YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M
bbc.com
bbc.com
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.
I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking that you're hanging out with another human. I don't want to unconsciously sate my social needs with podcasts so I've been more intentional about my listening.
As for people growing attached to the persona, here's an interesting case: https://youtu.be/VJJ90qpzark?t=458
Once hooked, the kardashians make bank because they can sell their fans laxative teas or hair growth gummy bears on instagram through huge ad endorsements
Yes. I see this kind of shows as social pornography. But meanwhile pornography is seen as something that you see in private and you are kind of ashamed to recognize that you see it publicly. This social pornography is widely accepted and even children watch it with, usually, their mothers.
Society needs to create a taboo about this kind of shows. It maybe OK to watch them on your own if you need it. But not to include children and not to make it the center of your life.
These are just the initial iterations of how influence in a hyper connected society works. What happens next we are yet to see. Naturally most people don't think anything good.
Reality TV produced Trump. People forget it(what passes for news+social media news) also produced Obama. Remember he was hailed as the first social media President. After that every single politician, religious and social figure in every country was suddenly broadcasting their daily activities.
Just another avatar of what Reality TV hit upon.
So now the mechanics exist for an enterprising person to exert influence on a large numbers of people like never before. Across all kinds of geographic/social/cultural boundaries. Traditionally such influence has taken decades for famous people to acquire. So the textbook on how to use that influence has been very thin. The outcomes produced were much more based on pure luck than by design.
With big data and thousands of psychological experiments going on, how to use influence vast numbers if peoples lives, for good, is going to increase.
The ability to interpret rational meaning into the abstract is something that enabled homo sapiens to get where we at today.
You can't just remove that for TV images and expect it not to impact the perception/thinking apparatus as a whole.
> One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. [...] The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.
They even use your term 'persona' to refer to the individual behind the glass.
> But of particular interest is the creation by these media of a new type of performer: quizmasters, announcers, 'interviewers' in a new 'show-business' world - in brief, a special category of 'personalities' whose existence is a function of the media themselves. [...] Lacking an appropriate name for these performers, we shall call them personae.
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/short/horton_and...
These could be today's satirists
The other personalities, do not specifically cater to this. They're more interested in creating a following and creating something that keeps people coming back for more.
>Trained and ordained as a minister, Rogers was displeased with the way television addressed children. He began to write and perform local Pittsburgh-area shows for youth. In 1968, Eastern Educational Television Network began nationwide distribution of Rogers's new show on WQED. Over the course of three decades, Rogers became a television icon of children's entertainment and education.
>Rogers advocated various public causes. In the Betamax case, the U.S. Supreme Court cited Rogers's prior testimony before a lower court in favor of fair-use television show recording (now called time shifting). Rogers also testified before a U.S. Senate committee to advocate for government funding of children's television.
Just like Mister Roger's Neighborhood in the 1970s.
IRL he seems to be awkward around other people, soft (nice), and obviously a bit depressed.
Afaik your IRL description is one he gave about himself, where he also explained that he initially used YouTube to get past his "awkward around other people" issue.
In that context, I find it hard to believe that people could consistently play a "fake-persona" without that ever influencing their normal mannerisms, particularly when they have to summon this "fake-persona" on a near-daily basis.
I follow him around a lot, and as you said, you cannot hide personality traits forever. E.g. he definitely is not misogynstic, but he plays that card often during Meme Review or his other weekly formats to cater to his Reddit audience. I honestly believe he speaks for his real self in his social commentary videos.
I don't think it's really a "card" he consciously plays, it's much more a reflection of the culture he lives in and caters to, as a gamer.
Not all use of misogynistic language has misogynistic intent, particularly not when it's been an established part of the sub-culture. And in that context, this recent need to "enforce PCness", particularly in gaming culture [0], DID trigger a massive reactionary backlash that most of the industry and especially the mainstream seems still to be ignoring.
Gaming has always been about freedom and creativity, just hinting at intent to censorship [1] is enough to cause a, usually very loud, reaction. Right now the industry as a whole is running into a wall it won't be breaking through, instead it's paying the price by losing customers en mass. Take a look at recent EA, Ubisoft, Activision stock development and you will see exactly what I mean.
Other factors play into that as well, like over monetization of products which are often of very shallow quality. Case in point: Fallout 76
Or simply misreading what your customers actually want: Blizzard with Diablo immortal.
All these issues have brought the community to a breaking point, and now the most visible and biggest industry players are feeling the brunt of it.
[0] https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/14/17572060/rainbow-six-siege...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/21/18106429/rainbow-six-sieg...
"He's not racist, he just says racist stuff often" "He's not a serial killer, he just murders people often"
It's not a great excuse, really.
But I guess intent doesn't matter, it's all about the optics, right?
