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YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

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Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#231

Post by matty_makes »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #108
TravHatesMe wrote: post #16

What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute fo…

My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or…

A great feature on Playstation is Family Management using sub-accounts. You can set time limits where it will log them out automatically. You can also setup a schedule with certain hours per day and end time.

I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#232

Post by Gruselbauer »

badpun wrote: post #188
a_imho wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube is turning 14 next year and computers have been mainstream way longer than that. Personally I was a kid when it was the TVs fault and video games were making kids violent, but imo things turned out just fine.

Regarding “just fine” - I may be mistaken, but my impression is the pre-home PC (and game consoles) generation is more socially adept.

Problem is that one can't measure social skills against anything other than ones own standards, and those evolve as generations go. In the eyes of a 1900 upper middle class person, we'd probably all be degenerates.

I'm born '86, regular access to technology since the early nineties. I'm a social kind of person, have many friends. Sometimes I just want to lock myself in for an entire weekend and play video games for 16 hours a day. Other times, I'll be having barbecues or going dancing.

And as many here have already stated, the extremes go smoothed over by time.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#233

Post by borplk »

ehsankia wrote: post #24
lynnetye wrote: post #21

I just watched a few minutes of "Ryan disappear[s] through a Secret Portal in the house to the North Pole" and am thoroughly impressed. Clearly a lot goes into the concepts, sets, and overall production of these videos. I don't know all of the details, but I can imagine how building a business like this could be one of the cooler ways for a family to spend quality time together.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but that video was honestly minimal amount of effort when it came to effects, sets and production. There are channels on Youtube with a fraction of the following that produce content orders of magnitude more professional than that. This kind of video can be made by some amateur producer in their bedroom. Considering they make 22M, you'd really think they'd spend money on at least…

Maybe they want to keep it "authentic" and "home-made".

It might backfire if they make them "too professional".

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#234

Post by ryanmercer »

TravHatesMe wrote: post #16

What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute fo…

>People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?

I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...

I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:

- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...

- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now

- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship

- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.

- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.

It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.

I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#235

Post by grecy »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #83
joering2 wrote: post #23

Who is watching these videos? Youtube TOS states you have to be at least 13 years old to use their site. If I were to see my 13 (or older) children watching a 7 year old unwrapping toys, I think I would go to the psychiatrist just to check them out. Unless of course YouTube allows for their own TOS to be violated and they have a right to do so in the spirit of greed; their pockets are clearly filled up by children cl…

> If I were to see my 13 (or older) children watching a 7 year old unwrapping toys, I think I would go to the psychiatrist just to check them out. Oh, 13 years is nothing... watching is nothing.... if I ever meet an adult who makes videos aimed at kids, where they're either saying nothing, or infantilizing themselves as extremely as possible, I have so many questions to ask them, and already one answer I reject befor…

> If I ever meet an adult who makes videos aimed at kids ... or infantilizing themselves as extremely as possible, I have so many questions to ask them

I take it you're not from Australia?

Have you heard of The Wiggles? [1] Wikipedia says they earned $AUD 49 million in 2009 alone

Or Hi-5? [2] Wikipedia says $AUD 18 million in 2009 alone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiggles

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-5_(Australian_band)

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#236

Post by sjg007 »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #108
TravHatesMe wrote: post #16

What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute fo…

My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or…

Says my HN friends.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#237

Post by Nasrudith »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #15

I’m kind of surprised that Logan Paul is still doing so well. Living embodiment of YouTube gone wrong, still made $3 million more than he did last year according to this article.

The toddler model of celebrity (acting out for attention) pays off short term from the controversy and occasionally destroys themselves in the long term.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#238

Post by murph-almighty »

peteretep wrote: post #215
anonymous5133 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or…

> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on. In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational…

> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.

I've had a very similar experience with the people I know who are trying to be teachers, though most of the people I deal with are either in or just out of college and this could be attributed to inexperience.

I find it a little troubling that I see people practically seeking examples of unusual social behavior and attributing it to autism. I saw this sort of pseudo-analysis happen a lot with Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. Opinions of the show aside, I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that he had a social disorder.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#239

Post by romanovcode »

porjo wrote: post #135

I was interested to see that the top 10 earners are all male.[1] I wonder if this is merely a reflection of greater male patronage of Youtube generally but the topics that these top earners are focusing on are not all stereotypically male interests. The 7 year old kid reviews toys which seems quite gender neutral and then there's the makeup artist which, presumably, would be of more interest to a female audience. Wha…

> I was interested to see that the top 10 earners are all male.

There is always one.

Re: YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M

#240

Post by matty_makes »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #18

To me this little news snippet had just hit home how much of a bubble I live in, and how we're diverging into multiple streams of media for different cultures and classes. These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just…

It's been happening for decades though. Kids don't watch Saturday morning cartoons these days or wait to see what toy will be in the next McDonald's happy meal. They watch YouTube and see ads there.

Internet advertising isn't regulated but in a way it self-regulates. Content creators don't want in-appropriate ads and YouTube doesn't want that either when a channel is targeted for 8yo, it would make them lose money.

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