10 ms·

YouTube millionaires are not your friends

164 points by thm 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago
These are the people who watch "the wolf of wall street" and take it as inspirational and motivation.
prpl 4y ago
Scottsdale seems a reasonable place for someone like that
upcastben 4y ago
That's because the author didn't see my youtube video on how to get rich in 2 easy steps. /s
- booi 4y ago
  Step 1: Already be rich.
  - smokelegend 4y ago
    Step 2: See Step 1
  - throwaway049 4y ago
    I built Reynholm Industries from the ground up. When I started, I only had two things in my possession: A dream and six million pounds. Now I have a business empire the like of which the world has never seen the like of which. I hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say that I am the greatest man in the world. -Denholm Reynholm
ThePinion 4y ago
Vox is also not your friend.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  conflict of interest. The more influence youtube gets, the more the other media channels are going to say bad things about them
  - echelon 4y ago
    > conflict of interest. The more influence youtube gets, the more the other media channels are going to say bad things about them The more influence [X] gets, the more [Y] are going to say bad things about them You can observe this everywhere. From high school hallways to government and corporate orgs. We get to practice this with football teams, but it bleeds over into politics.
- rnd0 4y ago
  true that; regardless of YouTube.
- politelemon 4y ago
  Corporations are not your friend.
Animats 4y ago
Celebrities are not your friends. Remember all those celebrities who claimed they'd bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs? That was all a scam.[1] It was put together by a Hollywood agent who represented both a long list of major celebrities and BAYC. Now there's a lawsuit against all the parties involved. Kim Kardashian was already fined a few million dollars by the SEC for that sort of thing. [1] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-class-action-suit-kevin-hart-jimmy-fallon-madonna-1235456896/ https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-c...
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Celebrities are not your friends. > Remember all those celebrities who claimed they'd bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs? Well, yeah... This isn't new, it's always been this way. Remember all those people who said they'd leave the US if Trump won?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    People complaining about politics isn’t the same as securities fraud.
    - swarnie 4y ago
      Calling an NFT a security might be the most charitable definition ever.
      - colechristensen 4y ago
        If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… The fact that the thing being abstracted into a security is BS doesn’t affect the rules you have to follow when you’re acting like a thing is an investment. Pumping and dumping nonsense Is securities fraud in plenty of cases, the legal frameworks were created to prevent that kind of behavior.
        polotics 4y ago
paganel 4y ago
[dead]
Velc 4y ago
“If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost.” So nobody can find inspiration and learn about new things from YouTube videos? This seems like a fairly obtuse statement. I don’t watch these hustle porn guys on YouTube but I learn a hell of a lot from smaller tech YouTubers who produce educational content. The author is clearly quite salty. Vox is just as bad if not worse than these guys on YouTube. Their whole schtick is riling people up for page views with no consideration for the wider societal impact.
- calculated 4y ago
  I was going to say the same thing as you. The article has a good title but besides that it completely missed the point. And the sentence you quoted was only the cherry on top.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Elsewhere on HN’s front page today: negativity drives engagement. Vox and others on both sides of the political spectrum turned that into a business.
- varsketiz 4y ago
  I'm not sure how you get from "If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost" to "So nobody can find inspiration and learn about new things from YouTube videos?"
  - Velc 4y ago
    If a startup idea is good, it doesn’t really matter if someone mentioned it in a video that got hundreds of thousands of views. Execution is still the key component. ‘You’ve already lost’ implies that every idea must be completely unique in order for you to ‘win’ whatever that means.
    - Osmose 4y ago
      You are stripping all of the context of the statement and then responding to the universal form of it that you created yourself, I dunno that Vox can be blamed too much in this case given how much you're working in order to be mad about it.
jen729w 4y ago
What I find distasteful about these fellas is that they’re not adding anything to the world. They’re taking away. It’s what I love about HN. Sure, most of us wouldn’t mind being rich (sorry, ‘financially independent’), but it’s not the driver. The driver is to make something cool; to make something better. I couldn’t imagine being the sort of person who sold people cheap Chinese shit just so I could buy a ‘Lambo’. Even if, by the book, that is a successful business. I have no envy of these people.
- nullcipher 4y ago
  > It’s what I love about HN. Sure, most of us wouldn’t mind being rich (sorry, ‘financially independent’), but it’s not the driver. The driver is to make something cool; to make something better. Is this sarcasm? If it's genuine, I can think of many reasons. Either you are too young or wearing horse blinds or not living in the valley. Practically every start up is driven by a desire to be rich. This is why everyone sells to make millions at the first opportunity. They objectively have made the tech industry a worse place.