It's kinda amazing how ESRB 18+ games can have players commit the cruelest and bloodiest violence, but as soon as somebody says a slur, that's suddenly "crossing a line".
Generally against fictional entities inside a computer.
> but as soon as somebody says a slur
Generally to or about a real person. That's why there's a difference.
In the past brand prestige protected the media from this to happen. A backslash on a TV will make all advertisers to flee.
YouTube does not suffer from this. They host radical, xenophobic, and misogynistic content without consequences. Because they label themselves as a tech company, a middleman that has no responsibility on their own content. But are they? Meanwhile we buy what YouTube advertisements show they have no reason to stop.
When you optimize society to generate money instead of generate value you get to this weird situation.
What contributes to "actual" well being of the follower is another matter entirely.
Though in the age of big data, despite all the pessimism we are surrounded by, it is possible more and more for the celeb class to influence "actual" well being (in terms of mental health/purpose/financial stability etc) of their followers.
The next George Lucas or Stan Lee could push psychological buttons in ways no one ever has before.
Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.
If people are tempted to escape into a virtual world, it might be because the real world around them sucks.
When instead of candy you get kicked in the nuts by a horse, that's when you need some of that youtube to get your mind off of things.
Not being online-savy would put me at a social disadvantage. I'm in my early 20s. My impression is that it's only more so for younger ones. When people talk of "real-world social skills" they usually mean the ones that made sense during their adulthood.
I spend my time online reading about my interests or talking to other people. In the outside world, the conversations I have are short and often unfulfilling. People are more open online and I really value that kind of open introspection with others. It's difficult to find information about my interests outside of the Internet as well, unless I go to the library which, for me, is at least an hour commute.
Lots of people are learning how to use the Internet productively because as we migrate our time from physical reality to virtual reality, we crave more corresponding meaning.
The real world sucks for me sometimes (y'know, apart from nature walks and the like) because it's not the apple it's the candy. It feels fake, empty, and lifeless.
Cue Monty Python sketch
I'm born '86, regular access to technology since the early nineties. I'm a social kind of person, have many friends. Sometimes I just want to lock myself in for an entire weekend and play video games for 16 hours a day. Other times, I'll be having barbecues or going dancing.
And as many here have already stated, the extremes go smoothed over by time.
Before I had regular access to technology I spent most of my after-school and recess time staring off into space, pacing around constructing imaginary worlds, and reading YA fiction. I had no interest in my peers, and no idea how to connect with them, years before I ever touched a computer. When I finally did get into the internet, and programming, it was manna from heaven. Now I get to be a productive member of society, staring off into space at my desk and constructing imaginary worlds in the form of software systems for important business purposes. If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
I dunno. Just because a child has no social life and a lot of screen time, doesn't mean the causality works as you propose. Some of us have a tighter grip on the world of things than the world of people. (It's definitely become more balanced for me, with time).
But today, when I can barely get shit done with all the distractions at my fingertips, I wonder if I could learn the basics before gravitating towards something passive.
It forced me out of necessity to give time to content I never would have bothered with otherwise.
Boredom is so healthy.
Among those: the media, fiction, or interactions that were meaningful to me held more space in my mind. They weren't competing against a sea of trash and new stimulus.
----
Also I did a ton of engineering and robotics extra curricular stuff through the years. Then one year we got broadband and I got Lego Mindstorms. I took it out of the box once. I still feel bad about that gift.
Or you might have found a friend and started a social circle based on common interests. Now you never have to, you get various approximations of that. You can hop onto an MMO and have an approximation of a social circle. You can code until a manager says "good job" and have an approximation of social approval. Hell you can watch porn and get an approximation of sex. You can watch ASMR videos and get an approximation of affection (don't tell me a video of a cute girl with audio that sounds like she's whispering in your ear isn't meant to be an approximation of affection).
It's good to have tech and the things it brings us, but on the other hand they're clearly sucking people into a passive life where they interact with the actual world as little as possible. I've looked back on how socially retarded I am because I ran away from the world using these tools, and I don't like it. And it's only a personal failure to a certain extent. We all know, clear as a bright spring day, that a lot of apps and services are build deliberately to keep you there as long as possible as often as possible.
When people say they wouldn't have it any other way, I'm not sure it's for any reason but they either don't know or can't handle any other way.
I live in both, I can function decently in both, and I still prefer the passive tech life. Pretty sure without tech, I'd still prefer to be distant/alone most of the time, with only occasional contact with other human beings
In my teen years I spent most of my time writing, reading, or walking wherever. Again, I had a few friends, but I was picky and apart from that didn't care to "maintain" the friendships. When I started using the Internet more frequently, I found more passive friendships online that came and went and this was a much better solution for me. It meant I could connect when I wanted to, and instantly end the connection when I wanted to be alone, without much risk.
