Hacker News Reader

Of course we all remember the days when it was hard for an artist to get attention, or even make money independently, or even get a job at all.

My opinion on the intent of the post was to highlight the reality of an "internet famous" person. There is this notion floating around that if you get enough subscribers / fans you can make enough money to quit your job and sign autographs. While many people have gone on to do this, this is not the norm whatsoever. It takes hard work, a head for marketing, production experience, photography, videography...or just a really good idea and/or personality.

I definitely get what you are saying, its definitely more sad when you can't pay your bills.

> My opinion on the intent of the post was to highlight the reality of an "internet famous" person. There is this notion floating around that if you get enough subscribers / fans you can make enough money to quit your job and sign autographs. While many people have gone on to do this, this is not the norm whatsoever. It takes hard work, a head for marketing, production experience, photography, videography...or just a really good idea and/or personality.

Perhaps I'm underestimating the naivete of the average person, but I didn't realize that people thought this was a thing. Hell, the concept that Internet fame isn't necessarily lucrative is so well-understood that even freaking South Park got around to satirizing it almost 8 YEARS ago (and South Park doesn't have a tendency to satirize super-niche concepts).

Even if I'm wrong about that and it is somehow novel and interesting to write a long article about how subscriber counts don't turn into dollars, I still find the article's premise and insistent emphasis that the economics of these distribution channels are somehow sad to be completely wrongheaded.

Most subscribers think the person they ar subscribing too has a lot of money. most consumers in this world have absolutely no idea about anything related to money. No dea how much things cost to make. No idea how little revenue thy generate. Anything that educates even a few consumers is a good thing.

AFAIK the market forces at play in a capitalist economy mean that in the end things cost as much as you think they cost.

He wrote "how much they cost to make". They're different things.

Not in advertising-supported or sponsored informational products.

It's totally a thing, especially among teens/twenties. Sometimes it even works, kind of. I know someone's teen daughter who makes non-trivial cash reposting art on her Instagram account.

Warhol said everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. He never said anything about being able to pay the bills from it.

> I still find the article's premise and insistent emphasis that the economics of these distribution channels are somehow sad to be completely wrongheaded.

I don't. A huge chunk of social traffic and the ad spend it feeds to YouTube/FB/etc only exists because (mostly) younger and (often) more creatively inclined users have been sold on the idea of making money from a "personal brand."

AdBusters was satirising this fifteen years ago, and now it's turned into reality.

The reality is that you always make more money from being the farmer than from being the livestock. Perhaps the farms have an interest in not making that too obvious.

It's not the hopefuls who are wrongheaded - it's the tropes of the bullshit "social" economy they're growing up in.

> someone's teen daughter who makes non-trivial cash reposting art on her Instagram account.

But the jump from "non-trivial cash" for a teen to "living wage for an adult or family" is substantial.

If lots of people are willing and able to do what you do for nearly free, you shouldn't expect to make much from doing it.

> I don't. A huge chunk of social traffic and the ad spend it feeds to YouTube/FB/etc only exists because (mostly) younger and (often) more creatively inclined users have been sold on the idea of making money from a "personal brand."

So if I'm understanding correctly, your claim is not that these channels don't trivially provide a fulltime job, but that they're somehow heavily marketed as doing so to kids? I suppose I can buy that.

On the other hand, kids are precisely the ones who don't need a full-time job. A kid with an extremely successful YouTube channel has an awesome hobby, not a full time job. This is further reflected by the fact that almost every single person who had money issues in the article is in their mid 20s at least (The 18 year old who quit IG modelling did so because it was fake, which is pretty much the opposite problem of "this is not lucrative enough"). I don't think it's too much to expect from people in their mid 20s to be realistic about how much money they can make adding another photographer to the Instagram hordes.

Hell I've been traveling for a while and have been posting random pictures, and I've had several people tell me that I'm one of their favorite feeds. I am decidedly not particularly good at photography, and somehow my random "hey look at my pics" is providing an amount of utility to some users that's roughly the same as the "professional" IGers they follow that have branding deals and stuff. Any market where supply can be increased at all by an untalented guy deciding he should post photos of his trip on a whim is not going to be one where suppliers can trivially demand large amounts of money, and for good reason.

> The reality is that you always make more money from being the farmer than from being the livestock. Perhaps the farms have an interest in not making that too obvious.

Perhaps, but this is one of the cases (as opposed to the usual analogy to owning capital vs productive labor) where the relationship is substantially less exploitative. The job of the farmer is substantially more unique and useful than any given "livestock" (though a lot of this is due to network effects, which always suck a bit).

> The reality is that you always make more money from being the farmer than from being the livestock.

Well, yeah, livestock can't own property, and is chattel. A more relevant analogy would be "label" and "artist".

> Perhaps I'm underestimating the naivete of the average person, but I didn't realize that people thought this was a thing.

