The jobs of the future are already here, and some are weird

I think this job catagory hides a lot. E-celebtrities do not gain a following for doing nothing. They do something that gets them followers, and that something is their job. I also do not see a reason to exclude sponsorship/Patreon from this catagory; as that just seems to be another method of monetizing the same work. I also do not see why podcasts and webcamming do not fall into this catagory.

PewDiePie happens to be one of the first to tap into the most popular genre on YouTube, hence the volume. But if you dig into some very specific channels with high production values you can see that the potential is huge.

I used to think a similar thing, however as I learn more about him the more I think it's unfair to think he makes millions of dollars for (almost) nothing.[1]

He appears to be very astute when it comes to his business and produces a large amount of content which must be hard and time consuming work, even considering he has people working for him. He entertains millions of people on a daily basis and, even if it isn't content I enjoy, he deserved to be compensated.

[1] I'm not in a position to assess the various controversies around PewDiePie and I don't think they're relevant to this point as most of his content is unrelated.

The guy works hard, and while I'm not a fan I don't begrudge him the wealth.

if you prefer to read instead.

Online Multiplayer Video Games: Peak Daily Users 5,000,000 League of Legends (Riot Games 2009, Free / Cosmetic microtransactions) 2,552,565 PLAYER UNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (Steam / Bluehole Inc. 2017, $30 / Cosmetic microtransactions) 727,479 Dota 2 (Steam / Valve Corporation 2013, Free / Cosmetic microtransactions) 547,883 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Valve Corporation 2012, $15 / Cosmetic microtransactions)

-in-built audience of about 500k-5million -low barrier of entry high skill ceiling -former professional players stream their games daily and give advice -livestream audience of 10k-20k concurrent viewers -streamer can earn up to 5 million USD a year from: monthly subscription model for cosmetic chat features, ad and merchandise revenue streams

There are many intersections between genres, because teenagers are interested in a lot of things, fashion, music, video-games, tv shows. There is also a certain infantisation of 20-30's due to the increasingly common choice to put off starting a family until late 30s.

A good example is the two brothers Logan (22) and Jake (20) Paul. Former viners(1) who were on a Disney tv show (2) moved to youtube (3) bringing over their fans from vine and disney and adding new ones due to clever self-promotion. Any 5 to 15 year old in America knows their name and about 5-10 million watch their videos daily.

What is their talent? In a post-modern twist, the story of their success is their product. Much like the various Kardashian sisters, famous for being famous very much describes where they are. They both live a Truman Show / EdTV esque life of daily fan interaction. every single day of their lives is documented into 15-20 minute long videos which they upload to their channels.

(1)(2)(3) the more intersections you can get the better your chances of having a wider audience. the youtuber you mentioned does not have 50 million people watching, he has 1-3 million, the fiasco around his racist slur was viral marketing on his behalf to draw attention to his struggling channel. his peak relevancy was probably in 2014 and he has been struggling for the past 3 years to remain relevant as his fanbase grows up and he needs to adapt to their changing interests.

video games are a 100 billion dollar industry with china's addiction for the electronic crack soon dwarfing anything the rest of the world does.

Also, note that there’s mention of specific political groups exclusively as trolls, but who are the professional counter-trolls? As my mom used to say, when it comes to fighting, it takes two to tango. Aren’t both just trolls?

Internet fights are pretty tedious to witness. Just ask HN’s moderators. But why trust them, when you can read plenty on your own.

One person’s moderator is another person’s censor. Trolling and moderation go hand in hand, and moderation is the true counter-troll.

I think many more product types could target smaller niches through some auto-scaling like service. For example, let's talk about food. it's possible to imagine Amazon starting a cloud for manufacturing food, where you send the recipes of what food to make, and you get a batch of it made(maybe not so large), and this gets distributed/sold via Amazon's grocery section.

Same for restaurants, you upload you recipe, and some chain restaurant makes your food and give you royalties.

And of course it could happen to clothes(already with printed t-shirts), electronics, shoes, etc. Maybe even houses, if housing gets done at a factory, modular fashion, using a set of standard blocks and software verification.

And there are all kinds of new technologies, like hyperloop, bio manufacturing, etc - that would require building a lot of infrastructure. and the fastest the rate of change goes up, maybe infrastructure we'll get refreshed faster.

And clearly we could use more teachers.

Or people at command centers for self-driving cars.