I probably sound a little more pathological than you, but my point is that some people just are a certain way. Apart from that there are external reasons why kids prefer the Internet to in-person interaction. The Internet as a solution came about for a reason. The world is so populated now that when one walks down the street, your neighbors are unkind or elusive because people cannot keep up with so many relationships at once. Trains are packed, everyone's chattering, everyone's rushing, there are people everywhere but no one is communicating-- there's no time or energy to connect with people. Some guy on the train is crying, but no one is going to comfort him because everyone has so much shit going on. The Internet, in one sense, is a way to reconnect with one's neighbors intimately while keeping a sane distance. If a guy on reddit is telling me he's crying, I instantly attempt to comfort him.
It's a weird thing, for sure. But, personally, I don't see an easy way around it in the short-term.
If children has a higher need to escape reality than in the past then maybe we should ask why that is rather than in vain hope try to make the problem go away by removing the escape method. Like you I find it troublesome that parents use computers to babysit, but I would say the same thing about any form of babysitting mechanism that result in the child not get any social support.
Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.
It's almost like reasonably moderating the content your child consumes will help prevent undesirable behavior.
I'm being a bit gratuitously sarcastic right now but that's really the crux of it. If it's trying to sell your child something or constantly stimulating them in a way the real world can't or it's not teaching your child something you want them to learn, be careful about how they consume it.
I'm nowhere near the age of having kids yet but I'm already thinking about the optimal balance of usage so my kid would be digitally native and not addicted to apps.
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational experience to pull from, even assuming she was making observations free of the very many cognitive biases one would expect in this situation.
My bet would be that if you found a teacher -- from almost any point in history -- and asked them what the kids are like in their time period, they'd tell you about the latest inventions that have made their kids uniquely awful and anti-social. I'll spare you pulling out the 3,000 year-old quotes about how "young people these days don't respect their elders".
If there are some studies that show it, I'd be all for it. Teacher anecdotes are uniquely poor quality samples, in my opinion.
Through all of time we’ve heard this. The current generation is supposedly rubbish in some way the previous generation was not. Instead it’s been the opposite. Each succeeding generation has surpassed the previous in any human quality. I have immense confidence that our collective children will be the same. We are better people than our parents. Our kids will be better than us. No doubt about it.
I'm a millenial, and my partner's parents, stereotypically, are always going off about how lazy, whiny, and unmotivated my generation is. From where I stand it's the complete opposite. I could explain why but, at the risk of starting a debate about millenials, I'll just say that my generation has been working on solutions to problems our parents either didn't have to deal with, or weren't aware of. And that's just the way "generations" work.
I've had a very similar experience with the people I know who are trying to be teachers, though most of the people I deal with are either in or just out of college and this could be attributed to inexperience.
I find it a little troubling that I see people practically seeking examples of unusual social behavior and attributing it to autism. I saw this sort of pseudo-analysis happen a lot with Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. Opinions of the show aside, I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that he had a social disorder.
I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.
Post-internet I at least had friends, sure some were in the Netherlands, or Germany, or Australia, or Brazil, or Japan but they were people. Actual people that existed outside of the fantasy novels I would read. People that as an adult, I was able to travel to and visit. I have a job in web development, something that wouldn't even exist without the internet.
I owe essentially 100% of my "successful adult life" to the internet existing. Without it I'd likely be working a minimum wage job at a local fast food chain without a single friend to speak of. Merely existing and reading books.
I blame helicopter parents like my mother far more than I blame access to the internet.
What about the giant scare of strangers that flared up in the 90s? Every stranger is a potential murderer/rapist and you shouldn't speak to them. Children not being allowed to travel outside alone, the rise of "helicopter parenting". Even if you allow your child to go outside it's increasingly unlikely they'll meet another child because other parents don't let their children go outside. When I was younger I remember always seeing parks full of unsupervised kids playing. Most parks I see now are empty. Or maybe a parent watching their kid(s) play on the equipment.
In contrast, these kids have friends, who actually share some common interest. They choose those friends. And also, probably, more of them. If anything, I'd call that hyper-social.
If I'm sad I can always watch their videos and feel happy and connected to other people. I like people who create awesome stuff, I can relate to them a lot more than to the people I meet in real life.
I don't think these feelings are invalid. If people watch someone's content, and learn things, and feel connected, and that makes them feel good and happy - I think that's wonderful.
Besides, it's not like real life people are amazing at being real, everyone has a fake persona they're trying to project. What you can't fake is being funny, insightful, educational, likable, charismatic, talented, inspiring, etc. If you're creating something good, people will like you. Nothing wrong with that.
