4 ms·

Young Creators Are Burning Out and Breaking Down

11 points by DLay 5y ago

rchaud 5y ago
> “I get to the point where I’m like, ‘I have to make a video today,’ and I spend the entire day dreading the process,” he said.He’s hardly the only one. “This app used to be so fun,” a TikTok creator known as Sha Crow said [...] “and now your favorite creator is depressed.” That's the unfortunate truth about turning your hobby into a business: at some point, it stops being fun and turns into a job.
kderbyma 5y ago
I can't be the only person who looks at influencers and thinks 'glad it's not me' - at first it's usually a bit of envy or disbelief, but once I think about the effort to maintain an appearance indefinitely for thousands to millions of people .... any envy disappears immediately and I instead get the sense of dread they must feel every day
- rchaud 5y ago
  To add to that, their audiences' tastes and the algorithm itself change way too fast for them to keep up. It is impossible to understand why something 'worked' i.e. went viral. So too many TT'ers focus on content that's not true to themselves, thinking it's what will juice those numbers. The result is a deeply insincere and mechanical production.
mkaic 5y ago
Speaking as a young creator who's burnt out on multiple occasions--it's definitely a real concern. Heck, I haven't posted to my account in almost six months after my last short-film-making sprint ended in January. I'm taking a hiatus and working on some other projects, but I also can't wait to get back to posting videos regularly. I miss it even though it's tough sometimes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pontifier 5y ago
I keep thinking about the ultra fickle and fleeting nature of fame on platforms like this. The phrase "one trick pony" comes to mind. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems like most of the creators I see are just turning that 1 trick into as many videos as they can. Which again is just fine. The problem is that once people have seen your cool thing a few times it starts to get old unless it's something that can maintain interest over the long term. The hydraulic press channel is a good example. At first they just smashed stuff with the press. It was new and exciting, and different. You never saw them, and all the videos had a very simple format. As they progressed, the format had to shift to maintain people's interest because we've all seen a hundred things crushed in a hydraulic press. They started doing a bunch of different experiments and things, and the current hydraulic press channel, and their beyond the press channel is much more involved. That shift to regular videos and monetization requires a lot of dedication, while the early videos were probably mostly for fun, and done to share that fun with others. At the end of the day, people are having to ask themselves tough questions about what people will watch. Often, the answer will be disappointing without significant effort, a fresh new idea, or a lot of... talent.
- rchaud 5y ago
  The fleeting nature of online fame is still an on-ramp to real fame, for the very few that make it. Justin Bieber was plucked from obscurity after being discovered on a Youtube video of busking on a street corner in 2008.
RGamma 5y ago
Well as influencer/soc med star you're a source of dopamine kicks. As that inevitably becomes boring the crowd moves on to the next sucker. That part of social media has always seemed to me a self-serving scheme to pit people's happy chemicals against each other. The crowd looking for cheap distraction, the creator spurned on by quick-found fame. No substance, no creation out of authentic well-being, no sustainability.

11 points by DLay 5y ago

> “I get to the point where I’m like, ‘I have to make a video today,’ and I spend the entire day dreading the process,” he said.He’s hardly the only one. “This app used to be so fun,” a TikTok creator known as Sha Crow said [...] “and now your favorite creator is depressed.” That's the unfortunate truth about turning your hobby into a business: at some point, it stops being fun and turns into a job.

kderbyma 5y ago

I can't be the only person who looks at influencers and thinks 'glad it's not me' - at first it's usually a bit of envy or disbelief, but once I think about the effort to maintain an appearance indefinitely for thousands to millions of people .... any envy disappears immediately and I instead get the sense of dread they must feel every day

rchaud 5y ago
To add to that, their audiences' tastes and the algorithm itself change way too fast for them to keep up. It is impossible to understand why something 'worked' i.e. went viral. So too many TT'ers focus on content that's not true to themselves, thinking it's what will juice those numbers. The result is a deeply insincere and mechanical production.

mkaic 5y ago

Speaking as a young creator who's burnt out on multiple occasions--it's definitely a real concern. Heck, I haven't posted to my account in almost six months after my last short-film-making sprint ended in January. I'm taking a hiatus and working on some other projects, but I also can't wait to get back to posting videos regularly. I miss it even though it's tough sometimes.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pontifier 5y ago

I keep thinking about the ultra fickle and fleeting nature of fame on platforms like this. The phrase "one trick pony" comes to mind. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems like most of the creators I see are just turning that 1 trick into as many videos as they can. Which again is just fine. The problem is that once people have seen your cool thing a few times it starts to get old unless it's something that can maintain interest over the long term. The hydraulic press channel is a good example. At first they just smashed stuff with the press. It was new and exciting, and different. You never saw them, and all the videos had a very simple format. As they progressed, the format had to shift to maintain people's interest because we've all seen a hundred things crushed in a hydraulic press. They started doing a bunch of different experiments and things, and the current hydraulic press channel, and their beyond the press channel is much more involved. That shift to regular videos and monetization requires a lot of dedication, while the early videos were probably mostly for fun, and done to share that fun with others. At the end of the day, people are having to ask themselves tough questions about what people will watch. Often, the answer will be disappointing without significant effort, a fresh new idea, or a lot of... talent.

rchaud 5y ago
The fleeting nature of online fame is still an on-ramp to real fame, for the very few that make it. Justin Bieber was plucked from obscurity after being discovered on a Youtube video of busking on a street corner in 2008.

RGamma 5y ago

Well as influencer/soc med star you're a source of dopamine kicks. As that inevitably becomes boring the crowd moves on to the next sucker. That part of social media has always seemed to me a self-serving scheme to pit people's happy chemicals against each other. The crowd looking for cheap distraction, the creator spurned on by quick-found fame. No substance, no creation out of authentic well-being, no sustainability.