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What I quite frankly struggle to understand is why this deal seems to be a good proposition for people. Your odds of becoming the next PewDiePie are Powerball o

What I quite frankly struggle to understand is why this deal seems to be a good proposition for people. Your odds of becoming the next PewDiePie are Powerball odds, essentially. The work offers no security, no benefits, and very lumpy income. You say one wrong thing, and you get cancel cultured (some cases, it's justified. But is it always?). My point: Why would you pick this up as a primary source of income? It's a terrible deal, yet so many people choose it. Maybe I'm really privileged in being able to walk away from bad deals. I wouldn't take a new job for less pay.

patio11 7y ago
Many people want to be popular. Some want to be popular so much that they'll sacrifice essentially everything else to do so. Entire industries exist to divide a cake such that it allocates popularity to some portion of seekers and allocates everything else to other players in the industry.
blihp 7y ago
From the standpoint of odds of success, it's probably not terribly different than trying to become a professional athlete, actor or musician. You have a tiny sliver of those who try who make it big, a much larger wedge who scrape by and the vast majority who get nowhere with it. While it's a lottery ticket, it's one that can make an order of magnitude of difference in many people's lives compared to their other options.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Is it worth the 95%+ of outcomes where you don't make it, struggle to pay life's basic expenses, and are left with little to marketable skills to employers? I get the appeal of the success of making it, but way more people are more optimistic than they ought to be. You could instead have a conventional career, and play the lotto weekly, and expose yourself to the same financial outcome. To go full in on YouTube sounds like such a suboptimal decision, unless you're already retired or doing it as a hobby.
  - blihp 7y ago
    For many of the people taking their shot, the struggle to pay life's basic expenses and having no marketable skills is the alternative. It's not like most of the people are asking themselves 'do I pursue a career in tech/law/medicine/business or do I take a shot on YouTube?' I'm sure there are some, but I don't think those options are even remotely what the typical content creator is looking at.
    - CM30 7y ago
      Yeah, pretty much this. If you have few options and the ones available to you without a lot of training/self teaching pay terribly with poor conditions, going for YouTube/Twitch/whatever stardom seems like a good bet. The fact the skill level needed to become successful is likely lower than it'd be for an actor/musician/athelete probably helps too.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
People choose it because they legitimately want to make Youtube videos, not because they've done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that Youtube is the best source of income available to them.
criley2 7y ago
"and you get cancel cultured (some cases, it's justified. But is it always?)" Feels like you're just trying to make a political comment here. Do you have a list of Youtubers who were unjustly "cancelled"? The way you phrase it "sometimes justified... but not always" makes it sound like you're familiar with unfairly "cancelled" youtubers, so I'm curious. If it were just one youtuber who was unjustly cancelled you wouldn't have written "some cases, justified" which implicitly means "most cases, unjustified" so I'd really love to see evidence that your implicit claim that most cases are unjustified isn't just a cheap political jab
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  My comment is about the financial risks in being a YouTube star: there's a risk you lose your income abruptly, but I suppose you could be fired from a normal job. Companies go under; CEOs get canned. I promise, my intent was not political. I do, however, feel the risks are higher in YouTube because what you say is more subject to public scrutiny. Your colleagues aren't going to advocate for your removal at work for what you say outside of work hours around your friends in a social setting. But when you're a public figure, or representing brands in videos, even those little moments become subject to criticism. YouTube stars' lives blend professional and personal spheres in ways that ordinary careers do not.
  - criley2 7y ago
    So, to be clear, you cannot think of a single youtuber who was "cancelled" unjustly, despite writing a statement which implied that most of the cases were unjust as a rule? To be frank, this is exactly what I thought, and really calls into question why you would make such a biased and baseless comment. Your criticism appears to have nothing to do with youtube at all, and is a general criticism of public life and how being a public figure opens you up to greater scrutiny both from the platforms you use publicly as well as the audiences you reach. Which, while true, is a truism that is far older than the internet... or electricity... or democracy...
    - JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
munificent 7y ago
No one who gets into this is thinking of it as a "deal". There's no single point of transaction where they do the entire cost/benefit analysis. What happens is more like: 1. They record a video of something on their phones and upload it to share with their friends. Practically every human with a smartphone does this at some point. 2. Maybe they enjoyed that and the feedback they got from their friends, so they make it public and maybe upload a few more. They start thinking about sharing videos to an audience bigger than the people they personally know. This is a completely natural transition because most people on Earth are frequently watching YouTube videos that were shared just like that. 3. Now it starts to feel like the video itself is the goal and not the experience they were having that they happened to film. Instead of "we were doing X and recorded it" it's "I'm making a video of X". They make more little videos and upload them. They enjoy seeing their production skills improve, and it feels good to make things. Their friends think they're funny and it feels really nice getting a positive comment or thumbs up on the video. They are getting zero money. It's entirely about intrinsic reward. 4. Some small fraction of the people who reach 3 stick with it enough and have the right personality/video skills/topic/whatever to get a bit of traction. Now they're making a tiny amount of money and being a "YouTuber" starts to feel like more of who they are. They start to wonder how far they can take this. 5. Now that some trickle of money is coming it, they naturally start thinking about investing in what they do. It makes sense to maybe get a better camera, or buy Final Cut Pro. They start putting real time into this, at the expense of other hobbies and activities. 6. At this point, being a YouTuber starts to involve actual trade-offs. They're putting enough time and money into it that they are sacrificing other opportunities. Raising their production value and keeping up with posting frequency means they need to make videos even when they don't feel like it. They start doing the calculation of whether it's worth it. 7. Those who decide it is worth it now need to start taking it more seriously. The sacrifices they are making are clear and fixed, but the rewards (popularity and money) are less predictable. Now they are at the point you mention where they start really caring about optimizing for YouTube's opaque algorithm. Those who do it well may actually be able to make a living, but it always feels tenuous and uncertain. Staking your income on the combination of popularity contest/machine learning algorithm/ad platform is pretty sketchy. But for some it actually works. And, at this point, you're in pretty far, already have a lot of experience and time put in, so it makes sense to see how far you can ride it.
soylentcola 7y ago
Isn't this basically the same thing as wanting to be a rock star or pro athlete or movie star? As a kid, I had fantasies of those things just like loads of others. The entertainment industry itself reinforced this with stories where the "winners" were those who never stopped trying to make it big, no matter what their parents said or how broke they got (much to my chagrin as my dad tried to explain why it was never gonna happen). The performing arts really are a notoriously difficult way to make a living and kid-me didn't realize that for every Mick Jagger, Michael Jordan, and Michael J. Fox who "never gave up the dream" there were millions of Mike and Michelle Smiths who spent an inordinate amount of their lives chasing that winning ticket but never pulling the right numbers. Thankfully, I also found that you can still pursue music, athletics, acting, or whatever else you enjoy as a hobby or side gig and still have a hell of a lot of fun (and probably end up a more well-rounded person).