Dismissing real life people as "not amazing at being real" is ironic to me because people have been the way they are since maybe even before the dawn of homo sapiens. That's just what real is. Not everyone is this charismatic, funny, inspiring character. You still welcome them into your life just as they welcome you into their lives.
Government funded art doesn't make it pure art, it makes it art that serves the political aims of the bureaucrats charged with doling out the money.
Almost no two people have the same taste in art, and what they're willing to pay for.
I doubt you'd be living in a world that doesn't have art you like if the government didn't fund it.
Virtually all governments all over the world have various arts funding schemes that covers music.
That being said I have no strong opinion either way on if that's a good thing or if the music funded this wouldn't have been funded some other way if those schemes hadn't existed
What country are you in? Definitely if you're in the US or Europe there are plenty of places you can apply for government funding if you're a composer.
Also if the government is funding the concert hall and that funding lets the concert hall put on work by and pay a composer, at what point does it stop being government funding?
> at what point does it stop being government funding?
It's a good question, and I replied to that in another comment.
http://www.playbill.com/article/national-endowment-of-the-ar...
https://www.musicofremembrance.org/news/national-endowment-a...
If you specifically want an example of a grant being awarded to a composer for the purposes of composing a new piece, see here:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwclassical/article/Chicago-P...
"The Chicago Philharmonic Society has been named the recipient of a $10,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award will support a collaboration between The Chicago Philharmonic Society, composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Chicago-based percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion for the creation and performance of a new work for percussion quartet and orchestra. The premiere will be presented in fall 2017 as part of the Chicago Philharmonic's 2017-2018 symphonic season."
No, but if really I wanted to find one I'd probably start by looking here: https://www.arts.gov/ and then continue looking at smaller and more local arts grants. Also I'm sure that at some point some part of the government has commissioned new music for some project or event, although it's quite possible that that music has never been released on a CD.
But again it's all down to how you draw the line. Are you asking if there are composers on the federal payroll or if a composer has ever won a government grant and uses the money for that grant to pay his rent while continuing to compose?
Sure, but it's no less pure than art funded by a private benefactor or patron.
And more importantly what do you mean by funded? If the local council offer free or subsidized rehearsal space to local up and coming bands, is the album they created there "government funded"?
I'd say government funding is when the government pays money to a specific artist to produce art. Like when a record company decides to pay a band to produce an album, or a publisher decides to give an advance to an author to write a book.
[1] http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-r...
[2] https://www.theindustryobserver.com.au/labor-promises-28m-fo...
(not "government funded" in the grant sense, but the old UK unemployment benefit worked a lot more like a basic income)
Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.
[1] For example the Czech Customs Administration: https://www.celnisprava.cz/en/Pages/default.aspx - note the sentence at the top: "Customs Administration of the Czech Republic is a security force ensuring processes in the field of customs administration and related taxes, as well as other non-fiscal activities in the favor of the state and its citizens. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Finance."
Are you saying that if art pleases people so much they're willing to pay money to experience it, that makes it not art?
Radio has similar properties, which is one of the reasons it is such a popular medium for certain types of demagoguery. Modern TV is different, but many people had similar feelings of attachment to soap opera characters, etc.
I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...
I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:
- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...
- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now
- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship
- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.
- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.
It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.
I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.
[0]- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-mexico-man-dead-aft...
I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )
I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.
I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale
I highly recommend the chrisfix videos, btw. We've both learned a lot about cars.
Thankfully, he watches kurzgesagt, BackYard Scientist, VSauce, TED and mostly scientific or programming videos so its mostly 5 to 1 , educational to entertainment videos with the limited screen time he has.
The Khan Academy courses are really good as well as the ProdigyGame (for math) for keeping him engaged and multiple grades ahead of his current grade.
To be fair I do this and I'm 34. ;)
Although you should tell him that running is the worst thing for gainz.
Clean language, strong work ethics. Works with heavy equipment, builds a Castle out of Shipping Containers, fixes trucks/boats/bikes/excavators etc.
Mustie1 is another clean educational YTber with similar content: https://www.youtube.com/user/mustie1/videos
I'm slightly shocked that the money comes from advertisers interested in influencing 6-7 year old kids.
One could imagine a world where advertising to children is no longer considered appropriate, with the understanding that the young minds of the world should not be manipulated by corporate interests.
Or those who want that kind of environment need to find a new way to fund media.
I don't know what ads your kids are getting but with the possible exception of the "Wish App" ads (which I fervently wish would die a fiery death at the very heart of the sun), most of the ads pitched to my kids are hawking digital ephemera of some sort or another.
I'm less worried about the commercials (we pay for YT Premium so there's none of those) but more in YouTube's suggestion algorithm. I worry about one of my kids getting lost down one of those toxic rabbit holes.
I hear things like this a lot. It's not hard, it just takes time. Is it hard to make that time? If it is too hard to make time to do something with your kids that you yourself think is important, you have to reconsider your priorities.
