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The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

therationalist.substack.com

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Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#21

Post by gruez »

ffwacom wrote: post #14
whiddershins wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most content is arbitrary?

Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl? Same for the arts. Same for most market segments whose products are artfully differentiated to prevent the customer from commoditising them mentally.

>Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl?

That's the wrong interpretation. The reason why the top only fan girl gets 10x more revenue than the penultimate only fans girl is because she's marginally better, so more people flock to her. This works because her marginal cost of production is zero, so her having 10x the fans doesn't cost her 10x the work. The same applies to other professions where the marginal cost is zero. I doubt the average NFL player signing multi-million dollar contracts are hundreds/thousands of times better than the amateur player, but because sports leagues wants to hire the best, the top players get a disproportionate amount of money chasing after them.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#22

Post by vehemenz »

tylerscott wrote: post #6

Is it me or does this article seem “off”. The verbatim repetition of the thesis multiple times makes me think this wasn’t written by a person.

The style is reminiscent of an eighth grade essay. The thesis is as trite and obvious as they come.

For bonus points, the writer cites sources without linking to them, including Forbes—the worst pay-to-play publication out there.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#24

Post by dsir »

I think it's key for creators to diversify their income and generate revenue from different streams. This is especially true in light of platforms becoming increasingly restrictive and unpredictable with their content moderation policies. Relying solely on automated ad systems as a means of generating revenue leaves the creator susceptible to the algorithm. It seems like the biggest asset that creators are creating are the communties that form around them and their content. Even for smaller creators, I've seen time and time again that all you need is one or two highly dedicated and engaged fans to make being a creator an extremely lucrative endeavour.

I've been working on a platform to help creators diversify their revenue streams and focus on developing their community as an asset on top of just creating content. The hope is to try and bring more predictability in their ability to monetize. http://sociables.com/creators

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#25

Post by auggierose »

bell-cot wrote: post #13
oj2828 wrote: post #4

“ The creator economy, once hailed as the solution to economic inequality and the savior of the middle class, is facing challenges that threaten its very existence.” Not to nitpick, but did anyone really believe that becoming a tik tok influencer was a reasonable career path for more than a couple hundred people? I don’t see how most middle class people would’ve been helped by the creator economy

THIS. Just how far into can’t-do-arithmetic self-delusion do you need to be, to believe that “you need X thousand followers to succeed financially” jobs could actually be available to more than a few people out of every X thousand???

From a theoretical point of view, that is not a problem. Given a population of Y people, each of which are following X other people, you can get X as high as Y-1. Fan bases are not mutually exclusive, just like I can shop both at place A and B and sell stuff at my own store C.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#26

Post by arnath »

tylerscott wrote: post #6

Is it me or does this article seem “off”. The verbatim repetition of the thesis multiple times makes me think this wasn’t written by a person.

100% had this thought because of the repetition. It generally just feels like it makes the same point three times without adding anything new in any of them.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#27

Post by ffwacom »

gruez wrote: post #21
ffwacom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl? Same for the arts. Same for most market segments whose products are artfully differentiated to prevent the customer from commoditising them mentally.

>Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl? That's the wrong interpretation. The reason why the top only fan girl gets 10x more revenue than the penultimate only fans girl is because she's marginally better, so more people flock to her. This works because her marginal cost of production is zero, so her having 10x the fans doesn't cost her 10x the work. Th…

Fair enough, it must be inevitable and the algorithm is irrelevant.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#28

Post by 99failures »

ffwacom wrote: post #5

Can the algorithms be changed to prevent Pareto outcomes from occurring? Most content is arbitrary anyway so no real cultural value discovery is occurring with these algorithms IMO, just chance and feedback loops.

It's actually not Pareto's but more like "Normal Distribution" and that is something embedded in Nature/Society that one can't change or eradicate. It's just the way things work, the natural dynamics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution

But that is objectively speaking.

Objectively we all have great tools:

* Free Will

* Agency

* Locus of control

and more. Choose wisely.

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#29

Post by lancebeet »

tylerscott wrote: post #6

Is it me or does this article seem “off”. The verbatim repetition of the thesis multiple times makes me think this wasn’t written by a person.

The same author just published an article on a new open source language model that supposedly outperforms GPT-3[1]. Very curious.

[1] https://therationalist.substack.com/p/glm-130b-an-open-bilin...

Re: The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else

#30

Post by danbruc »

I actually had to look up what creator economy even means exactly and if Wikipedia [1] is accurately describing it, then it seems to essentially belong into the broader category of entertainment.

The creator economy was once hailed as the solution to economic inequality and the savior of the middle class.

How would that have worked? You can not run a world on entertainment.

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

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