patio11 7y ago

Many people want to be popular. Some want to be popular so much that they'll sacrifice essentially everything else to do so. Entire industries exist to divide a cake such that it allocates popularity to some portion of seekers and allocates everything else to other players in the industry.

blihp 7y ago

From the standpoint of odds of success, it's probably not terribly different than trying to become a professional athlete, actor or musician. You have a tiny sliver of those who try who make it big, a much larger wedge who scrape by and the vast majority who get nowhere with it. While it's a lottery ticket, it's one that can make an order of magnitude of difference in many people's lives compared to their other options.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Is it worth the 95%+ of outcomes where you don't make it, struggle to pay life's basic expenses, and are left with little to marketable skills to employers? I get the appeal of the success of making it, but way more people are more optimistic than they ought to be. You could instead have a conventional career, and play the lotto weekly, and expose yourself to the same financial outcome. To go full in on YouTube sounds like such a suboptimal decision, unless you're already retired or doing it as a hobby.
- blihp 7y ago
  For many of the people taking their shot, the struggle to pay life's basic expenses and having no marketable skills is the alternative. It's not like most of the people are asking themselves 'do I pursue a career in tech/law/medicine/business or do I take a shot on YouTube?' I'm sure there are some, but I don't think those options are even remotely what the typical content creator is looking at.
  - CM30 7y ago
    Yeah, pretty much this. If you have few options and the ones available to you without a lot of training/self teaching pay terribly with poor conditions, going for YouTube/Twitch/whatever stardom seems like a good bet. The fact the skill level needed to become successful is likely lower than it'd be for an actor/musician/athelete probably helps too.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

People choose it because they legitimately want to make Youtube videos, not because they've done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that Youtube is the best source of income available to them.