If you didn't plan appropriately, and decided to have kids before realizing the effort required, then you need to do some risk-reward analysis and determine which things you "have time" to pay attention to and which you don't.
> unwanted but hard to avoid space
Again, not hard, just time consuming. Time and interest will make sure your kids are well adjusted (well, at least as well adjusted as their parents).
- GI Joe
- Transformers
- He-Man
- She-Ra
- Might Max
- Power Rangers
- Bionicle
- Ninjago
- Care Bears
- Street Sharks
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Those are just off the top of my head. TV shows (and in some instances movies) that existed to sell toys.
But I mean, hell, the Paw Patrol folks apparently don't say no to any licensing idea. Last weekend my buddy picked up Paw Patrol gardening gloves for his kid. Seriously... who would say "Yes, it makes perfect sense to put a children's tv character on gardening gloves and sell them in Lowes, next to all the actual, real gloves." And it worked.
Edit: grammar goof fix
So cheap that they busted open when I was using them for dying plastic beads with alcohol ink. Beads and ink went flying all over my apartment. I bought them specifically for dying beads btw.
I've resented Paw Patrol ever since.
Now my fear is just that my behavior is not good enough.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110815121519.h...
Half a year ago I saw a documentary (can't remember which), where a number of popular YouTube vloggers were followed to see what being an influencer entails.
While each of them were enjoying the good stuff - the money earned, the free gadgets and trips, etc. - in general each of them also felt trapped. To me it seemed like hell to live a life like this.
Huge social pressure from followers to crank out new content on a continuous basis. No time to take real breaks, let alone a longer vacation. Totally focused on social metrics. A wrong move leading to loss of 1,000s of followers. A vacation or even being sick leads to people complaining in your feeds, or even starting to threaten you. Responsibilities and contracts with influence marketers.
Being an influencer is a kind of topsport. You are a professional, while you are also still a kid.
And the longer you keep doing it, the more you've made a life's choice (neglecting school, building real social network, etc.) and it is harder to get out of it.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the real famous vloggers also can no longer come outside without being recognized everywhere. E.g. 16-20yr olds that cause young children to go histerical when they see them, giving signatures all the time. Literally no rest anywhere.
At that point, it's impossible to stop going to work 40+ hours a week.
These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just never coming into the house/houses of his friends, blocking, even though that's what it is we're doing is almost too 'active' a word). And there will be a whole sub-class of the population brought up on this stuff that we never mix with.
Or maybe I'm naive and these media will get in past our defences, but judging by how current media bubbles work it's a distinct possibility that it will remain a bubble I'm never exposed to (I.e I know pay TV options and certain newspapers/you tube things exist, but struggle to tell you a single person I know under the age of 50 who subscribes).
I can't be the only one who feels a little sick at the prospect of making money heaping consumerism on children...?
Unless I’m misunderstanding your comment, most of the money comes from pre-roll advertising, not sponsored content product placements.
As a video-hosting website, i don't think it would be responsible for me to consider giving a young child open access to it until they're old enough to basically be able to have open access to the internet: because its a video-hosting website on the internet, not a media company, and certainly not one that's vetting material suitable for small children.
Subsequently, it doesn't even get past the first psychological/physical barrier of getting into the home as an idea.
Now, bear in mind, when I grew up and was under 10, I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons before school. Cable wasn't a thing in my country. Indeed my parents would have protested that cartoons and many commercial shows "rot the brain" (and these days, i'd be inclined to agree).
I didn't feel denied, I remember watching cartoons on the weekend, and while yes, I had some hotwheels and matchbox cars (never saw a cartoon of them, did they exist?) and a voltron sheet and toy set (which I do remember as a cartoon admittedly, along with astroboy, lost cities of gold, dr who, etc). But for the most part I remember my sand pit and my building blocks more. And then just as I got old enough, home computers became a thing.
We had sesame street and playschool and mr squiggle, to be sure, but these did not have any commercial content. I also remember I had david attenborough and nature documentaries and general trivia gameshows that I liked to watch with my grandmother downstairs in the granny flat. And there was a set time each night when my parents would watch the news (which i found boring). And of course we had books!
But there were a whole HEAP of shows where the main purpose of the show/story was not even vaguely ads or consumption, and its those and similar shows that I'd be allowing, or am planning to put on a server and let my child watch from there.
As for target and walmart, well, we don't have the later in my country, and I've barely been in one of those retail stores currently for several years. Our food/groceries are delivered, and when we do go to the supermarket, its to pick something up on the way home from work or as a last minute when we're out of something: alternatively, many of the other essential things are bought from the greengrocer/bakery/dairy or other specialist retailers that are scattered around my neighbourhood, again, currently without advertising distractions targetted at children.
