Boo hoo, losers. Your device has a power switch. Influencers have a warped and inflated sense of the value they create. They can stop at any time and use their skills in other ways.
Making good content is hard, but ‘good’ content doesn’t have an expiration date. Shallow brain-rot content does and that’s what the algorithms reward.
The entitlement that influencers have is nauseating. There are many creators out there laboring in near obscurity and producing useful content all the time for little or no compensation.
They are tools for Zuck and fools for propping his platforms up. It sounds like a hard slog, but they can stop any time.
You’re making enemies of your own team. These people are creatives, doing a job they love, and a corporate algorithm forces them to destroy their work life balance to keep doing what they love. And you’re belittling them. You need a reality check, these people are not your enemy.
Nah, if you are feeding the Zuck, not my team. The principled creatives aren’t there.
It sucks to try to make a living as a creative. But giving your efforts to support social media platforms controlled by the worst people is inexcusable. Zuck literally and provably helped the fascists gain power.
The creatives I can respect create because they are compelled to. They work jobs and create when they can. They share their work on less shitty platforms and in actual real life.
Facebook isn’t the only site these people use…
Zuck owns more than Facebook, too. ANY big social media platform is similarly toxic.
These people have co-opted our social discourse for evil causes. And they aren’t the only way to share work online.
Creative people do not have a right to my admiration if they provide fresh bait that the oligarchs use to degrade democracy and civil society
The question isn’t about admiration, it’s about considering them worthy of being respected as fellow human beings who are also struggling. You’re just shitting on them because the way they make their living is more directly linkable to sources you don’t like.
Every job is going to be that way, one way or another. Even many charities will have shady ties somewhere, that most of the volunteers and employees don’t know shit about. Shitting on these people because you don’t respect the things they’re linked to, and ultimately have no control over, is petty and meaningless. It devalues them as humans, and as much as I’m sure you don’t think so, they’re still human. And deserve to be treated as such.
If they’re like the Pauls or something, I can see criticizing them for being shitty people… but that’s not what you’re doing, you’re shitting on them for being part of a system that exists whether they make use of it or not. And will continue to exist whether they use it or not.
Curious who signs your paychecks?
but ‘good’ content doesn’t have an expiration date.
Yes, it does, depending on the topic. If it’s video games, like with MOBAs that get updated regularly, all the content for that patch expires after two weeks. Itemization and champion builds change so much that whatever value there was for you to build similarly is lost, and you’re left with a mildly amusing thing about how something used to be.
Do creative people have viable paths to income that aren’t social media?
How does one survive as an artist or a small film maker, when there is no patronage, government funding for museums is constantly on the chopping block, and any form of art you make is going to be uploaded whether you like it or not?
Our society essentially has no paths to success for creative types other than social media - especially with C-suites deciding that they’d rather use the plagiarism machine to make slop than hire actual content makers and artists?
Making things like clip art used to be a job. You used to be able to paint signs. There was work for mid level artists. Now, your options are trying to go viral on social media/hunt for commissions.
Yeah sheez. You know what you can’t pause? The flow of customers into the drive through. Internet influencers work on their own clock.
Let’s get an article about fast food worker burnout please.
My lord the amount of “I have a REAL job” in here is too damn high. I work 8 hours a night, 40+ hours a week, in an automotive plant. My job can be very stressful, and physically demanding. So what?
I don’t sit here and whine about people that stare at their screens (IT, developers, etc) all day. Are they really doing any work? After all, they are not performing physical labor.
How is it that different for people who create content? I’d argue that they do more work, as they have to set up, film, edit and market their work.
See how silly this sounds? A job is a job. Unless you own your own business, you are making money for someone else.
It’s easy to try on that pair of shoes. Those ignorants should go ahead and try building a community, try creating a video with some genuine effort regarding its content and - especially - edit it in an appealing way.
Heck, I was doing some Blender rendering for fun as a hobby and am occasionally recording some demo videos of a project I am working at for my supervisor. Sometimes it takes about two hours to edit a fucking 10 minute video. This is just a huge amount of work. No wonder any creator, who has reached a sufficient level of income, hires editors.
I also think a big part of content creator burnout is the ‘everything is content’ mindset. If you work in a factory or an office usually you can go home and not be at work any more. When hanging out with your friends or being with your family also becomes content and therefore part of your job, the mental toll clearly becomes unbearable.