  - varsketiz 4y ago
    It's not black or white. There are people in the startup ecosystem that are driven mainly by money and there are those more idealistic.
    - camillomiller 4y ago
      I’m sorry, but no. Not anymore. Everything is run by being able to get money from VC investors, and to make money for them. It IS the main driver. Idealists learn pretty fast how their idealism won’t take them anywhere in Silicon Valley of 2023. Or they’re stupid or tone deaf enough to keep on going and thinking that their n-th to-do list app will change the world. I’m afraid I gotta break it to you, but your romanticized idea of Silicon Valley is dead in the water.
      - varsketiz 4y ago
ZhadruOmjar 4y ago
The sigma male grindset is by the funniest meme at the moment. I love how far its been taken into absurdity. It is becoming frustrating having to talk to nephews about the realities of ecommerce and business after years in the industry and them thinking you can flick a switch to become a millionaire over night. The most worrying trend is the attitudes towards women and people of perceived lower status, a victim mindset can hold people back but so can poverty and systemic issues.
analognoise 4y ago
What's sad is that there are so many unmoored men who are drawn to this type of thing; that a true and caring network of real people and relationships eludes them, and that they were not taught to distinguish reality from artifice. It's deeply, crushingly sad that a flimflam gimmick preying on parasocial affection is a draw - they're so low that it works on them. How do you even undo that kind of damage?
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Give parents education on parenting. In the UK at least they're sort of left to just work it out. Often that means give the kids a smartphone or tablet because that keeps them quiet.
dalys 4y ago
Throwing Alex Hormozi into that list feels like the author just found a random person on YouTube that seems like a get rich quick guy and added him to the list? The other ones seems very shady I agree.
jossclimb 4y ago
It's the path that anyone who gets into internet marketing soon learns. You start off trying to make money by playing SEO , keyword slicing and dicing and filling the internet up with affiliate links. Eventually you realise for all your hours of efforts, you have made 12 cents over the past 3 months, so you make the ultimate pivot. You start trying to make money on the internet, but selling 'products' to people on the internet, about how to make money on the internet. Your passive income, becomes selling information to others about how to make passive income. They in turn eventually do the same pivot and thus it continues.
holoduke 4y ago
Nobody you have really befriended (in real life for a long stable period) can't be your friend. No emmotional expession in commercials or other people towards you is genuine. Its all so they get what they want from you. Money or attention. Of course the random stranger you meet can be an exception. But i never understood how people can fall in love with brands, (most) artists etc. There is no mutual feeling.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  > There is no mutual feeling. Why would you think that? That seems like a very negative world view to me. The seller is not exploiting the buyer, it's just a mutual deal where both parties benefit. I create a product, and some of my users really love it. They are very happy that I created it in so far that they want to pay for it. They want me to make more features. I, on my part, am very grateful that they love my product. That means they want to pay for it and I can make a living. I love my biggest fans or hard-core users the same way as they love me and my product. Is it a real personal relationship? Probably not. You make it seem like all people that sell you something try to rip you off. Maybe they just want to create a great product, and create a win-win relationship. I'm sure plenty of artists love their fans and want to do great things for them.
sirsinsalot 4y ago
The worst thing about these toxic people, aside from preying on disenfranchised people in a cult-like way is that rather than use something obvious like religious talk they co-opt the language of things that are legitimate and mix in vile philosophical memes. Like an MLM scheme that also has links to white Christian fundame.. oh nevermind.
blackoil 4y ago
I don't seek friends on Youtube or online. I am looking for genuine information, better parameter is conflict of interest. A shovel seller may have best info. about gold, but they have an incentive to exaggerate and hype it. In a more relevant context, VCs may be able to give best advice to a founder but they have a bias towards to the fund. For youtube influencers / gurus / religious gurus, they are in business of selling clicks and views so they'll be more prone to tell you what you want to listen than what will truly help you. Even likes of Jordan Peterson may give wonderful advice if consulted in person, but on Youtube he has to cater to the bias of people who are viewing his videos.
berjin 4y ago
> Drop shipping, or the practice of PURCHASING cheap goods, usually from China, and selling them on a legitimate-seeming website for profit Vox doesn't even understand what drop shipping is. The whole point is that the goods don't need to be owned. Vox are mad people are watching dumb videos instead of their own low quality articles.
- throwaway049 4y ago
  vox seems not to understand what mass retail is either. Things sold by well known brick and mortar stores are also made cheaply in China.