I mean, i get the message: I went to the supermarket as a child with my parents as well, but we weren't allowed to get anything. It was 'the rules'. I distinctly remember being allowed one Cadbury Furry Friends chocolate bar every wednesday that my mother would bring home from work: they're little blocks of chocolate about 15-20g in size.
I'm not saying we're immune from advertising. But my point is there's at least two separate worlds now: like the internet with ads, I've grown up without ads on the internet, my children are going to grow up without ads on their internet, because they're just blocked before they come in the door. There's a whole world of media out there (apparently) they aren't going to see (and looking at some of it now I'm even less inclined to let them) because at best they might have to watch it at a friends, but due to the social bubble, even the degree that its going to happen is an open question.
Internet advertising isn't regulated but in a way it self-regulates. Content creators don't want in-appropriate ads and YouTube doesn't want that either when a channel is targeted for 8yo, it would make them lose money.
An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.
That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.
This cult of relativism really needs to stop.
Home that's more clear.
There is a big difference between education/enrichment and entertainment and while some content creators might walk the line between them there is a pretty big split.
I would say pre-defining what is “valuable” is probably not the best approach because it too prone to selection bias, an instruction video on how to do nails to a beautician is far more useful than a video explaining correspondenant banking systems.
That said the content as a whole can be measured in terms of its impact on cognitive and emotional state and well being especially on large sample sizes.
We already know that social media voyeurism causes a lot emotional distress, we know that certain types of content can make you “dumber” at least in the short term.
And on a larger scale we can check the social and individual benefits for specific cases, e.g. how many individuals who watched a specific subeset of content turned their life to the better in say a period of 5 years.
That's also the reason today we have substantial ZERO innovations and capacity to produce new things.
The young will give you a well simulated part/assembly ready for first prototype, the ancient normally gives you small note and a drawing. Prototype the two: the younger one is generally far more complex to being build, costly and far less effective than the ancient one. And it's not a matter of experience, it's a matter of different way of thinking.
Today we spent enormous time in bureaucracy with ridiculous stuff from ITIL/Kanban to the last bit, we spent enormous time in detailed reasoning being on contrary incapable of see the big picture. That's why for instance in shipping company when a (rare) EU doctor (we have less reformed medicine studies than the USA) went in the USA local seafarers they put themselves in the queue for being visited by "real" doctors.
Also, if you travel the world a bit, you'll easy see how most "mean acculturated" countries offer generally a better life quality, life expectancy etc.
Also, when you tell someone "if you travel the world a bit", it makes you seem like a stuck up cunt standing on a soap box that attended too many liberal arts classes and you're just regurgitating what your teachers told you since you don't have a single independent thought or experience of your own. Just sayin'.
I do not say that nail art should not exists, only that reward you get from it should be proportionate to what you give to our society so I expect that a good plumber being rewarded more than a nail artist. Simple as that.
On different countries comparison, I'm living in French, have lived in Italy, Sweden, a bit of stay in USA, UK, CZ and Rus. I compare plus and minus I see in all that countries and that's my conclusions. Never attended a "liberal art class".
Who are you to say nail techs don't contribute to society? Getting my nails done as harm reduction strategy for a mental illness is an enormous boost to my quality of life. I'm often in a lot of pain because of my cuticles or because I've got some picking spot I can't leave alone, and getting my nails done always comes with a sense of relief for me. I've gotten less and milder staph infections since I started getting them done regularly, too.
Don't poo poo on nail techs, man. Most fabulous, glittery "medical treatment" I've ever gotten.
I mean, in my poor English, that it's normal we have a bigger audience for a video of people doing parkour that for a video about Bayesian's filter but we must develop a way to prize more the latter than the former.
In physical world we have something like a doctor, lawyer, ... get paid more than a clown, so they can afford a better life, get prize by the society, inspire other's to take their path etc. Clowns have their role of course, we also need them, only they receive a proper reward.
We start to invert this trend with professional sportsmen's, movie/entertainment industry and now with social platform we bring that trend to the sky.
It is very untypical for an entertainer in popular fields like this to remain very big for over a decade. I think Jeffree Star is one of the few entertainers who has actually maintained top status since the Myspace days. In music, it's easily possible to think of a few Myspace-era music acts that are going strong (think Arctic Monkeys). But it's also easily possible to think of top Myspace-era acts that are now operating at much lower levels (think Owl City). The modeling / fashion world seems even worse than music at first glance for career length.
Currently, if you are an average programmer (you don't even have to know much about Bayesian filters) or other more technical career (including doctors and lawyers), you probably will have a pretty good paying career that could last decades. If you are a stellar entrepreneurial type, you also could earn millions (more than entertainers even). But if you don't have the knack for that or don't get the right breaks, you'll still probably come out fine, much better than the average entertainer.