Its a thing for much the same reason as pursuing sports for a reasonable possibility of raking in ludicrously large paychecks is: the successes are inherently highly visible in the media, the failures inherently almost completely invisible.

> Hell, the concept that Internet fame isn't necessarily lucrative is so well-understood that even freaking South Park got around to satirizing it almost 8 YEARS ago

8 years ago, there were a lot fewer highly-visible internet celebrities; many of the currently well-established social media services didn't exist or were fairly new; Facebook was only 3 years old.

> Of course we all remember the days when it was hard for an artist to get attention, or even make money independently, or even get a job at all.

Wait what? This has always been the case and always will be. Art has never been profitable. The starving artist is a trope at this point.

The sadness comes because of the downside of being famous. The upside of most famous celebrities is that they make vastly more money than everyone else. Thus for many people who want to be famous they can offset the downsides of getting fame with the upsides. On the Internet, celebrity does not make enough to offset the costs - leading to sadness and bitterness and jealously. I'd also categorise these type of Internet celebs as working long hours on their work, as opposed to the viral stars who probably go off and get a publicist and cash in on non-internet stuff.

I would recommend that if one wants to be famous and vastly rich not to do it via the Internet. The good old "you are working for them" is even more true here.

This is the first response to my comment that I've found compelling. My only disagreement would be the idea that if the tradeoff is really that bad, you could quit and your fame would dissipate pretty rapidly relative to other media. Also the idea that being famous is an unalloyed negative; there are many, many people for whom fame itself is a desired outcome. I can't imagine this population isn't overrepresented among performers (esp YT).

I see it in a similar way. These low barrier distribution channels provide an opportunity for people to live experiences beyond their financial capability. Performing on stage, walking the red carpet, etc. Sure, some strike it rich, but most don't. The same power law that exists throughout the entertainment industry.

And regarding the offset/highlighted comment about Van Gogh. If the author knew their art history (or at least had seen and paid attention to Mona Lisa Smile), he only sold one painting during his lifetime [0]. One might even go so far as to draw a parallel between his position with the art dealer Goupil & Cie and somebody today "shilling themselves out on audible.com".

[0] http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/faq.html

Everyone mentions Van Gogh every time this comes up because he's the one artist out the top thousand or million who couldn't sell during his lifetime. He was an extremely rare exception.

He sold, just to his brother. He is a rare exception though.

Mozart struggled with poverty towards the end of his life.

>because he's the one artist out the top thousand or million who couldn't sell during his lifetime. He was an extremely rare exception.

Actually he's the canonical example of how it was for the VAST majority of artists. Being rich, or having a rich patron, was very much an exception. There are tons of poets, painters, musicians, writers etc that never got any of that, including tons of later recognized ones.

Pretty much the opposite, in fact if there's a continuum it's between canonical professions of:

"accountant" -> all qualified practitioners have a steady income, little variation between accountants and

"rockstar" -> huge variation - winner takes all, a few practitioners get most of the fame and income, the majority get nothing.

No prizes for working out where "artist" and "celebrity" fit on that continuum.

The drivers is, how much does the business model scale?

Accountancy is still pretty much 1-to-1; but everyone on spotify/iTunes can in theory listen to the same hit band (within same musical tastes) so the 2nd-ranked band gets far less play than the 1st, despite being nearly as good. Scale down to the 100th who is also quite good but has to have a day job. If you know musicians you have met them.

Yes, portraiture was in Rembrandt's day a business model that did not scale, but van Gough was later - he wasn't a portraitist and photography was established by then.

>but can anyone explain how the economics of these new Internet-enabled distribution channels are "sad"?

The article mentions people who had to quit their day jobs because too many people recognized them.

Right, that point is a good one. The costs of fame are possibly out weighing its benefits for these people.

The thing is, they have a hobby that brings in a fair amount of money and the cost is fame. Given that they could stop at any moment and their fame would dissipate pretty rapidly, is it "sad" that these channels provide the opportunity to make this trade off? All these channels are providing is shifting the opportunity boundary so more people who are extremely passionate about their creations (and think it's worth the time and the fame) can indulge in it. Earlier, only those who had the luxury of chasing after major labels or distributors had this chance.

>they have a hobby that brings in a fair amount of money and the cost is fame.

According to the article, many of the 'famous' YouTube stars do not bring in a fair amount of money, so they must rely on day jobs that they cannot keep because of the fame.

Whether you find it 'sad' or not is not particularly relevant. The author is exposing the misconceptions about 'fame' in the YouTube world and exposing the irony of being too famous for day jobs but not paid enough to quit them.

It appears you don't empathize because you believe the opportunity they are given to pursue their passion outweighs the struggle of funding that passion. They disagree.

