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tomhoward

To break down my comment:

Anyone who:

- produces content consistently for a long enough period of time,

- pays good attention to how their content is received,

- continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants,

- and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc,

will find success eventually.

When all parts of this are met, there is no material difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big".

I understand that not all people will be able to do all of these things to a sufficient level, quickly enough to satisfy their desire for success, and those people will quit before they make it.

But I maintain that for media content creation (unlike, say professional sport), people who really want to find success in that field will be able to work out how to do it given enough persistence and discernment over enough time.

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Consider this, there is a hypothetical "perfect youtuber lottery".

To enter it, you must meet or exceed all the requirements you laid out, you then get a ticket.

Tickets are drawn, some small handful are winners.

Everyone who won did all the perfect youtuber things, but beyond that the fact they were successful was entirely based on factors outside their control.

Is this a reasonable approximation of reality? Maybe, it would certainly fit the mold of what makes a successful person in most other highly skewed areas of life where some very small percentage involved are identifiable as really successful like musicians, actors, authors, artists etc.

The problem is that you don't even admit this as a possibility, just the standard refrain of work harder at it and those who fail clearly didn't work hard enough.

Unless you define those who are successful as the only people who "did it all right", which is definitely a circular argument...

Nobody is saying it doesn't take hard work, just don't expect hard work to be enough, and worse still, if any other areas where creative output is used as income are any indication, don't expect being very good, or even the best to be enough either (plenty of examples of musicians, authors and artists who changed history languishing in obscurity their whole lives)

Not once have I used the words “hard work”.

This whole discussion is in response to the claim that you can produce 3 pieces of _good content_ every week for 1-2 years and be good at promoting it, and that only 1/10 will succeed.

I’m really saying this defies the definition of good content.

I’m aware it can seem like a circular argument; I’m surprised people keep disputing what is a self-evident position.

I don’t suggest everyone can do it. I do think most can probably do it eventually if it’s their passion and they choose to make it their top priority, but I’m aware that’s a separate debate that I don’t especially care to thrash out, as it’s not central to my point.

The fact its a circular argument means that the premise is invalid as an inescapable consequence, its fundamentally a confusion of cause and effect.

Re-reading the thread after a night's rest, it seems everyone was getting a bit confused about the main point, myself included. When seen as a simple circular argument like that, you're right, it's pointless.

As I've said several times, the main point I was refuting is that an aspiring creator could create great content and promote it perfectly, consistently over several years, and still be at the mercy of a random chance of (according to the original commenter) 1/10 as to whether they succeed. I maintain that's just not how the world works.

But I understand the issue you and others take with this is that someone could _try_ to do all the right things consistently for many years, but never develop to the point where they can make a career of it. I don't dispute that. I do think the skills required are far more learnable than, say, NBA-level basketball. But just how many more people can do it, or what any given individual's chances are, well of course we don't know.

For any individual to make a judgement about whether it's worth giving it a try, it's like any other career decision, and making decisions about how to invest one's time is a fundamental life skill.

But I always think it's a shame when someone who could have succeeded at a creative or entrepreneurial pursuit decides not to even try because they believe the falsehood that success is random, regardless of your own qualities or efforts.

It's very similar to the very reasonable claim that if you put in seven _good_ practice sessions a week every week for five years and are good at deciding what to work on, you've got less than a 10% of getting into the NBA/Julliard/Hollywood A-list.

Claiming that this defies the definition of good practice is essentially narrowing the definition of "good" so far that your original claim is a tautology.

When we're talking about tournament games like those listed above, success isn't that simple. Not everyone is capable of winning every tournament. Some people can't win any highly-desired tournament.

Going full-time as a YouTuber may be easy enough of a tournament that many can do it, depending on native language, physical beauty, finances, etc. I really doubt most can, though. Your personal network is probably highly skewed towards those who can prevail in the YouTube tournament (and at many others, but perhaps not sports-related ones based on your earlier comment).

I can see from your profile that you run a program where people can learn programming languages and frameworks. So you clearly agree that some things can be learned by most people who put their mind to it. Doubtless, it takes a real desire to learn, and, sure, a degree of natural aptitude, but those who have those qualifiers will generally succeed at it.