It isn't stupidity in itself that pays. Make a channel of hitting yourself in the groin every day and you won't even break $10k/year.
Heck Pewdiepie is actually a pretty interesting channel from time to time. You got to hand it to the guy for putting in the work to not only reach the top, but to stay on the top but hasn't completely sold out to advertisers to make bland family friendly content.
One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1].
At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience.
The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth.
Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless.
Why 15%? Why not 100%? Why not even 50%?
Should this sit right with me? I want to believe this child isn't being exploited.
EDIT: Thanks for clearing that up for me. It seems I was misunderstanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bil...
Of course, the child also isn't generating the whole business himself either.
“This law requires a child actor's employer to set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a Coogan Account), and codifies issues such as schooling, work hours and time off.”
Seems like it should be more.
http://www.perennialfinancialservices.com/blog/thank-uncle-f...
Even so, the parents are probably the actual 'runners' of the company (?) doing all the work except being on camera. Meaning administrative work, accounting, filming, editing, marketing maybe and so on.
youtube is the definite leader for <10 y.o.s around me.
It's the stupid stuff they'll do in high school and college they should be worried about.
Maaaaybe. Link Rot is a real thing. Look at Twitch. They delete a LOT of footage all the time. A lot of speedruns are lost to time due to these 'top-level' decisions.
https://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5975413/twitch-video-on-dem...
I don’t know why but the concept of my child being an active yt contributor at that age freaks me out.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/12/03/high...
Recently I saw a woman and man commenting on the chess championship on YT, both excellent chess players.
She tried to impress/be liked by being nice and helpful, he tried to impress/be liked by being powerful. This of course should not be taken as a study but a starting point for some thought - he kind of dominated her appearance (though I guess this wasn't his intention).
on Instagram the top earners are all females. Kylie Jenner makes $1 million per post, Selena Gomez 800k. And it is ok to be like that as Instagram is 70% female.
I didn't get that from the OP at all - I think it's a valid (and quite an interesting) question to pose (especially as a marketer): what is it about YouTube's audience that seemingly favours male creators?
Not about "forcing" anything, but it's always interesting to dive into why platform demographics differ and the reasons behind it.
(Also, my assumption is "dominate" here isn't like take over, but just "do it really well" - feel free to correct me OP).
I think it is valid in English language to consider this sentence as saying women doing better than men on the platform. dominate is not another word for equality in English.
Should any gender "dominate" here?
Interesting article about it: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/digiday.com/media/demographics-y...
Obviously the reason this kid is making 22m is because other kids are watching. Which isn't bad. This kid basically won the lottery and good for him.
But then you have things like elsagate which is/was (idk if it's over) so weird. I still don't know what the hell was going on there. I can only assume that, once again, kids are mindlessly watching these videos and that's fairly disturbing.
Also I am curious about what people that buy ad spots on youtube think about the fact that a lot of the views they're paying for are kids that won't care about products like their makeup or adult oriented products/services.
On the other hand, the recommended video feed is something akin to heroin for the brain, so giving kids unbridled access to YouTube is probably not the best parenting strategy
I am assuming you've never watched an elsagate video because it's like a fever dream. I know old cartoons like ren and stimpy were strange, but these videos are just... creepy. They'll show things like drinking, taking drugs through needles, all kinds of weird sexual stuff in a way that's really disturbing. You just have to watch it see what I mean.
And there's a lot of this disturbing content that seems to mainly target kids on youtube.
I will never give my kid unbridled access to YT. When she's old enough to watch videos, I would consider downloading specific content from YT filtered by myself, for offline viewing.
...why? Their current production values seem to be doing well.
If everything needs to be professionalized, where does that leave the hobbyists and the amateurs? Should there not be room for them? If not, why?
When I read the BBC article, I assumed it was something equally no budget. Little kids like weird stuff.
Seems the HN mentality of "this isn't anything special, I could make this in a weekend in my bedroom" can be applied to pretty much all areas of life.
It might backfire if they make them "too professional".
Considering they make 22M, you'd really think
they'd spend money on at least getting a single
professional video editor
If your videos shot in your bedroom with a single fixed camera on a tripod, no staff and basic editing are making you $15 million a year, why fix what isn't broken?
You can still keep your personality, your style and your quirks, but upgrade things such as video quality, editing, and overall production quality.
Except when the youtube families use child abuse to generate controversy and views...
My son watches these, a little less than he used to, but still.
They're mostly about him goofing off (using toys) with his family. I'm sure there're some that are scripted, but a large majority of them are just him being a kid.
Living embodiment of YouTube gone wrong, still made $3 million more than he did last year according to this article.
There are kids who have been depressed since age 8, no idea when their depression will end.