Yeah man, that shit can be hard and time consuming.
I used to do a podcast. Each episode was around 12 minutes. I’d spend a good eight hours a week on those 12 minutes, around my actual job, and would get about ten people listening. And you know that within half an hour of hearing it, they’ve forgotten it and moved on to the next thing in their queue. It’s hard to maintain enthusiasm for that.
You aren’t wrong. But being a social media influencer is something almost no one would accidentally fall into. People who do it intentionally are doing it to chase a dream of fame and fortune and glamor - but because there is a limited amount of attention in the world and it is highly concentrated, you are really rolling the dice on a dream if you decide to commit to it. There is a very high probability that even if you put your whole heart and soul into it and did everything perfectly, you will still never achieve much more financial success than a child’s lemonade stand.
It’s basically the same thing as wanting to be a blockbuster film actor or a rock star or an NBA player. If you are struggling and unsuccessful… Well yeah, that’s exactly what everyone told you would happen. Go get a different job. And if you are successful and famous and making tons of money - “oh no, boohoo, it must be so hard to be successful beyond your wildest dreams.”
Maybe for the top tier influencers, but there are a ton of people making a reasonable living just by doing it what they enjoy. For example, strategy game streamers:
- FlorryWorry is probably the most popular EU4 streamer and has won the tournament something like 7-years straight; he makes enough to go full time
- NumotTheNummy is perhaps the best MtG Arena draft streamer, and has tons of subscribers (LSV honorary mention, who got famous for being a top-tier MtG pro tour competitor)
- Hikaru Nakamura - #2 chess player in the world, has a very healthy following
There are plenty more who are popular because of their skill at what they stream about and are competent enough at keeping people’s attention. If you’re the best, people will come to you, it’s not always just luck. A lot of people get there through luck, but a lot earn their way too.
At least in some cases, it might just be wholesome advice. The fact that you have “a job” and a whole different persona from that and they’re two separate things that sometimes intertwine probably brings you closer to us in administrative tasks (in the end, IT is by definition always something administrative rather than actually productive) than me as in an IT guy with an influencer. Because ultimately, your actual identity is your job, and by conclusion, your whole life is performative, which sounds REALLY exhausting
in the end, IT is by definition always something administrative rather than actually productive
Lol, what?
Might as well say mechanics are administrative too
With administrative, I meant that IT is a about information flow - defining rules how data is consumed, transformed and ultimately output. These by definition of a classic business I’d see as administrative.
I agree the wording isn’t good, and I didn’t mean it as in “anyone working in IT is just performing administrative tasks”, but rather that the field of IT is traditionally more of an enabler of other businesses.
The mechanic is usually the actual worker - you run a repair shop - but his spare parts management is an administrative task, and nowadays usually implemented by an IT solution.
The mechanic is usually the actual worker - you run a repair shop
But what is being repaired? A machine of some kind? And the machine is operated in pursuit of another actual productive activity, right?
Machines are just about the application of mechanical force in some way, and that in itself isn’t an end goal. Instead, we want that machine to move stuff from one place to another, to separate things that are apart or smush/mix separate things together, to apply heat or cooling to stuff, to transmit radiation or light in particular patterns.
Everything in the economy is just enabling other parts of the economy (including the informal parts of the economy). Physical movement of objects isn’t special, compared to anything else: kicking a ball on TV, singing into a microphone, authorizing a wire transfer, entering a purchase order, answering a phone, etc.
I’m not seeing a real distinction between an IT consulting business and a heavy equipment maintenance/repair business. The business itself is there to provide services to other businesses.
My point was not only that aspect, but also about the fact that input and output of the task is information. And while information itself can be a “product” or be provided as a service, in most cases, it’s not.
But anyhow, I feel like I’m overexplaining myself over a term I said wasn’t good.
And while information itself can be a “product” or be provided as a service, in most cases, it’s not.
Sure, but my point is that the same is true of physical machines. People don’t want working machines for the sake of working machines. They want working machines to actually do something else, to output a “product” of that machine’s operation.
And viewed in that way, information services are as much a standalone “product” as maintenance/repair services. Information services account for trillions of dollars of economic activity for a reason.
