5 ms·

I really don't get what it is about my comment that's counter to general understanding of how people achieve positive outcomes. It's pretty well established tha

I really don't get what it is about my comment that's counter to general understanding of how people achieve positive outcomes. It's pretty well established that people who stick at a pursuit for long enough, learn as they go and respond to their audience will find success, if they don't quit first. > What data do you have to back this up? If your primary concern was precise data, you'd first be confronting my parent commenter, who claimed, without any evidence whatsoever: "For every ten people who did this [i.e., posted three quality videos a week, for 1-2 years], maybe one made it big". That's quite plainly an implausible statistic. I get that it's made for rhetorical effect, not precision, but surely that commenter carries the primary burden of evidence for some validity of their position. My position is based on what is generally accepted by anyone with experience in entrepreneurial or creative endeavours. > That's a very different claim. How so?

brabel 6y ago
> That's a very different claim. > How so? That explains your reaction: you don't seem to understand the difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big". There's plenty of evidence showing that doing what successful people do does not guarantee success.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  To break down my comment: Anyone who: - produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, - pays good attention to how their content is received, - continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, - and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually. When all parts of this are met, there is no material difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big". I understand that not all people will be able to do all of these things to a sufficient level, quickly enough to satisfy their desire for success, and those people will quit before they make it. But I maintain that for media content creation (unlike, say professional sport), people who really want to find success in that field will be able to work out how to do it given enough persistence and discernment over enough time.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    You are kind of ignoring the question - how do you know this? What it sounds like is you observed a statistically insignificant sample and have drawn conclusions from it.
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      I wasn't ignoring the question; I think I was mistaken about what people were disagreeing with. I was making a point I thought was self-evident: that if you're already capable of creating "3 quality videos a week" (in the words of the original commenter I replied to), you'll be able to attract a growing audience for it if you persist with the content creation and audience engagement. I.e., good product + good marketing -> long-term success, which is how creative/entrepreneurial success always happens. I later realised people seemed to think I was claiming that any person, even one starting with below-average video production abilities, could eventually become as big as PewDiePie if they just "try hard enough". That's not what I was claiming.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Consider this, there is a hypothetical "perfect youtuber lottery". To enter it, you must meet or exceed all the requirements you laid out, you then get a ticket. Tickets are drawn, some small handful are winners. Everyone who won did all the perfect youtuber things, but beyond that the fact they were successful was entirely based on factors outside their control. Is this a reasonable approximation of reality? Maybe, it would certainly fit the mold of what makes a successful person in most other highly skewed areas of life where some very small percentage involved are identifiable as really successful like musicians, actors, authors, artists etc. The problem is that you don't even admit this as a possibility, just the standard refrain of work harder at it and those who fail clearly didn't work hard enough. Unless you define those who are successful as the only people who "did it all right", which is definitely a circular argument... Nobody is saying it doesn't take hard work, just don't expect hard work to be enough, and worse still, if any other areas where creative output is used as income are any indication, don't expect being very good, or even the best to be enough either (plenty of examples of musicians, authors and artists who changed history languishing in obscurity their whole lives)
dragonwriter 6y ago
> My position is based on what is generally accepted by anyone with experience in entrepreneurial or creative endeavours. It sounds a lot like what people in that position would correctly observe as being generally necessary for success being mistaken for being sufficient.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  I think/hope I just addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467409

brabel 6y ago

> That's a very different claim. > How so? That explains your reaction: you don't seem to understand the difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big". There's plenty of evidence showing that doing what successful people do does not guarantee success.

tomhoward 6y ago
To break down my comment: Anyone who: - produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, - pays good attention to how their content is received, - continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, - and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually. When all parts of this are met, there is no material difference between "all people who get big do x" and "all people who do x get big". I understand that not all people will be able to do all of these things to a sufficient level, quickly enough to satisfy their desire for success, and those people will quit before they make it. But I maintain that for media content creation (unlike, say professional sport), people who really want to find success in that field will be able to work out how to do it given enough persistence and discernment over enough time.
- xnyan 6y ago
  You are kind of ignoring the question - how do you know this? What it sounds like is you observed a statistically insignificant sample and have drawn conclusions from it.
  - tomhoward 6y ago
    I wasn't ignoring the question; I think I was mistaken about what people were disagreeing with. I was making a point I thought was self-evident: that if you're already capable of creating "3 quality videos a week" (in the words of the original commenter I replied to), you'll be able to attract a growing audience for it if you persist with the content creation and audience engagement. I.e., good product + good marketing -> long-term success, which is how creative/entrepreneurial success always happens. I later realised people seemed to think I was claiming that any person, even one starting with below-average video production abilities, could eventually become as big as PewDiePie if they just "try hard enough". That's not what I was claiming.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Consider this, there is a hypothetical "perfect youtuber lottery". To enter it, you must meet or exceed all the requirements you laid out, you then get a ticket. Tickets are drawn, some small handful are winners. Everyone who won did all the perfect youtuber things, but beyond that the fact they were successful was entirely based on factors outside their control. Is this a reasonable approximation of reality? Maybe, it would certainly fit the mold of what makes a successful person in most other highly skewed areas of life where some very small percentage involved are identifiable as really successful like musicians, actors, authors, artists etc. The problem is that you don't even admit this as a possibility, just the standard refrain of work harder at it and those who fail clearly didn't work hard enough. Unless you define those who are successful as the only people who "did it all right", which is definitely a circular argument... Nobody is saying it doesn't take hard work, just don't expect hard work to be enough, and worse still, if any other areas where creative output is used as income are any indication, don't expect being very good, or even the best to be enough either (plenty of examples of musicians, authors and artists who changed history languishing in obscurity their whole lives)

dragonwriter 6y ago

> My position is based on what is generally accepted by anyone with experience in entrepreneurial or creative endeavours. It sounds a lot like what people in that position would correctly observe as being generally necessary for success being mistaken for being sufficient.

tomhoward 6y ago
I think/hope I just addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467409