4 ms·

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 receive

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)
- tomhoward 6y ago
  Not once have I used the words “hard work”. This whole discussion is in response to the claim that you can produce 3 pieces of _good content_ every week for 1-2 years and be good at promoting it, and that only 1/10 will succeed. I’m really saying this defies the definition of good content. I’m aware it can seem like a circular argument; I’m surprised people keep disputing what is a self-evident position. I don’t suggest everyone can do it. I do think most can probably do it eventually if it’s their passion and they choose to make it their top priority, but I’m aware that’s a separate debate that I don’t especially care to thrash out, as it’s not central to my point.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    The fact its a circular argument means that the premise is invalid as an inescapable consequence, its fundamentally a confusion of cause and effect.
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      Re-reading the thread after a night's rest, it seems everyone was getting a bit confused about the main point, myself included. When seen as a simple circular argument like that, you're right, it's pointless. As I've said several times, the main point I was refuting is that an aspiring creator could create great content and promote it perfectly, consistently over several years, and still be at the mercy of a random chance of (according to the original commenter) 1/10 as to whether they succeed. I maintain that's just not how the world works. But I understand the issue you and others take with this is that someone could _try_ to do all the right things consistently for many years, but never develop to the point where they can make a career of it. I don't dispute that. I do think the skills required are far more learnable than, say, NBA-level basketball. But just how many more people can do it, or what any given individual's chances are, well of course we don't know. For any individual to make a judgement about whether it's worth giving it a try, it's like any other career decision, and making decisions about how to invest one's time is a fundamental life skill. But I always think it's a shame when someone who could have succeeded at a creative or entrepreneurial pursuit decides not to even try because they believe the falsehood that success is random, regardless of your own qualities or efforts.

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)

tomhoward 6y ago
Not once have I used the words “hard work”. This whole discussion is in response to the claim that you can produce 3 pieces of _good content_ every week for 1-2 years and be good at promoting it, and that only 1/10 will succeed. I’m really saying this defies the definition of good content. I’m aware it can seem like a circular argument; I’m surprised people keep disputing what is a self-evident position. I don’t suggest everyone can do it. I do think most can probably do it eventually if it’s their passion and they choose to make it their top priority, but I’m aware that’s a separate debate that I don’t especially care to thrash out, as it’s not central to my point.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  The fact its a circular argument means that the premise is invalid as an inescapable consequence, its fundamentally a confusion of cause and effect.
  - tomhoward 6y ago
    Re-reading the thread after a night's rest, it seems everyone was getting a bit confused about the main point, myself included. When seen as a simple circular argument like that, you're right, it's pointless. As I've said several times, the main point I was refuting is that an aspiring creator could create great content and promote it perfectly, consistently over several years, and still be at the mercy of a random chance of (according to the original commenter) 1/10 as to whether they succeed. I maintain that's just not how the world works. But I understand the issue you and others take with this is that someone could _try_ to do all the right things consistently for many years, but never develop to the point where they can make a career of it. I don't dispute that. I do think the skills required are far more learnable than, say, NBA-level basketball. But just how many more people can do it, or what any given individual's chances are, well of course we don't know. For any individual to make a judgement about whether it's worth giving it a try, it's like any other career decision, and making decisions about how to invest one's time is a fundamental life skill. But I always think it's a shame when someone who could have succeeded at a creative or entrepreneurial pursuit decides not to even try because they believe the falsehood that success is random, regardless of your own qualities or efforts.