I’m not sure I understand where you are going with that. Performative? Exhausting? The hell are you trying to say?
I heard someone talking about a content creator they watch, and how that creator basically can’t take a vacation without losing tons of followers and potentially a major chunk of their income.
A lot of creators will have a number of videos created ahead of time, so they can go on holiday and still have a steady release schedule.
Doesn’t help if you’re a streamer, though. I guess that was a part I left out, whoops -_-
Yeah, that’s a whole different world.
Larger streamers post reruns.
Don’t they just take working vacations?
Yep, this exactly. They can never clock out at the end of the day. It isn’t 8 hours of work and you’re done. You’re having to constantly try to innovate. Make tons of content, spend so much time editing, constant filming, constant planning. And if you deviate in your schedule, or upload some content that isn’t interesting, the algorithm punishes you and you may even get people that unsubscribe.
Must be hell when you can’t afford to take a vacation from that content creator life. Can never really “switch off”. Plus the fact that less than 1% actually make it big, and it’s mostly based on luck plus years and years of determination.
It isn’t 8 hours of work and you’re done
That really depends on the type of content. Something like LTT is very much 8 hours and you’re done, except the handful of times when there’s a time crunch (e.g. new hardware launch). Even smaller creators plan out videos in advance and can create a working schedule.
The hardest part is starting out, followed by finding an audience. Once you get the audience, creating a consistent schedule is the easier part, especially once you can start hiring help.
I hear this all the time but I struggle to see how it is true. How many people regularly trawl through their feed looking for creators who haven’t posted in X days and unfollowing them? It would be a minuscule number. I’m pretty darn selective with my follows and I think I’d do this once a year, tops.
I think creators are conflating the everyday ups and downs of follower counts on their platform(s) as being something more. And I think the platforms themselves are encouraging this mentality because they need fresh content.
if someone i follow posts a bad video, i remove them from the ‘People I Like’ list and add them to the other list
OK, Santa.
Just because you do something a certain way doesn’t mean everyone does. A huge chunk of these peoples income comes from the random people who find their videos or streams because of the “algorithm”. Not from their regular viewers. Those regular viewers allow for a certain amount of steadiness, but they’re also more likely to watch videos at a later time rather than right when they’re uploaded. Which is a significant drop in revenue for each view.
As OP specified in another reply, they were talking about streamers specifically. And with them, big chunk of the income comes from Twitch subscribers, which is a monthly paid subscription. If you are willing to pay someone for it, you’ll notice pretty much immediately if they miss their scheduled stream and cancel it.
For many other platforms what you said is true, I’m way more likely to unsubscribe from someone when they post a video and remind me I’m still subbed than when they take a break and fade out of my feed.
This seems like a flaw in the design of the platform…
I currently scrub toilets for a living while I’m back at school for a mid-life career change. I work ten hours tonight, my feet are still a bit sore from my shift two days ago.
Suck it up, buttercup, get a real job. I’m not sharing all of this to sound like I’m better, I’m sharing this to show what a significant chunk of people do for a living, Joe Jobs.
Being a social media influencer isn’t a job for most people, it’s a vanity hobby.
This is the most boomer take I’ve ever seen on this website. And that includes what few conservatives have filtered in.
yeah I’m pretty shocked that a socialist website would value labor over entertainment like that
That entertainment is labor. What are you talking about?
Socialism is about more than unions, that’s just the most obvious aspect in a heavily capitalist society. It’s about the sharing of burdens, which includes more than physical labor.
Does social media create a physical product? Remember, computers need engineers to repair them and electricians to keep the power on. Physical infrastructure.
May I ask what your age range is, and what you do for a living, as well as how much income you make?
By that metric do authors or poets or actors create a physical product? Do computer programers? Since the death of physical media, books and art are now far more frequently digital than paper or canvas. Applications and software is 100% digital. Newspapers are dead, so journalists don’t create a physical product. Is your argument that only physical labor producing physical things is “real” work?
No, there is value in artistic expression and other intangibles. Our ideas are what give the tangibles scope.
What I AM saying is that people seem to think that social media influencers are more important than farmers or gas station attendants or grocers. No they are not. Most aren’t creating anything more than a hobby level. That’s okay if that’s what you want to do with your time, just don’t expect sympathy from those who feed you, keep your lights on, and ensure the comfort of all.
