> We built an entire industry around the idea that “you too can become me” > [....] > The rise of the influencer became a potent growth engine for all of thes

> We built an entire industry around the idea that “you too can become me” > [....] > The rise of the influencer became a potent growth engine for all of these platforms. It ensured that the aspiring creators would keep feeding the social media beast, and keep playing stupid games to win stupid prizes (likes, hearts, retweets). > And in return, we got status games, status anxiety, FOMO and a whole cocktail of other issues. All of this has been detrimental to our creativity. And of course a scheme like that [people living in small groups of, say, 50 people, in which several would have great social value and a role as story tellers, singers of songs, et c.] doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist". How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!" - Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard, 1987. ---- I think the reality of this observation has remained the same, and after a brief period of confusion, the promise of success and reward for creative people has expanded, and the promise itself has been commercialized, without much expanding the actual likelihood of it. There may be just a few more total winners, now, through the creation of more areas of competition, but it's still winner-take-all.