Good. I hope we return to a time where people made stuff because they want to. Not because they see it as a payday.
Artists and musicians produce genuine creative work that creates a great deal of skill and creates a lot of enjoyment. They often do this for little or not money purely out of their love for the medium. Meanwhile influencers post photos of themselves with products in order to get you to buy stuff. Or they record clickbaity YouTube videos interspersed with ads from sponsors. They specifically identify themselves as commercially oriented - the term "influencers" comes from the concept of "influence marketing" which has been around for decades and has simply been taken up a notch online.
It's not on the same level as genuine art, which is not there to change your purchasing habits. All the influencer content is "optimized for engagement" i.e. they have thought about how to get you addicted, so you consume it, but you would be better off if you consumed actual art and music instead.
Michaelangelo got paid to produce art, "creators" get paid to flog a VPN. The difference in quality between what the two produce is notable!
Creators get paid for drawing attention to something via the content they create. No one watches them because they are promoting VPN ads. This is not substantially different from a Renaissance artist creating a painting that promotes Catholicism.
If anything, the fact that modern creators are funded in ways explicitly and obviously "separate" from their creative work would imply that the work itself is less bound by patron requirements and more by the (more pure) currency of attention.
In other words, if a creator today made a video in the same manner as a Renaissance painter did, we would likely interpret it as "shilling" or somehow lacking in artistic authenticity.
Nobody grows up dreaming they'll work at McDonalds, and nobody _wants_ to work at McDonalds. They want to have a decent salary to live on.
And in general, many people work to live, not live to work. For them the things they _want_ are things outside of work like hobbies, family, etc. and a job is just a means to an end - having enough money to live and do the things they actually enjoy.
Perhaps more importantly, being a successful "influencer" seems to require accepting and internalizing a startling amount of personal and societal dishonesty. From buying your views/ranking to shilling products that you would never use, or are even actively harmful. (Like VPNs that are literally anything but private.)
They can be, because a decent chunk of the people working steady but boring jobs don't want to "make cool stuff". They want to get money in exchange for their time, that's it. Some people have zero work-related ambitions, or zero ambitions overall, and that's totally fine.
> Perhaps more importantly, being a successful "influencer" seems to require accepting and internalizing a startling amount of personal and societal dishonesty. From buying your views/ranking to shilling products that you would never use, or are even actively harmful. (Like VPNs that are literally anything but private.)
It doesn't require those at all. Many choose those because they're "easy", but as an example, Ray William Johnson didn't make shady advertisements. He made funny videos, tried his luck as a writer/producer/director (I think this is still ongoing but haven't really kept up with him), and now only does short TikTok style videos. As far as I know, outside of a deal to get his series out on Facebook exclusively for 24h, he has no shady dealings/advertisements/etc.
Technology exists in the first place to reduce the execution of unwanted tasks by humans. Universal basic income can help here, while the economical model of the world adapts to the pace of technological advancements.
Alternatively, the The Jevons Paradox:
> The Jevons paradox occurs when the effect from increased demand predominates, and the improved efficiency results in a faster rate of resource utilization.
As for this:
> Universal basic income can help here, while the economical model of the world adapts to the pace of technological advancements.
I might be pessimistic, but I don't see universal basic income being a thing in the next decade or so in any developed country. If anything, we'll probably go in the opposite direction with the looming demographic challenges (fertility rates below replacement, leading to an increase in the median age and the % of people working vs people not working, and most notably for many many countries, contributing to retirement/social security schemes).
I write code and I expect to get paid, for instance.