Hacker News Reader

Comment by lathiat | Hacker News Reader

Because with current times, the historically low cost of technology including video production and software development plus the ability to command an audience over the internet make it easier for those outside of the Boys/Hollywood/Silicon Valley/whatever club to break out and be successful than it once was.

View on HN

I think it depends a lot on who is considered to be the "producers" in the current indie media ecosystem. You can run your own streaming channel for basically nothing (maybe $200 for a decent camera, microphone, and capture card), but it takes a lot of hustle to make any money doing that, and you could easily argue that the real producers in this scenario are the PMs and executives at Twitch and YouTube, who may not be old-guard media people, but are almost certainly still a bunch of mostly older white dudes.

Maybe they're not calling the shots on content in quite the same way as TV executive, but they're definitely the ones getting rich off of it, anyway.

I agree with you here, but I was recently in /r/beautyguruchatter and it seems like big-time makeup influencers are increasingly men.

From run-of-the-mill influencers to professional makeup artists and drag queens.

I found that unexpected and very fascinating.

Quite a few of the most successful youtubers in beauty / makeup genre are men indeed.

I hope this is the case, however a lower barrier to entry also means those who could afford to clear the old barriers can come into this new space, leveraging the new technology in concert with their pots of money and make a bigger splash than any new player can afford. It wouldn't be the first time that a small creator has had their idea ripped off by someone with money, and be left in their shadow.

That said, it doesn't mean that those new creators couldn't still be "successful" in such a situation. Just that someone else with more money is still making more money than them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com