- wheybags 4y ago
  I think people might be down voting you because they also don't know what drop shipping is. To clarify: drop shipping is when you have no inventory, take customer orders, and then simply forward those orders. So, for example, If I get an order for a hairbrush on ebay, instead of shipping a hairbrush myself, I would go on alibaba or similar, and order a hairbrush shipped straight to my customer.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    Or it is a customized item, say a tshirt with an artists image. They still don’t want to hold inventory (all those sizes and shirt skus), so the item is printed on demand and drop shipped from the manufacturer.
msavio 4y ago
The German TV host Jan Böhmermann recently made a similar piece [1] talking about the shady practices on how to make "success coaches more succesful". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdDeklnVGrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdDeklnVGrM
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Just an aside, but I've noticed a lot of popular video trends among the younger generation revolve around watching somebody you don't really know, doing things I would I've done with friends. Reaction videos, eating things, hanging out and making jokes, making a stupid contest, trying some new experience... It's like there is an entire part of the children/teen population that have such a bland life they feel good while watching somebody else living it. Just read my comment and realized how "old man yells at cloud" it sounds, but hey, maybe someone will have something interesting to answer.
- csydas 4y ago
  Keep in mind, childhoods are a lot different now because you are exposed to a lot of information and people you never would have had a chance to meet when you were a child. As a kid in the 90's, my parents gave my brothers and I a choice: cable TV, or DSL once DSL came to our area of the city. We chose DSL, and definitely the Internet experience I had growing up was way different than every other kid at school since it was actually feasible to download a few small movies or games at the time, and to talk on chat apps/message boards at a very early age. All the online activities became part of my childhood along with my friends who lived locally and my other activities, and turned out, I enjoyed those a lot more than the in person activities which I mostly just _could_ do, as opposed to wanting to do them. So I had a pretty good balance I felt between physical activities, meeting with friends locally for bike rides or playing games, and the online social life also. Edited addition: One of the most positive parts about this was that it was so new that my parents had very little to say because they did not understand it; if I wanted to join a message board or crack a game, my parents and teachers and other authority figures in my life absolutely could not say anything about it in a reasonable way; it was brand new, there were no guides or playbooks, I had to learn this all on my own. While I was a very independent child, it was mostly stuff in a familiar scope for my parents. They "knew" that if I went on a bike ride with friends, probably we were up to some mischief, because that's what happened when they were kids. Same with if I went to a friends house to play games, to the park, etc. The Internet was (and still is) completely out of their scope along with all the tech and knowledge required to use it at the time, so it was a major point of growth for me to learn this new world and how to survive in it. That felt really nice as a child, as I'd slowly start to learn the skills that helped me succeed as an adult. I think that the current childhood experience probably would be what most of us would have had as online is now a normal aspect of kids lives, whether it's games or various chats/message boards, etc. When you write: >It's like there is an entire part of the children/teen population that have such a blend [sic] life they feel good while watching somebody else living it. (I assume you mean "bland") I'm not sure it's about a bland life. There is a lot of social interaction, just in a different form. Some people have trouble with understanding that online light interactions don't have the same weight as in real life impersonal interactions, but that's pretty normal I think. Most adults from the previous generation still have troubles with communication in my opinion (at least a fair amount of persons from businesses I work with have weaker communication skills that most children I know), so I'm not sure it's that these children are missing anything or have a "bland" life, it's just different. A lot of my younger friends are often in shock at my childhood pastimes before I had a nice computer and access to the Internet, cause man my friends and I used to get into a ton of trouble and do really dangerous/mean stuff to each other sometimes. We meant it in good fun, but in retrospect, I think that I'd rather my children were doing social stuff and learning/reading like I did when I got Internet as opposed to the stuff I used to do as a kid, which frankly speaking, was petty vandalism at times even just because we were so bored and wanted something "fun". So it's not really that one is worse than the other or that modern life is bland, it's just different. There are lots of videos you can watch about early 2000's and 2010's internet culture, and it's really interesting for me because it wasn't the Internet I experienced as a kid; stuff like virtual worlds or alternate reality games that pop up on message boards seem like they were a lot of fun, and looks to have sparked a ton of creativity in the kids participating. I don't think this is a bad or bland life at all; just different.