I think we agree that this is fundamentally not the case with NBA, Julliard, Hollywood A-list, in which success is far more dependent on endowed traits.

My observation is simply that the skills needed to succeed as content creator are more learnable by more people than pro sport, pro music or Hollywood stardom.

The main qualifier for being a successful content creator is having something unique/interesting/valuable to say. And yes, confidence, presentation, production, audience engagement all matter. But all these can be developed or learned with enough dedication. And no, not 100% of the time. But it's true enough that it's worth a try if you're inspired.

Please remember, the claim I'm refuting is that you can do all of these things absolutely right, and still only have a 1/10 chance of success. That's clearly untrue. In the online media world, people with unique/interesting/valuable things to say break through eventually.

For what it's worth, my personal network doesn't conform to the stereotype you presume. Yes it includes highly successful people (including pro sportspeople). It includes people who have great natural ability but lack the confidence or desire to excel. And it includes people from extremely modest backgrounds, including refugees who came to Australia with nothing, but who are building businesses and profiles as creators, learning the required skills as they go, and making great progress.

> So you clearly agree that some things can be learned by most people who put their mind to it.

Absolutely! I think people can learn almost anything. Barring true disabilities, I believe anyone can learn to program, translate a foreign language, play a violin, play basketball, swim or most other things.

But I don't think most people have even a chance of becoming the best.

What you refer to as "endowed traits" affect everything from our life span to our appearance to our level of happiness, personality traits and ability to learn different skills. They affect every possible kind of skill we could choose to pursue and even what kinds of things we're inclined to pursue.

I also don't agree than the skills needed to succeed as an athlete or musician are "less learnable" than others. On the contrary, I think they're extremely well defined and that we have millennia of collective knowledge in how to train them, thus making them extremely learnable.

The perspective I was coming from is the difference between an economic tournament, where wage differences are based more upon the relative differences of individuals rather than upon their marginal productivity.

This is crucial because while almost anyone can learn to play the piano or to repair a house, very, very few people have even the possibility of being one of the top few people in the world at either. The difference is that people doing the latter are paid based on their marginal productivity and those doing the former are paid based on their approximate ranking among all other pianists in the world and in their city.

As a result, repairing houses is a modest career opportunity open to a large number of people with sufficient absolute skill regardless of their relative ranking in the world. Being a pianist, on the other hand, is a fantastic career for an extremely small number of people at the top and an unsustainable one for nearly everyone else. Some teach on the side and pursue their dreams for years.

The question is, "Is YouTube an economic game where rewards are based primarily on marginal productivity or are they based more on relative comparisons between participants?"

> But I don't think most people have even a chance of becoming the best.

Yep sure - it took me to step away from the discussion for a while to realise that's what people thought I was arguing. I wasn't.

My contention was that if you're already producing good quality content (as per the original commenter's comment), assuming it's interesting/unique/valuable, if you persist doing it regularly you'll be able to grow an audience, and probably get it big enough to make some sponsorship income or build your personal brand to further your career (promote your business etc). And most importantly, it won't be purely random "bad luck" that stands in your way.

People seemed to think I was claiming that any randomly selected person – even one starting out with well-below-average video production and presentation skills and little interesting to say – could become as big as PewDiePie if they just stick at it long enough. That's not what I meant.

I think we're in agreement :)

You are kind of ignoring the question - how do you know this? What it sounds like is you observed a statistically insignificant sample and have drawn conclusions from it.

I wasn't ignoring the question; I think I was mistaken about what people were disagreeing with.

I was making a point I thought was self-evident: that if you're already capable of creating "3 quality videos a week" (in the words of the original commenter I replied to), you'll be able to attract a growing audience for it if you persist with the content creation and audience engagement. I.e., good product + good marketing -> long-term success, which is how creative/entrepreneurial success always happens.

I later realised people seemed to think I was claiming that any person, even one starting with below-average video production abilities, could eventually become as big as PewDiePie if they just "try hard enough". That's not what I was claiming.

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