Why won’t you feel sympathy for someone who’s hurting? Why do you feel that someone needs to fall into a very narrow category to be “worth your time”?
Just because someone doesn’t fall into your narrow view of what’s worthwhile doesn’t mean they’re not worth basic human compassion.
Of course they are worth compassion. I just don’t understand their desire to be the center of attention, when all the acclaim of the crowd doesn’t truly bring individual satisfaction.
Fame is fickle and not worth chasing. Achilles found that out the hard way.
I just don’t understand their desire to be the center of attention
There is that aspect of it, but there’s also the aspect of writing your own destiny, about creating something you care about instead of just being a nameless cog in an industrial machine putting out consumerist crap day in and day out. Why is the latter more admirable to you than the former?
It doesn’t come across as you appreciating value in artistic expression and other intangibles when you say “suck it up and get a real job”. That may not have been your intention, but it can definitely be read that way. I think that is the “boomer” people have commented on.
I don’t think there are really that many people who think social media creators or better than farmers or essential services personnel, and those that do are completely out of touch, but there are plenty of people who see alternative media creators as less than any other job. I personally think A-list actors, celebrities and sports professionals are no better than grocery store worker or warehouse person, but I won’t deny they work just as hard in different ways.
My point is that no matter what, if you have success at something, there’s going to be blood, sweat and tears involved. Sisyphus doesn’t complain about his boulder for cheating Death, why should they? It’s pointless.
Just keeping up with the boomer takes…
Something doesn’t need to be a physical product to hold tangible value.
deleted by creator
Where did I say that social media creates no value whatsoever? I’m just saying that without those who work in physical reality, creating tangibles with tangible things, make the mental edifices possible.
Also, you didn’t choose to share your profession with us. It makes me think that you’re attempting to create a social media presence of your own. Trust me, it’s pointless. I had a facebook fan page with 150-175 people on it. All foolish vanity, nothing more.
To win the acclaim of the mob is what the worst of us amongst human beings do. Do you want to be a politician in terms of expression?
Also, you didn’t choose to share your profession with us. It makes me think that you’re attempting to create a social media presence of your own.
Either that or I don’t think value is only subjective to what you do for a living. That my opinion is somehow less valuable because I don’t fall into a specific field you perceive as valuable.
I’m just saying that without those who work in physical reality, creating tangibles with tangible things, make the mental edifices possible.
And often those non-tangible things help to give those who make the tangible things the willpower to go on. It’s not a one way street, where value is only created by those who create tangible goods and stolen by the intangible. That’s a very pessimistic, if not “holier-than-thou” perspective. As though anyone who doesn’t do what you respect isn’t worth as much as someone who does.
Like I said, a very boomer attitude.
Who did you vote for?
What business is it of yours who I voted for? I even voted for Musk, so what?
Who did you?
You are better.
No I’m not, walking down that path leads to arrogance and unearned pride. I just live in reality, instead of falling prey to the lies of false riches in the social media popularity contest.
Seek for your own answers and Know Thyself. Please, all of you that are always on social media. Withdraw, do not fall prey to the Siren’s Tale of the Glory of Achilles. Instead, seek a good life, one that is quiet, and belongs to you.
Do not become a false god, you cannot live up to that burden.
You’re not like everyone else!
Yes I am.
If your “job” is to convince brainless zoomers to eat tide pods or convince them to try DIY plastic surgery with hammers, maybe burning out isn’t a bad thing. Maybe we’re just seeing nature healing itself.
Bonesmashing?! Just when I thought people couldn’t get any stupider.
You get this a joke?
Children were never eating tide pods either.
Children were never eating tide pods either
Yes they were. Because some people really are that dumb.
The same year, nearly 220 teens were reportedly exposed, and about 25 percent of those cases were intentional, according to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
So far in 2018, there have been 37 reported cases among teenagers — half of them intentional, according to the data.
And that’s just reported numbers for teenagers. I can almost guarantee you the number of idiots that ate one and didn’t know how to call poison control is much higher.