danjac 4y ago
The sigma-male/get-rich-quick types (and their female equivalents in the MLM spaces) are parasites, but as with any parasite, they thrive in an unhealthy environment. Since the 1970s, the path to even modest generational wealth has been eroded. You can play the property casino, inherit your money, or maybe luck out with joining the right startup or making the right investment at the right time - or a combination thereof. The slow-and-steady path of working hard and saving frugally for a reasonably priced home and a pension, with a decent public education for your kids and decent free or reasonably priced healthcare and social protections, has been eroded in the turbocharged neoliberalism of the past few decades. If you are a young person looking at all of this, you could be forgiven for thinking the "study hard, work hard, have a family, buy a home, retire" ethic is for mugs, and the only way to carve out a decent lifestyle (not even talking about Lambos and mansions) is the Hustle.
- kfrzcode 4y ago
  The path to modest generational wealth is pretty straightforward, pay off all your debts, don't borrow money, invest at least 15% of your income toward retirement in stable low-risk index funds or managed mutuals and leave it alone. Don't waste on big toys and you'll be a millionaire in a couple decades. It's really really that simple. If your income is not enough to achieve the above state loop, then you'll need to put effort into increasing available income; whether by reducing expenses or increasing income by way of self education, career change, etc. It's not hard. Anyone in America with $35,000/yr is in the 1% of the world's economic strata.
  - esprehn 4y ago
    > It's not hard. Anyone in America with $35,000/yr is in the 1% of the world's economic strata. That doesn't take into account the vastly different cost of living across the world. Sure, 35k USD is a lot compared to some countries, but it's barely scraping by in most US metros. US wages have not kept pace with the increase in cost of living and goods and services for decades. Even if folks somehow managed to save 15% of the 35k every year for 40 years (which is really hard) they're left just touching a million with a guaranteed 8% return, and that's their retirement funds. After using those funds to live for the next ~20+ years extremely modestly doesn't leave much of anything for "generational wealth". Unless you're already in the upper 20% the best bet remaining is to help your kids get through college and hope they get a higher paying job than you. Which is increasingly difficult as the cost of education has skyrocketed compared to wages.
hristov 4y ago
Those guys sound just like those late late night infomercials you would see back in the 90s if you fell asleep in front of your tv and woke up at one am with the thing still on. Except back in the 90s nobody took those infomercials seriously. Now apparently people's defenses are down. And they take those scumbags seriously. So here we again have the general malaise of western culture -- the fact that everything is done for money and more and more of the culture is based on tricking the content consumer into spending money. Have you ever wondered, for example, why in modern culture the paragon of femininity is considered the ability to shop for a lot of expensive stuff that you do not need and the paragon of masculinity is considered to be gambling. When you think about it those are both ways to lose a lot of money fast. So culture or content is more and more centered on the ability to trick the consumer to lose money for no good reason and the smarter consumers try to grow an internal resistance to these tricks and the dumber ones fall prey to them.
meghan_rain 4y ago
I agree with the article that those are narcissistic psychopaths but then there is this quote from the tweet: > - 8 hours sleep > - No porn > - Hit the gym > - Make lots of money > - Have a big family > This is the magic of life. The author points to that like those are supposed to be bad/vain things. Hard disagree. Whoever wants to nudge me not to pursue the above (here: author of the article) is my enemy. So I despise both the influencers mentioned and the author of the article. EDIT: I would add "no social media", but that would break the influencers business model ;-)
- luckylion 4y ago
  I don't think it's mentioned as "this is bad", it's "this is what they pretend to be about to lure in young men who lack direction in life so they can exploit them".
  - meghan_rain 4y ago
    I see.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Title is misleading. This is about a particular subset of successful youtubers, not successful youtubers in general. I've never even heard of these people.
adolph 4y ago
It was interesting to read the article after reading the top comments, which seem more based on a headline rather than tfa read. The nut graph is at the end: If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost. This is a truth of media literacy, not business or science, and it’s a lot more difficult to learn than watching a YouTube video that basically amounts to “eight easy ways to lose your life savings.”
tacker2000 4y ago
In the programming/IT space ive noticed that the indiehackers community is somewhat in the same vein. Lots of posturing and talking about how to get rich and build a saas (with 1m ARR and No Code), courses, email lists, “masterminds”, etc, but little substance behind it.
mangosventures 4y ago
So is there no way of actually making a good amount of money through the internet because most of the cash is in the hands of the mega wealthy? Does Vox have anything to suggest?

