I agree with the author's sentiment tremendously. When all this community and creator stuff kicked off, the youtube community was self-aware that the quality of

I agree with the author's sentiment tremendously. When all this community and creator stuff kicked off, the youtube community was self-aware that the quality of their product was much lower than a professional product and would look for other ways to provide value. The author misses a few marks though. -"There is nothing so depraved as labeling someone a creative when the reality is every human being is creative or has the innate capacity to be creative." JP kicked this one in the d*ck, when he pointed out that published creatives are very rare. Also as a separate, supporting point, the ratio of uploaded videos on youtube that get above 1k views, is tiny. Something like 98% of videos uploaded to youtube die in obscurity or were never meant to be mass appeal "creative products". Innatism is a good idea, yet it is not without flaw. Leaning the whole definition of creativity on what people can innately do, is quite narrow. The huge benefit of community and "content" is that even though you lose the quality production that I truly love, you get a fantastic ability to convey knowledge across the largest chasms. I can flick open youtube and get a near-expert introduction on a whole bunch of stuff (or at least the gist). This effect was most emphasized from roughly 2016 to 2020. Youtube has been leaning into questionably farming out recommendation channels as the primary source of useful content, which has it's downsides. But the author undervalues what community and content meant, which was access like we've never seen before to people all over the world and in their highly specialized niches. To me, 'consumer' was always the worst offender of the 'c' words. Who wants to be a consumer? A Customer gets a modicum of respect and a somewhat two way street with the company. A consumer is just an open mouth on the end of a factory production line, unpleasant. It'll be a very sad day when youtube or content 'creators' start hiding or deleting their old videos in an attempt to push revenue up for new stuff.