Out of tens of millions of children, that’s nothing. It was pure fear mongering
It’s both fear mongering and a problem. I imagine there are a lot more unreported cases, since teens are especially unlikely to ask for help with something like this. On the other hand, it was used as an excuse to attack TikTok, which is stupid because the similar things happen on other platforms and happened before everyone was on social media. Kids will do stupid things as long as peer pressure is a thing.
Your TikTok addiction may have turned you into a psychopath. “Kids die all the time, what’s the big deal?”
The gun rights crowd has better arguments about why their hobby is more important than kids dying.
? I’ve never used TikTok…
But yes, kids die all the time for various reasons. When talking about individual causes, it’s important to look at the impact on trends. Are more kids dying due to TikTok, or is TikTok merely replacing another cause?
Obviously no death is acceptable, but death will happen. The role of public policy isn’t to prevent all death, but to address the bulk of it with the least invasive policy possible.
Did you see the part where only half of those ingestions were intentional?
You would be freaking out about rainbow parties and snap bracelets in the 90s.
How does one unintentionally eat a tide pod? So you tell the guy when you’re checking in at the ER “Homie and I were just playing catch with a tide pod and I was yelling at cousin Mabel to get off the dang roof and it just dropped into my mouth and I swallowed. It was a one in a million shot doc. One in a million.”
More likely they did it intentionally and didn’t want to admit to it to avoid embarrassment. That or one of their dumb buddies thought it’d be funny based on some Tiktok they saw so they dropped one into someone’s bowl of Doritos.
Either way all I was doing was correcting a false statement you made about children never eating tide pods. Because they surely did.
Ngl my partner put a dishwasher pod on the counter the other day and I genuinely thought it was candy for an uncomfortably long second or so.
I feel that, looks like they might taste like one of those carnival lollipops :>
How does one unintentionally eat a tide pod?
The same way a bulb end up in someone ass…
Because it looks like candy. It feels like jelly. It’s individually wrapped in clear plastic, just like candy
Now, imagine someone leaves one of those on the counter, or in a random drawer. That’s where loose candy lives.
So of course other people, who maybe don’t do laundry and don’t often see tide pods, are going to go “oh, look, candy!”
And then they call poison control as they retch and the cells in the mouth turn to soap, and they get added to the statistics
Title of your link:
Liquid Laundry Detergent Pods Pose Lethal Risk for Adults With Dementia
For all those teenagers with dementia XD
Speaking of rainbow parties - that was actually a great idea. How come we never do that?
I could support a few of these
You don’t understand, kids are really summoning satan with their dungeons and dragons books, and every grown up should be very threatened about it!
Like all horrible male “beauty trends” it comes from looksmaxxing forums where it was a joke but the people were highly autistic and actually did it. The same thing happens when it gets to tiktok. A bunch of people post about it knowing its a joke and people who struggle to understand its a joke get sucked in.
To “normal” people its like yeah obviously this is stupid, but to someone whos extremely socially inept they view it as a real path to looking like that. I’ve not met someone who has done this one exactly but ive met people who have done insanely destructive things because of what they saw on the internet.
Well you can’t stop everyone from being foolish. Before this they copied stuff on tv.
Thats true
Well maybe they weren’t at first. Just like flat earthers and bird aren’t real started as jokes. People started seeing and acting. My niblings had a kid in their high school
eattasted and spit out a tide pod. They ended up going home early.Just go hide back under your rock. Next thing you’ll say is that kids are absolutely safe minded individuals that stop and think about their safety and the safety of others when see they something that intrigues them.
Bro - I was literally a fucking teacher during the peak of that moral panic. I spend more time every day with teenagers than half of you on this thread do. Every kid knew it was a fucking joke. A handful of children actually did it on purpose, and like every moral outrage/hysteria it became “teens are doing this wild crazy thing!”
Yes, teenagers do dumb fucking shit all of the time. It’s not the shit the media picks up on for the viral clicks.
The real shit teens are actually doing is vaping shady carts and creating massive group chats to bully each other with naked pictures. But that doesn’t sell the same kinds of ad impressions as “there’s a stupid TikTok video that when viral so we are going to assume this is a massive regular thing that hundreds of children are doing.” Talking about those issues involves parents having to, you know, parent but instead it’s gotta be about stupid shit.
The real “hiding under a rock” is being distracted by the newest stupid TikTok video instead of dealing with the things teenagers actually do.