164 points by thm 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago

These are the people who watch "the wolf of wall street" and take it as inspirational and motivation.

prpl 4y ago

Scottsdale seems a reasonable place for someone like that

upcastben 4y ago

That's because the author didn't see my youtube video on how to get rich in 2 easy steps. /s

booi 4y ago
Step 1: Already be rich.
- smokelegend 4y ago
  Step 2: See Step 1
- throwaway049 4y ago
  I built Reynholm Industries from the ground up. When I started, I only had two things in my possession: A dream and six million pounds. Now I have a business empire the like of which the world has never seen the like of which. I hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say that I am the greatest man in the world. -Denholm Reynholm

ThePinion 4y ago

Vox is also not your friend.

ekianjo 4y ago
conflict of interest. The more influence youtube gets, the more the other media channels are going to say bad things about them
- echelon 4y ago
  > conflict of interest. The more influence youtube gets, the more the other media channels are going to say bad things about them The more influence [X] gets, the more [Y] are going to say bad things about them You can observe this everywhere. From high school hallways to government and corporate orgs. We get to practice this with football teams, but it bleeds over into politics.
rnd0 4y ago
true that; regardless of YouTube.
politelemon 4y ago
Corporations are not your friend.

Animats 4y ago

Celebrities are not your friends. Remember all those celebrities who claimed they'd bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs? That was all a scam.[1] It was put together by a Hollywood agent who represented both a long list of major celebrities and BAYC. Now there's a lawsuit against all the parties involved. Kim Kardashian was already fined a few million dollars by the SEC for that sort of thing. [1] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-class-action-suit-kevin-hart-jimmy-fallon-madonna-1235456896/ https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/bored-ape-yacht-club-c...

lelanthran 4y ago
> Celebrities are not your friends. > Remember all those celebrities who claimed they'd bought Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs? Well, yeah... This isn't new, it's always been this way. Remember all those people who said they'd leave the US if Trump won?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  People complaining about politics isn’t the same as securities fraud.
  - swarnie 4y ago
    Calling an NFT a security might be the most charitable definition ever.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… The fact that the thing being abstracted into a security is BS doesn’t affect the rules you have to follow when you’re acting like a thing is an investment. Pumping and dumping nonsense Is securities fraud in plenty of cases, the legal frameworks were created to prevent that kind of behavior.
      - polotics 4y ago

paganel 4y ago

[dead]

Velc 4y ago

“If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost.” So nobody can find inspiration and learn about new things from YouTube videos? This seems like a fairly obtuse statement. I don’t watch these hustle porn guys on YouTube but I learn a hell of a lot from smaller tech YouTubers who produce educational content. The author is clearly quite salty. Vox is just as bad if not worse than these guys on YouTube. Their whole schtick is riling people up for page views with no consideration for the wider societal impact.

calculated 4y ago
I was going to say the same thing as you. The article has a good title but besides that it completely missed the point. And the sentence you quoted was only the cherry on top.
FredPret 4y ago
Elsewhere on HN’s front page today: negativity drives engagement. Vox and others on both sides of the political spectrum turned that into a business.
varsketiz 4y ago
I'm not sure how you get from "If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost" to "So nobody can find inspiration and learn about new things from YouTube videos?"
- Velc 4y ago
  If a startup idea is good, it doesn’t really matter if someone mentioned it in a video that got hundreds of thousands of views. Execution is still the key component. ‘You’ve already lost’ implies that every idea must be completely unique in order for you to ‘win’ whatever that means.
  - Osmose 4y ago
    You are stripping all of the context of the statement and then responding to the universal form of it that you created yourself, I dunno that Vox can be blamed too much in this case given how much you're working in order to be mad about it.

jen729w 4y ago

What I find distasteful about these fellas is that they’re not adding anything to the world. They’re taking away. It’s what I love about HN. Sure, most of us wouldn’t mind being rich (sorry, ‘financially independent’), but it’s not the driver. The driver is to make something cool; to make something better. I couldn’t imagine being the sort of person who sold people cheap Chinese shit just so I could buy a ‘Lambo’. Even if, by the book, that is a successful business. I have no envy of these people.

