Not to nitpick, but did anyone really believe that becoming a tik tok influencer was a reasonable career path for more than a couple hundred people? I don’t see how most middle class people would’ve been helped by the creator economy
Yes, there are huge swaths of the population that are, to put it politely, low information and unsophisticated. Everyone comes around to the disappointment of the situation at their own pace.
"The importance of school is secondary because I am easily going to become a rich and famous YouTuber or TikTokker."
Source: Many school teachers.
Art and entertainment has had more supply than demand for at least a century because it is a great life for self-directed creators.
When a youngster tells me they want to be an influencer for their profession, I simply ask them "who are you influencing, and what sort of credibility do you have in order to influence them?"....seems to get the kids every time - they haven't put 2 and 2 together. The credibility needed to influence comes before everything else, and people really don't understand that, for some strange reason.
The original influencers were people who were already doing cool stuff and just decided to film it and post it on Youtube 10+ years ago. Shit, the electronic musician, deadmau5, was streaming his production sessions online in like 2007 or 2008. To me, that's a creator - someone who creates for a profession and would be doing so regardless if social media existed or not. The guy was also an early influencer in the music tech space because he would talk on his streams "hey yeah I've been using this plugin or that piece of gear in my latest tracks, here's what it sounds like, and here's how I use it". I dig that, that's legitimate - you have a professional talking about tools used in a professional environment and how to use them.
Nowadays everyone seems to think that because a few hundred bots have followed their Instagram account, they are entitled to make millions of dollars by posting stupid dance videos or copying the latest trend.
Maybe it's just part of being a teenager, but it's amplified dramatically I think by the fact that there are countless successful teenagers / early adults on the platform and these kids have parasocial relationships with them.
Even the 1%'s success is shaky. It's based on fashion, hysteria, playing engagement games and algorithms snowballing them into power. It cannot and will not ever work for a huge group, that's just not how attention is distributed. It's by definition winner-takes-all.
I think there was a trend towards "I want to be a programmer, cos they get paid loads and have free food", but don't know whether that's still with us.
I'd blame this on a mixture of unfounded optimism and, for my generation at least, literally everyone offering the career advice of "Do what you love and it'll all work out great". Nonsense but sounded plausible at the time.
He’s right in being skeptical that “people” (who?) thought that “being a creator” was a viable career path, as the article suggests was the case.
Being a content creator/influencer is a viable career path. There are creators with disabilities, creators that never speak, creators that never show their face. Not everyone makes great money but for many people the money is enough.