The number is increasing at huge rate.
There are kids who will look upto these kids and get in competition mode while other kids gonna be depressed because they can't afford or can't do as good as them.
I've no idea if it's good or bad.
wayyy more than comfortable
The individual in this article:
>all but $1m of the $22m total is generated by advertising shown before videos, with the remainder coming from sponsored posts.
But take people like Jenna and Julien: they make and sell limited edition pins, they have a twitch that pretty mcuh always has someone as a top bits tipper at 10k bits plus twitch subscribers, a cut of YouTube red subscribers watching their streams, Jenna has done keynote and commencement speeches (a quick google search shows her booking fee might be 20-50k$), she has a Sirius XM show, she has a podcast.
They then proceed to disprove this "fact" in (literally) the next sentence:
> The toys featured in one of the channel's videos can sell out instantly.
Perhaps a startup that helps parents deal with this kind of stuff easier?
The truth is hard work can pay off not that it does and working smarter is always a better option.
Specifically, I'd like to get an idea about the distribution of income across active monetised accounts. This would be far more interesting to me than looking at some - I'm guessing - statistical outliers.
What does a average channel, with modest viewers, with niche content, earn for the producer?
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8 [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5P_n5njCQ
Yes, I'd definitely say that Linus' channel is much bigger than I'm interested in. I'm thinking of the small channels who put out quality content, b with a restricted audience. I watch some channels who make Linux and Chess videos and the content is superb, but there's a natural threshold level of views they'll get.
I was prompted to think about it after a conversation with a colleague. We were talking about the market within medicine for giving exam prep courses to med students and doctors. A recent day course we noted was £50 per student and it was sold out (about 200 people I think). The person delivering the course had multiple dates lined up across the UK.
We wondered whether it would be more profitable for this individual to use youtube (there would be numerous pros/cons to this, but that's another topic).
We could quickly do the maths to work out the income from X students, on Y dates, minus Z estimated costs, etc, for the traditional lectures... but we just cant find any data for likely youtube profits. The information seems almost deliberately obscured.
I'm happy for you if you've had any amount of good-natured uplifting human interaction. This is not the case for everyone. A privilege.
Youtube should add personalized content filtering designed to remove such content from search results and feeds.
Unless of course YouTube allows for their own TOS to be violated and they have a right to do so in the spirit of greed; their pockets are clearly filled up by children clicking on Google ads; otherwise how do you think he made that $22MM, from a GoFoundMe donations??
Can you create a Youtube ad and target < 13 yo?
> In any case, you affirm that you are over the age of 13, as the Service is not intended for children under 13. If you are under 13 years of age, then please do not use the Service. There are lots of other great web sites for you. Talk to your parents about what sites are appropriate for you.
Google just needs it to cover themselves because they can't track under 13 legally
It is that simple. It would be laughed out of court on any challenge as an issue.
You can also use thousands of other popular sites that are 13 age restricted while in the presence of your children.
Does YouTube TOS allow a six year old use its service directly? Actually interact with the service and not passively watch an adult do it?
Oh, 13 years is nothing... watching is nothing.... if I ever meet an adult who makes videos aimed at kids, where they're either saying nothing, or infantilizing themselves as extremely as possible, I have so many questions to ask them, and already one answer I reject beforehand, and that's "money through advertisements shown to small children".
Speaking of that, we'll never know how many million dollars YouTube made (or god forbid is still making) on ads on ElsaGate-type videos. It's not like that would be hard to find out for them in one week, and it's not like it couldn't be argued to be a sound investment in PR to donate some or all of that ill-gotten money to charities that help with child abuse or trauma. But I guess it's even better PR-wise to just change the subject and never bring it up again, as they kinda did last year.
I take it you're not from Australia?
Have you heard of The Wiggles? [1] Wikipedia says they earned $AUD 49 million in 2009 alone
Or Hi-5? [2] Wikipedia says $AUD 18 million in 2009 alone.
Take people like jackseptic and others with their "floundering around while being hyper" stuff. That's what I mean with infantilizing oneself in a way that harms development and is not kid-friendly at all.
"But kids like it". That's where the concept of being mature comes in. Adults cannot excuse what they are doing by what kids supposedly like. By that logic, it'd be better to give kids sweets than actual food.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=learn+colors+tr...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unbox+learn+col...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=minecraft+monst...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pop+ballon+baby
I don't even have to try, ElsaGate is going strong as ever. Couldn't find you any live action extreme stuff with adults in diapers and all that, but I wouldn't be surpised if even some of that is still around.
Thanks to Youtube and Disney calling it "over" before it could gain the mainstream traction it absolutely still warrants. These unmarked mass graves, they will have to be talked about, make no mistake. Decades of normalization that lead up to this will have to be thrown out, too.