nullcipher 4y ago
> It’s what I love about HN. Sure, most of us wouldn’t mind being rich (sorry, ‘financially independent’), but it’s not the driver. The driver is to make something cool; to make something better. Is this sarcasm? If it's genuine, I can think of many reasons. Either you are too young or wearing horse blinds or not living in the valley. Practically every start up is driven by a desire to be rich. This is why everyone sells to make millions at the first opportunity. They objectively have made the tech industry a worse place.
- varsketiz 4y ago
  It's not black or white. There are people in the startup ecosystem that are driven mainly by money and there are those more idealistic.
  - camillomiller 4y ago
    I’m sorry, but no. Not anymore. Everything is run by being able to get money from VC investors, and to make money for them. It IS the main driver. Idealists learn pretty fast how their idealism won’t take them anywhere in Silicon Valley of 2023. Or they’re stupid or tone deaf enough to keep on going and thinking that their n-th to-do list app will change the world. I’m afraid I gotta break it to you, but your romanticized idea of Silicon Valley is dead in the water.
    - varsketiz 4y ago

ZhadruOmjar 4y ago

The sigma male grindset is by the funniest meme at the moment. I love how far its been taken into absurdity. It is becoming frustrating having to talk to nephews about the realities of ecommerce and business after years in the industry and them thinking you can flick a switch to become a millionaire over night. The most worrying trend is the attitudes towards women and people of perceived lower status, a victim mindset can hold people back but so can poverty and systemic issues.

analognoise 4y ago

What's sad is that there are so many unmoored men who are drawn to this type of thing; that a true and caring network of real people and relationships eludes them, and that they were not taught to distinguish reality from artifice. It's deeply, crushingly sad that a flimflam gimmick preying on parasocial affection is a draw - they're so low that it works on them. How do you even undo that kind of damage?

sirsinsalot 4y ago
Give parents education on parenting. In the UK at least they're sort of left to just work it out. Often that means give the kids a smartphone or tablet because that keeps them quiet.

dalys 4y ago

Throwing Alex Hormozi into that list feels like the author just found a random person on YouTube that seems like a get rich quick guy and added him to the list? The other ones seems very shady I agree.

jossclimb 4y ago

It's the path that anyone who gets into internet marketing soon learns. You start off trying to make money by playing SEO , keyword slicing and dicing and filling the internet up with affiliate links. Eventually you realise for all your hours of efforts, you have made 12 cents over the past 3 months, so you make the ultimate pivot. You start trying to make money on the internet, but selling 'products' to people on the internet, about how to make money on the internet. Your passive income, becomes selling information to others about how to make passive income. They in turn eventually do the same pivot and thus it continues.

holoduke 4y ago

Nobody you have really befriended (in real life for a long stable period) can't be your friend. No emmotional expession in commercials or other people towards you is genuine. Its all so they get what they want from you. Money or attention. Of course the random stranger you meet can be an exception. But i never understood how people can fall in love with brands, (most) artists etc. There is no mutual feeling.

koonsolo 4y ago
> There is no mutual feeling. Why would you think that? That seems like a very negative world view to me. The seller is not exploiting the buyer, it's just a mutual deal where both parties benefit. I create a product, and some of my users really love it. They are very happy that I created it in so far that they want to pay for it. They want me to make more features. I, on my part, am very grateful that they love my product. That means they want to pay for it and I can make a living. I love my biggest fans or hard-core users the same way as they love me and my product. Is it a real personal relationship? Probably not. You make it seem like all people that sell you something try to rip you off. Maybe they just want to create a great product, and create a win-win relationship. I'm sure plenty of artists love their fans and want to do great things for them.

sirsinsalot 4y ago

The worst thing about these toxic people, aside from preying on disenfranchised people in a cult-like way is that rather than use something obvious like religious talk they co-opt the language of things that are legitimate and mix in vile philosophical memes. Like an MLM scheme that also has links to white Christian fundame.. oh nevermind.

blackoil 4y ago

I don't seek friends on Youtube or online. I am looking for genuine information, better parameter is conflict of interest. A shovel seller may have best info. about gold, but they have an incentive to exaggerate and hype it. In a more relevant context, VCs may be able to give best advice to a founder but they have a bias towards to the fund. For youtube influencers / gurus / religious gurus, they are in business of selling clicks and views so they'll be more prone to tell you what you want to listen than what will truly help you. Even likes of Jordan Peterson may give wonderful advice if consulted in person, but on Youtube he has to cater to the bias of people who are viewing his videos.

berjin 4y ago

> Drop shipping, or the practice of PURCHASING cheap goods, usually from China, and selling them on a legitimate-seeming website for profit Vox doesn't even understand what drop shipping is. The whole point is that the goods don't need to be owned. Vox are mad people are watching dumb videos instead of their own low quality articles.

