.
But he's at the very top. How much do you think the top software developer in the world makes? The problem with streaming is that once he gets off the hamster wheel for a bit there might be no wheel to climb back on later.
>The problem with streaming is that once he gets off the hamster wheel for a bit there might be no wheel to climb back on later.
Is that really a problem? He makes more in one year than most people make in their entire lifetime. Unless he's out there blowing his money on mansions and yachts (which I'm pretty sure he isn't), then he could stop at any time and retire comfortably. He doesn't need to get back on the hamster wheel.
Welcome to being self employed. When you run a business by yourself, every hour not worked is money lost. No PTO, no sick days, no breaks... you're always wondering how much money any given activity is costing you, from doing dishes and laundry to going to a bar with friends to whatever.
It's certainly not a millennial thing at all. 500k a month now could turn into little to nothing if he were to take a two week holiday and his fan base lost interest (conceivably).
This fits into the stereotype of Millennials as entitled. He makes 500k a month, but can't get off the hamster wheel? Poor soul.
Hopefully one day he gets off that hamster wheel and has to dig ditches or clean toilets or roof a house in the desert for a living. Then he can know what work is.
My office window shows me a variety of people who work a thousand times harder than I do coding. And each day I am grateful that I don’t have to do their tasks.
While I'm sure starvation, lack of shelter, unemployment etc. are certainly in a different league, I can empathize with someone who feels trapped due to their compensation.
My story isn't as intense, but after an acquisition I had a really hard time. My career growth was frozen and I wanted to leave but I felt that leaving money on the table was doing a great diservice to my wife and children. It was much rougher than I had imagined.
That's not to say someone deserves pity for having to choose between a massive income and "getting off the hamster wheel", but I for one don't blame him for feeling trapped.
We call that "shit you say when you're full" in Korea. It may be subjectively stressful, but don't expect much sympathy from people who objectively have it 100x worse than you do.
Would you say the same thing about the problems of famous "normal" celebrities, such as the high amount of drug overdose deaths?
These real life problems of famous individuals shows that fame and success isn't always all it is cracked up to be.
Related to Ninja in particular, I would also like to point out that Ninja's success is only recent. He has been doing the streamer grind for 10 whole years to get to this point of success in his life. And with a lot of luck along the way.
Before taxes, he has about 100k subs who contribute around $5 each.
Loosing 40k subs is pretty significant, however I am not sure how that is possible in just 2 days. While there is an option to auto renew most twitch subscribers are not automatic, a person is usually watching the stream and chooses to subscribe. When subscription expires they can do so again. Assuming 140k subs are evenly distributed throughout the month the loss from not streaming for 48 hours should be 2/30 * 140k, this comes down to slightly less than 10k. Moreover most of these subs should rejoin once he starts streaming again.
That's the most they take. Higher level partners get a better cut.
If he lost 40k subscribers, that's most likely 40k renewals that didn't happen -- and they're not going to happen until he broadcasts again. It's almost a certainty he didn't lose 40k, many will have renewed once he was on again.
And if 40k subscriptions lapse over 2 days that would seem to imply that he has 600k subscribers. He doesn't. The 40k loss is just sensationalist. He didn't log in the first of the month and probably had a ton of people re-sub on the 3rd when he was back on.
It has a huge detrimental effect. Each day you take a break can set you back by several. From the article:
>> “I left for less than 48 hours and lost 40,000 subscribers on Twitch. I’ll be back today… grinding again.”
> move on to doing something else
There's not a clear career path to anything else. Many of them have spent their formative adult years streaming, and transitioning to another career would be incredibly difficult and likely pay significantly less.
Sure, there are the mega-streamers who have (hopefully) saved enough money that they could absorb that gigantic setback, or have enough celebrity that they can transition to something else, but I doubt the majority of them have earned enough to support a major life transition - like, say, going back to school full-time.
This is also one of the problems former professional athletes face, and there are actually a lot of interesting parallels between the two groups. "Broke" is a really interesting watch if you haven't seen it already that is quite eye-opening: http://www.espn.com/30for30/film?page=broke
Umm yeah, I still think they should move on. If you hate doing something then why continue doing it? Best to shift into an occupation you enjoy. I don't really think youtube or twitch were even meant to be full-time occupations to begin with.
It's a shame that that is the quote they decided to use in the article. But you can ask any Twitch streamer, if you take a vacation expect to lose large amounts of your subscribers.
On YouTube, if you stop posting videos for a while, YouTube will severely punish you in the algorithm. It'll take weeks before your videos start showing back up in user's subscription boxes.
> If you’re making $6 million / year, you have the resources with which to take time off and reconsider your choices.
> > Sure, there are the mega-streamers who have (hopefully) saved enough money that they could absorb that gigantic setback, or have enough celebrity that they can transition to something else, but I doubt the majority of them have earned enough to support a major life transition - like, say, going back to school full-time.
Ninja, makes an estimated $500,000 (£384,000) every
month via live broadcasts of him playing the video
game Fortnite on Twitch, a service for livestreaming
video games that is owned by Amazon. Most of Blevins’
revenue comes from Twitch subscribers or viewers who
provide one-off donations (often in the hope that he
will thank them by name “on air”).
There is something fantastically wrong about the way internet economies operate. In the same way so many other sub-economies panhandle, in exchange for absolutely nothing.
I mean, it's dumb because the chances of writing a successful blog is next to nil. And the way to exit the scene is easy: stop writing content. But it's the path that worries me. You need to write a lot of relevant content -- almost certainly more content than you can reasonably think about critically. You will be judged on that content. If you make a mistake or change your mind, then you can be treated very harshly. It seems that the masses have this binary view of their celebrities: genius or moron. The more popular you get, the more people have you in their sights aiming to plonk you firmly in the latter category.
For a long time, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time writing in safe havens like HN comment sections: because I truly love writing. I like thinking about stuff and breaking it down. I like explaining the insights that I find. And most of all, I like the fact that somebody reads what I write. I like thinking that I've connected with somebody else who I don't even know.
I seem to remember a set of rules for writers by Stephen King (although my recollection doesn't seem to match what Google returns to me). In one of them he says to prepare yourself for an unbelievable amount of criticism. It's this that worries me the most. I don't mind criticism, per se, but I don't want to have to deal with a reputation based on ideas formed from my prose.
"He's the dufus who believes that unit tests shouldn't test requirements. What a moron," is fine when I'm dealing with people who know me. It's down right terrifying when dealing with people who are potentially going to interview me for a job :-) A slight miscalculation in how you describe something, a popular misconception arising from rumours of your writing, or even just having a derpy day because you didn't think it through before you put pen to paper... And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
Like I said, it's putting the cart before the horse by a long, long way, but it still stops me from writing, which is a massive shame. Somehow I must overcome it (advice is welcome, BTW!)
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