> According to the article, many of the 'famous' YouTube stars do not bring in a fair amount of money, so they must rely on day jobs that they cannot keep because of the fame.

A "fair amount of money" for creating music and videos doesn't mean "enough to not have to work". As an analogy, if I made crafts or something and sold them online and they weren't so successful that I could quit the working world, it wouldn't be inaccurate if I were to say "I make a fair amount of money on the side from my hobby". Note that I'm using the word "fair" in the sense you'd say something is "fairly big", not in the sense of justice (a much more complicated discussion).

> Whether you find it 'sad' or not is not particularly relevant.

Jesus christ dude, do you just click on random comments on the page without reading the thread they're part of? The parent comment of this thread is me disagreeing with the article title's characterization of the economics as "sad". There is quite literally nothing more relevant to this discussion.

> It appears you don't empathize because you believe the opportunity they are given to pursue their passion outweighs the struggle of funding that passion. They disagree.

This is 100% wrong, in more than one way (200% wrong?). First off, the comment you're responding to and quoting isn't talking about the financial cost of creating. If you bothered to actually read the thread, you'd see that we covered that in _the very first comment_, and no one is really in disagreement in this thread that the financial struggle of artists of all kinds is a bummer. We're talking about what costs in particular are unique to Internet-famous creators, (ie what makes it 'sad'), and the answer is the cost of fame.

Secondly, let's say I go along with your random change in subject and start talking about the financial costs of creating not being worth the opportunity for people who are currently creators. This is also completely wrong, pretty much by definition. The people who _aren't_ still YouTube (et al) creators are the ones that decided that the struggle of funding their passion is not worth it. The ones who are still doing it, by definition, have decided that the costs are worth it.

You've completely misunderstood the article, this entire comment thread, and the comment you're responding to, so I'll summarize part of it for you here:

I find it as sad as anyone (and more than many) that people have to get jobs and aren't free to pursue their passion if it doesn't happen to be lucrative[1]. This is a completely different discussion, and one that often comes up on HN. It usually involved discussion of post-scarcity economies, basic incomes, etc. That has precisely nothing to do with the "sad economics" of Internet fame in particular. Hence my original contention that the author is essentially complaining about the same problem (people have to get jobs instead of follow their passion), and to make the article more clickbaity, pointing at a solution that doesn't go far enough and pretend that it's causing the problem. Specifically, the fact that lower-gated revenue sharing for online creators doesn't allow them to live off their work is an incomplete improvement on the previous gatekeeper system where you had to get lucky and be connected and convince a record exec that your passion is worth it.

[1] this is particularly sad in the arts, where our current system isn't particularly good at valuing its positive externalities. Which isn't to say that I have a perfect solution for arts funding...

High expectations financially coupled with mediocre financial results ==> Sad We tend to associate someone being 'famous' with being rich, which is rarely the case.

> I've found poverty and lack of economic opportunity to be very sad, for far longer than it's been fashionable to do so

You are pretty old then, I guess?

Considering there are quite a few pentagenerians on HN, that wouldn't be so rare.

Haha, fair enough: I can see how my pithy phrasing of that part of my comment could be interpreted to mean that I saw myself as the only one who cared about poverty and how the world was cruel and nobody else understood </angsty teenager>.

What I actually meant by "fashionable" was that, in the couple decades preceding the financial crisis, it was far, far from the mainstream to be concerned about or even acknowledge some of the structural economic issues that had been growing since the 80s or so in the US (for example, dropping social mobility, which is more or less agreed to be a bad thing pretty much across the political spectrum). There were obviously plenty of people who cared in the same period, but that's not really what "fashionable" means.

So no, I'm not particularly old, but caring about those issues in particular for a couple of decades gives me something like a 15-year head-start on the epoch we're currently in, when suddenly even the most ignorant and apathetic person in the country can quote factoids from a Robert Reich book or whatever.

At any rate, it was a throwaway remark to point out that I'm not just pretending to care about the deeper issues underlying how "sad" Internet economics are because I think it's the "in" thing to do (I know plenty of people who are like this for any social issue that's currently in vogue).

So, I'm probably not a whole lot older than you, I was born around the time Reagan was first elected. but I do consider myself a fan of history. my perception is that the time between somewhere around '80 and the 2008 crash was a rightward[1] cycle of the pendulum of public opinion, at least on economic issues,[2] and that before that, when my parents were youngsters, there was a lot more support for a safety net and for wealth redistribution in general.

My feeling is that the 2008 crash and the lopsided[3] recovery from same has... given rise to the sorts of economic feelings that were popular in the '70s and before. Sanders isn't particularly radical by '70s standards, but compared to anyone who had a shot during my lifetime? he is extremely radical.

[1]I like using "left" and "right" because their meanings are less complicated than "liberal" and "conservative" (essentially, on which side of the Legislative Assembly would you sit?)