throwaway049 4y ago
vox seems not to understand what mass retail is either. Things sold by well known brick and mortar stores are also made cheaply in China.
wheybags 4y ago
I think people might be down voting you because they also don't know what drop shipping is. To clarify: drop shipping is when you have no inventory, take customer orders, and then simply forward those orders. So, for example, If I get an order for a hairbrush on ebay, instead of shipping a hairbrush myself, I would go on alibaba or similar, and order a hairbrush shipped straight to my customer.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Or it is a customized item, say a tshirt with an artists image. They still don’t want to hold inventory (all those sizes and shirt skus), so the item is printed on demand and drop shipped from the manufacturer.

msavio 4y ago

The German TV host Jan Böhmermann recently made a similar piece [1] talking about the shady practices on how to make "success coaches more succesful". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdDeklnVGrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdDeklnVGrM

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Just an aside, but I've noticed a lot of popular video trends among the younger generation revolve around watching somebody you don't really know, doing things I would I've done with friends. Reaction videos, eating things, hanging out and making jokes, making a stupid contest, trying some new experience... It's like there is an entire part of the children/teen population that have such a bland life they feel good while watching somebody else living it. Just read my comment and realized how "old man yells at cloud" it sounds, but hey, maybe someone will have something interesting to answer.

csydas 4y ago
Keep in mind, childhoods are a lot different now because you are exposed to a lot of information and people you never would have had a chance to meet when you were a child. As a kid in the 90's, my parents gave my brothers and I a choice: cable TV, or DSL once DSL came to our area of the city. We chose DSL, and definitely the Internet experience I had growing up was way different than every other kid at school since it was actually feasible to download a few small movies or games at the time, and to talk on chat apps/message boards at a very early age. All the online activities became part of my childhood along with my friends who lived locally and my other activities, and turned out, I enjoyed those a lot more than the in person activities which I mostly just _could_ do, as opposed to wanting to do them. So I had a pretty good balance I felt between physical activities, meeting with friends locally for bike rides or playing games, and the online social life also. Edited addition: One of the most positive parts about this was that it was so new that my parents had very little to say because they did not understand it; if I wanted to join a message board or crack a game, my parents and teachers and other authority figures in my life absolutely could not say anything about it in a reasonable way; it was brand new, there were no guides or playbooks, I had to learn this all on my own. While I was a very independent child, it was mostly stuff in a familiar scope for my parents. They "knew" that if I went on a bike ride with friends, probably we were up to some mischief, because that's what happened when they were kids. Same with if I went to a friends house to play games, to the park, etc. The Internet was (and still is) completely out of their scope along with all the tech and knowledge required to use it at the time, so it was a major point of growth for me to learn this new world and how to survive in it. That felt really nice as a child, as I'd slowly start to learn the skills that helped me succeed as an adult. I think that the current childhood experience probably would be what most of us would have had as online is now a normal aspect of kids lives, whether it's games or various chats/message boards, etc. When you write: >It's like there is an entire part of the children/teen population that have such a blend [sic] life they feel good while watching somebody else living it. (I assume you mean "bland") I'm not sure it's about a bland life. There is a lot of social interaction, just in a different form. Some people have trouble with understanding that online light interactions don't have the same weight as in real life impersonal interactions, but that's pretty normal I think. Most adults from the previous generation still have troubles with communication in my opinion (at least a fair amount of persons from businesses I work with have weaker communication skills that most children I know), so I'm not sure it's that these children are missing anything or have a "bland" life, it's just different. A lot of my younger friends are often in shock at my childhood pastimes before I had a nice computer and access to the Internet, cause man my friends and I used to get into a ton of trouble and do really dangerous/mean stuff to each other sometimes. We meant it in good fun, but in retrospect, I think that I'd rather my children were doing social stuff and learning/reading like I did when I got Internet as opposed to the stuff I used to do as a kid, which frankly speaking, was petty vandalism at times even just because we were so bored and wanted something "fun". So it's not really that one is worse than the other or that modern life is bland, it's just different. There are lots of videos you can watch about early 2000's and 2010's internet culture, and it's really interesting for me because it wasn't the Internet I experienced as a kid; stuff like virtual worlds or alternate reality games that pop up on message boards seem like they were a lot of fun, and looks to have sparked a ton of creativity in the kids participating. I don't think this is a bad or bland life at all; just different.