The point of the thread was for the influencers to fucking go and get a real job because they’re just rotting brains anyway. It started with tide pods and it’s grown into the exact thing you just stated. All that manosphere bullshit for example. You don’t think all those podcasts, Twitch, and whatever the fuck else today’s teenagers could get their hands on had any influence whatsoever from from all these dipshit people? We were all shitty teenagers so get off that “BRO I WAS A FUCKING TEACHER” high horse. It’s just worse now because they’re constantly bombarded by stupid fucking ideas. Welcome to the failure of the education system! Sorry you had to eat shit daily to find out I guess!
Children were never eating tide pods either.
Somewaht true, back at the time we had not tide pods.
But we did a lot of stupid shit even without social media.
I’m so glad I was young before this stupid reality happened. I have a regular job and no desire for internet fame.
I asked my younger family members what they want to be when they grow up, and being a YouTuber was at the top of the list. I hate this so much.
So no follow-up questions? “What content are you gonna make? How are you gonna promote it? Any backup plans?”
you’re just old…
Yeah, and I feel like I’m winning. If you want to be an influencer, go do that.
I imagine that being a content creator as a full-time job is much more difficult than most people realize. Also, the modern work environment is a hellscape, and I can’t blame people who want to avoid it. Still, it’s risky as hell - if the platform you rely on changes its compensation policies, you are screwed, and have even less legal protection/recourse than a McDonalds employee.
I wouldn’t expect a responsible person to take on that level of risk without a safety net. If you’re young and childless, then taking that risk is your call, and it’s unfair for me to judge you. If you’re relying on social media to pay the mortgage for your child’s home, though, you’d better have a backup plan and keep it ready.
You can’t turn off any job. We all are burning out in this bitch. At least you’re sitting at home making videos.
Okay, not sure how much this matters considering where the world is heading, but:
If they can’t get better working conditions because you’ll complain (it’s not fair, yadda yadda), how will you get better working conditions when they complain (it’s not fair, yadda yadda)?
I’m just saying, if you’re not willing to play ball, why should I care about your sick pay?
Medicaid is gonna burn up soon. Should I be concerned that you’ll be losing coverage, or are we just fully on board with this petty individualism?
You can’t pause the internet
Something I had to tell my mom all the time.
“Pause your damn game!”
“Its online, I can’t pause it!”
Funny. I follow some creators, but if they don’t post I’ll just check back later, and the content will still be relevant.
If your followers just leave you if you don’t post, your content is probably shallow and doesn’t really add much value to the world.
The algorithm is also fucked, but you use it to your advantage when you can, so can you really complain about the downside? This is what you choose to work with.
That being said, making good content is hard and really time consuming. So I get that there is stress.
But I believe if you make good solid content that suits you and your style, you don’t need to get into a pissing contest with the algorithm. Upload when you want, make what you want and you will attract viewers. They are out there, and they will find you through searching.
Yeah most of the content I watch is still useful years later. Now it may not be super current since tech changes so fast, but still useful. If you have to stay in someone’s face all the time to stay memorable, you’re not memorable or relevant.
I think they should stop.
Get a better job.
You say that but i appreciate their efforts. And wile i will understand and expect creators to work at their own pace, if only the algorithm wasn’t 100% momentum driven AND/OR i could just get front page notification when my subs post something, and didn’t just unsub me for not watching a video for a wile. I am an adult and can manage my own feeds
Get a job*
Won’t someone think of the poor influencers!? Sorry, “creators”. Just like Van Gogh and Stanley Kubrick.
If someone calls themselves an “influencer“ I immediately want to punch them in the face.
Cool, I have workplace stress and complete fatigue from sitting in an office dealing with bullshit all day and I don’t get paid millions fucking around on YouTube and tiktok. You can’t pause any job. Stfu
Firstly, let’s call them what they are, hucksters.
Secondly, I cannot think of anything I give a shit less about than their burnout at making internet videos of themselves.
If you’ve talked yourself into a world where you must be on social media, you are absolutely fucked. Get out. now.
More like discontent creators amiright?
I’ve taken to calling them effluencers.
effluencers
It perfectly describes their contribution to this reality. Thank you.
I’m hoping it catches on. Spread it around.