[2]- of course, we're talking about economics only, to the extent that you can talk about economics without talking about social issues. I have a much harder time supporting the claim of a leftwards social push during the same time.

[3]by lopsided, I mean that some areas, and some people have done pretty okay. I certainly can't complain about my position. For that matter, compared to 2001? 2008 wasn't a crash for me and the people I hang out with at all. But, I am given to understand that others aren't so lucky.

I'm of similar age and understand the rightward cycle. Growing up we didn't have much, but I remember working in a grocery store and watching people who drive nice cars buy steaks with food stamps and beer and cigarettes with cash. My family was eligible for food stamps, and my parents fought about it often. My mom wanted my dad to go get them and he refused and instead took another side job.

I think experiences like that shape people, and over time becomes part of their core. I'm more libertarian while many of my friends who grew up well to very well off are extremely liberal. They never experienced pulling themselves out of nearly nothing so they have a hard time imagining it is possible. I did it, so I think it is infinitely possible. Of course the reality is somewhere in the middle.

Old beats dead :) Until it doesn't, anyway ;)

He must be, I would peg the start date of "finding poverty and lack of economic opportunity to be very sad" at some time around the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

Maybe earlier, I don't know, since similar sentiments were apparently expressed in the Roman province of Judea, circa 30AD.

You're evidently unfamiliar with the meaning of the word "fashionable". Looking up the definition may help in understanding my post.

What are you saying - that fashion began in 1995?

Apparently he's not the only one. Care to enlighten us by explaining what the word means?

Fair enough. "Fashionable" in the sense that it's used here means that it's fairly predominant in the discourse of the mainstream. Contrast the conversation about poverty and economic opportunity in 2006 to the conversation post-crisis. You and your friends individually may have considered social mobility, income inequality etc to be a significant issue, but it's pretty much objectively true that the discourse in the country at large did not. It didn't make the news, pundits didn't care, the population at large had a dual-earner-with-credit-cards-financed delusion that their quality of life was improving. In 2015? Try finding a group of people who considers them informed who doesn't have something to say about the topic. Eight years ago the word "socialist" was unambiguously a slur that Obama had to defend against, and now there's a candidate with a non trivial degree of support who identifies himself using the same word... And it's hardly a scandal at all.

Further, it should be obvious from the context that I'm speaking about the local temporal context (last 40 years), as opposed to claiming that human society has never gone through periods where economic opportunity was prioritized more highly than today. Part of why my response was so dismissive is because bringing up the fact that people cared about poverty in Roman times means she's either uninterested in understanding my point or too stupid to do so.

"the country"? Please don't assume that the USA is one of the countries that I have lived in - it isn't. Thanks for your deep summary of recent developments in American society, though having seen bits of the Republican debates I hope you're right but suspect that for a whole lot of people you're not. Watch them call Sanders a "socialist" all day long if and when he has a nomination and there's a Republican who does too.

You also can do better than "must be too stupid" if someone don't share this "obvious" parochial context. Or makes allusions to ancient events that you don't get.

Thanks for the explanation. You highlight important points (in particular, I didn't notice how fast sentiments toward political labels change). Even the TL;DR of that comment posted instead of dismissive response would be great...

... except:

> means she's either uninterested in understanding my point or too stupid to do so.

Please apply the principle of charity. People here aren't generally dumb (hell, most people aren't generally dumb); HN is frequented by people for whom English is not the native language, and then sometimes people post comments when they're tired, or feeling sick. Just because someone misses your point doesn't mean they're stupid.

Concern about inequality has indeed come to the fore recently in American political thought, and global - see Thomas Piketty.

Though I'm not sure how much this is really affecting the USA - witness Trump stand up and boast "I'm really rich" - which implies "I have far more money than you, we are unequal" and be rewarded for it. I'm also not sure how deep it runs - it seems that a simple security scare would shake it off and the usual tough posturing will again be a more effective political tool - see the recent Vegas Republican debate.

But if there's an inexact use of the English language, "inequality" only came into it later - "social mobility, income inequality" is not exactly the same thing as "poverty" as originally responded to, is it?

> It didn't make the news, pundits didn't care, the population at large had a dual-earner-with-credit-cards-financed delusion that their quality of life was improving.

Did they? I seem to recall most sentiment measures being stubbornly bad for most of the period between the 2001 recession and the Great Recession, despite periods of fairly positive results in top-line measures. (E.g., consumer confidence in the "expansion" period between the 2001 recession and the Great Recession never reached the level it was June of the March-November 2001 recession, and was often far below its levels from during the 2001 recession. [0])

Sure, the media presentation (what news and pundits were talking about) was generally positive up until the collapse and Great Recession, but I don't think that it necessarily reflected the "population at large".

[0] http://www.econstats.com/r/usind__m5.htm

Well said!