danjac 4y ago

The sigma-male/get-rich-quick types (and their female equivalents in the MLM spaces) are parasites, but as with any parasite, they thrive in an unhealthy environment. Since the 1970s, the path to even modest generational wealth has been eroded. You can play the property casino, inherit your money, or maybe luck out with joining the right startup or making the right investment at the right time - or a combination thereof. The slow-and-steady path of working hard and saving frugally for a reasonably priced home and a pension, with a decent public education for your kids and decent free or reasonably priced healthcare and social protections, has been eroded in the turbocharged neoliberalism of the past few decades. If you are a young person looking at all of this, you could be forgiven for thinking the "study hard, work hard, have a family, buy a home, retire" ethic is for mugs, and the only way to carve out a decent lifestyle (not even talking about Lambos and mansions) is the Hustle.

kfrzcode 4y ago
The path to modest generational wealth is pretty straightforward, pay off all your debts, don't borrow money, invest at least 15% of your income toward retirement in stable low-risk index funds or managed mutuals and leave it alone. Don't waste on big toys and you'll be a millionaire in a couple decades. It's really really that simple. If your income is not enough to achieve the above state loop, then you'll need to put effort into increasing available income; whether by reducing expenses or increasing income by way of self education, career change, etc. It's not hard. Anyone in America with $35,000/yr is in the 1% of the world's economic strata.
- esprehn 4y ago
  > It's not hard. Anyone in America with $35,000/yr is in the 1% of the world's economic strata. That doesn't take into account the vastly different cost of living across the world. Sure, 35k USD is a lot compared to some countries, but it's barely scraping by in most US metros. US wages have not kept pace with the increase in cost of living and goods and services for decades. Even if folks somehow managed to save 15% of the 35k every year for 40 years (which is really hard) they're left just touching a million with a guaranteed 8% return, and that's their retirement funds. After using those funds to live for the next ~20+ years extremely modestly doesn't leave much of anything for "generational wealth". Unless you're already in the upper 20% the best bet remaining is to help your kids get through college and hope they get a higher paying job than you. Which is increasingly difficult as the cost of education has skyrocketed compared to wages.

hristov 4y ago

Those guys sound just like those late late night infomercials you would see back in the 90s if you fell asleep in front of your tv and woke up at one am with the thing still on. Except back in the 90s nobody took those infomercials seriously. Now apparently people's defenses are down. And they take those scumbags seriously. So here we again have the general malaise of western culture -- the fact that everything is done for money and more and more of the culture is based on tricking the content consumer into spending money. Have you ever wondered, for example, why in modern culture the paragon of femininity is considered the ability to shop for a lot of expensive stuff that you do not need and the paragon of masculinity is considered to be gambling. When you think about it those are both ways to lose a lot of money fast. So culture or content is more and more centered on the ability to trick the consumer to lose money for no good reason and the smarter consumers try to grow an internal resistance to these tricks and the dumber ones fall prey to them.

meghan_rain 4y ago

I agree with the article that those are narcissistic psychopaths but then there is this quote from the tweet: > - 8 hours sleep > - No porn > - Hit the gym > - Make lots of money > - Have a big family > This is the magic of life. The author points to that like those are supposed to be bad/vain things. Hard disagree. Whoever wants to nudge me not to pursue the above (here: author of the article) is my enemy. So I despise both the influencers mentioned and the author of the article. EDIT: I would add "no social media", but that would break the influencers business model ;-)

luckylion 4y ago
I don't think it's mentioned as "this is bad", it's "this is what they pretend to be about to lure in young men who lack direction in life so they can exploit them".
- meghan_rain 4y ago
  I see.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Title is misleading. This is about a particular subset of successful youtubers, not successful youtubers in general. I've never even heard of these people.

adolph 4y ago

It was interesting to read the article after reading the top comments, which seem more based on a headline rather than tfa read. The nut graph is at the end: If you’re taking AI or drop shipping startup ideas from online videos with hundreds of thousands of views, you’ve already lost. This is a truth of media literacy, not business or science, and it’s a lot more difficult to learn than watching a YouTube video that basically amounts to “eight easy ways to lose your life savings.”

tacker2000 4y ago

In the programming/IT space ive noticed that the indiehackers community is somewhat in the same vein. Lots of posturing and talking about how to get rich and build a saas (with 1m ARR and No Code), courses, email lists, “masterminds”, etc, but little substance behind it.

mangosventures 4y ago

So is there no way of actually making a good amount of money through the internet because most of the cash is in the hands of the mega wealthy? Does Vox have anything to suggest?