criley2 7y ago

"and you get cancel cultured (some cases, it's justified. But is it always?)" Feels like you're just trying to make a political comment here. Do you have a list of Youtubers who were unjustly "cancelled"? The way you phrase it "sometimes justified... but not always" makes it sound like you're familiar with unfairly "cancelled" youtubers, so I'm curious. If it were just one youtuber who was unjustly cancelled you wouldn't have written "some cases, justified" which implicitly means "most cases, unjustified" so I'd really love to see evidence that your implicit claim that most cases are unjustified isn't just a cheap political jab

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
My comment is about the financial risks in being a YouTube star: there's a risk you lose your income abruptly, but I suppose you could be fired from a normal job. Companies go under; CEOs get canned. I promise, my intent was not political. I do, however, feel the risks are higher in YouTube because what you say is more subject to public scrutiny. Your colleagues aren't going to advocate for your removal at work for what you say outside of work hours around your friends in a social setting. But when you're a public figure, or representing brands in videos, even those little moments become subject to criticism. YouTube stars' lives blend professional and personal spheres in ways that ordinary careers do not.
- criley2 7y ago
  So, to be clear, you cannot think of a single youtuber who was "cancelled" unjustly, despite writing a statement which implied that most of the cases were unjust as a rule? To be frank, this is exactly what I thought, and really calls into question why you would make such a biased and baseless comment. Your criticism appears to have nothing to do with youtube at all, and is a general criticism of public life and how being a public figure opens you up to greater scrutiny both from the platforms you use publicly as well as the audiences you reach. Which, while true, is a truism that is far older than the internet... or electricity... or democracy...
  - JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

munificent 7y ago

No one who gets into this is thinking of it as a "deal". There's no single point of transaction where they do the entire cost/benefit analysis. What happens is more like: 1. They record a video of something on their phones and upload it to share with their friends. Practically every human with a smartphone does this at some point. 2. Maybe they enjoyed that and the feedback they got from their friends, so they make it public and maybe upload a few more. They start thinking about sharing videos to an audience bigger than the people they personally know. This is a completely natural transition because most people on Earth are frequently watching YouTube videos that were shared just like that. 3. Now it starts to feel like the video itself is the goal and not the experience they were having that they happened to film. Instead of "we were doing X and recorded it" it's "I'm making a video of X". They make more little videos and upload them. They enjoy seeing their production skills improve, and it feels good to make things. Their friends think they're funny and it feels really nice getting a positive comment or thumbs up on the video. They are getting zero money. It's entirely about intrinsic reward. 4. Some small fraction of the people who reach 3 stick with it enough and have the right personality/video skills/topic/whatever to get a bit of traction. Now they're making a tiny amount of money and being a "YouTuber" starts to feel like more of who they are. They start to wonder how far they can take this. 5. Now that some trickle of money is coming it, they naturally start thinking about investing in what they do. It makes sense to maybe get a better camera, or buy Final Cut Pro. They start putting real time into this, at the expense of other hobbies and activities. 6. At this point, being a YouTuber starts to involve actual trade-offs. They're putting enough time and money into it that they are sacrificing other opportunities. Raising their production value and keeping up with posting frequency means they need to make videos even when they don't feel like it. They start doing the calculation of whether it's worth it. 7. Those who decide it is worth it now need to start taking it more seriously. The sacrifices they are making are clear and fixed, but the rewards (popularity and money) are less predictable. Now they are at the point you mention where they start really caring about optimizing for YouTube's opaque algorithm. Those who do it well may actually be able to make a living, but it always feels tenuous and uncertain. Staking your income on the combination of popularity contest/machine learning algorithm/ad platform is pretty sketchy. But for some it actually works. And, at this point, you're in pretty far, already have a lot of experience and time put in, so it makes sense to see how far you can ride it.

soylentcola 7y ago

Isn't this basically the same thing as wanting to be a rock star or pro athlete or movie star? As a kid, I had fantasies of those things just like loads of others. The entertainment industry itself reinforced this with stories where the "winners" were those who never stopped trying to make it big, no matter what their parents said or how broke they got (much to my chagrin as my dad tried to explain why it was never gonna happen). The performing arts really are a notoriously difficult way to make a living and kid-me didn't realize that for every Mick Jagger, Michael Jordan, and Michael J. Fox who "never gave up the dream" there were millions of Mike and Michelle Smiths who spent an inordinate amount of their lives chasing that winning ticket but never pulling the right numbers. Thankfully, I also found that you can still pursue music, athletics, acting, or whatever else you enjoy as a hobby or side gig and still have a hell of a lot of fun (and probably end up a more well-rounded person).