My 7 year old routinely tells me he is going to be a YouTuber. I routinely remind him about power law distributions. So far he has made 2 YouTube channels with

My 7 year old routinely tells me he is going to be a YouTuber. I routinely remind him about power law distributions. So far he has made 2 YouTube channels with a handful of videos each and even less subscribers. I can't recall if it was for his 6th or 7th birthday but he had been talking a lot about wanting his own "merch", so I asked him what kind of design would he put on his "merch" and he told me what he wanted. I whipped one up on a t-shirt making site and got it for him for his birthday. He still wears it and still refers to it as his "merch". I think it's mostly harmless and of course most kids will grow out of it. It's definitely like wanting to be a rockstar, but I think the scale is larger and the barrier to entry so much lower that they seem much more convinced it's actually a viable option than what I thought being a rockstar was when I was a kid. My guess is for many of them it will be a second "wait, Santa isn't real?" moment when they get a bit older and realize that power law distributions are a thing and that's just how it is. Followed by fun times reminiscing about it with each other as adults.