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Comment by solomonb | Hacker News Reader

He states:

> What the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable.

> what the market dismisses are activities that are easy to replicate and produce a small amount of value. Well social media use is the epitome of an easy to replicate activity that does not produce a lot of value [...] by definition the market is not going to give those activieis a lot of value [...]."

Yet in the years since this TEDx talk we have seen the rise of influencer and streamer celebrities who have gained an immense amount of wealth and power.

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> ... we have seen the rise of influencer and streamer celebrities who have gained an immense amount of wealth and power.

For most influencers, they're not the ones with the wealth and power. Many of them are barely getting by. They rent content houses, clothing, cars, and other things they need to put on their facade.

Pretty much all of the wealth and power is in the hands of the people that employ the influencers.

perhaps a decade or more ago? not now.

you will never become a streaming millionaire. talking heads like beast and pewdiepie employ literal armies of Hollywood editors and writers. For every organically grown insufferable content monster created on Youtube, ten more are vat-grown by a billion dollar industry designed to shepherd you into a fantasy consumerist lifestyle.

These powerhouses of industry control the flow of capital at a level you will never be able to. they secure rights to music and video clips at rates you could never get, have tie-ins to major brands media and celebrities on day one, and are programmed with an endless firestorm of bots and preferential algorithmic treatment on every FAANG product in order to guarantee their success.

You are painfully unaware of the difference between being a Youtube video creator and being a streamer. Mr. Beast is not a streamer. He is a packaged video creator. PewDiePie is a reaction video creator who occasionally streams. They are not what people think of when they think of streamers.

To be a professional streamer usually takes a combination of talent and concentration that most people simply don't have. But to say that you can't become one? LOL.

The AVERAGE millionaire streamer on twitch is so painfully unedited that they end up getting banned a couple times a year for saying stupid things live on air. Twitch and their sponsors practically THROW money at them to spend an hour or two to sponsor content. There's an entire backend bounty system which is only available to partners which will pay you based on your audience size. I've seen a guy with 3K viewers get a $30K check for 3 hours worth of sponsored content.

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