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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

#51

Post by ebiester »

whodidntante wrote: post #40

There used to be a very vibrant creator community, one in which most everyone earned a decent living. However, we no longer have a community of people growing food, making clothes, building and fixing houses, making metal tools, shoeing horses, etc. Cannot eat a blog post about food, cannot wear a photo of someone wearing expensive clothes, cannot live in a photo of a mansion.

That's because of the industrialization of those creator economies.

There are still bespoke furniture designers out there, but it's very competitive in the same ways other arts are.

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

#52

Post by ralusek »

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???

It's actually a problem of time. Everyone on earth could follow everyone else. But you have 24hr in a day to fight for. You probably have about 5 hours of a heavy user's attention to fight for.

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

#53

Post by simonh »

whodidntante wrote: post #40

There used to be a very vibrant creator community, one in which most everyone earned a decent living. However, we no longer have a community of people growing food, making clothes, building and fixing houses, making metal tools, shoeing horses, etc. Cannot eat a blog post about food, cannot wear a photo of someone wearing expensive clothes, cannot live in a photo of a mansion.

The problem with an economy like that is it doesn’t scale up to support a modern state. Things like a universal health service (even to the extent of Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP in the US); national road, rail and telecoms infrastructure; a universal education system; social services. You need a massive surplus to pay for all that stuff, that an artisanal craft based economy just can’t support.

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

#54

Post by factsarelolz »

danbruc wrote: post #49
ernestipark wrote: post #8

I half agree with this article. There does seem to be a typical power law in terms of who is able to make a bunch of $ and make this a viable career. That being said, 'winning' doesn't necessarily mean having this be your entire job or revenue source. I think we're progressively going to see more 'portfolio careers' or people holding multiple small jobs. I've seen many folks have small ish followings (say few thousan…

Put another way, being a creator can just be the marketing or top of funnel for other activities. Then, I would argue, you are not a creator, you are just running your own ads for your actually business on YouTube. This is not to say that it is a bad choice, you might really enjoy it, it might be more cost efficient than other ways of advertising or whatever.

> you are not a creator

You are creating content to drive traffic to a service or product. Are influencers not creators? Is making an ad not creation?

Interested in your definition of creator. Thanks!

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

#55

Post by whodidntante »

simonh wrote: post #53
whodidntante wrote: post #40

There used to be a very vibrant creator community, one in which most everyone earned a decent living. However, we no longer have a community of people growing food, making clothes, building and fixing houses, making metal tools, shoeing horses, etc. Cannot eat a blog post about food, cannot wear a photo of someone wearing expensive clothes, cannot live in a photo of a mansion.

The problem with an economy like that is it doesn’t scale up to support a modern state. Things like a universal health service (even to the extent of Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP in the US); national road, rail and telecoms infrastructure; a universal education system; social services. You need a massive surplus to pay for all that stuff, that an artisanal craft based economy just can’t support.

I am not sure that an economy where everyone is creating tiktok content can support those type of services either.

It also has not been proven that we, as humans, are able to "scale up" as you say in a sustainable manner.

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

#56

Post by whodidntante »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #47
whodidntante wrote: post #40

There used to be a very vibrant creator community, one in which most everyone earned a decent living. However, we no longer have a community of people growing food, making clothes, building and fixing houses, making metal tools, shoeing horses, etc. Cannot eat a blog post about food, cannot wear a photo of someone wearing expensive clothes, cannot live in a photo of a mansion.

That is a lovely way to put it. Never thought about craftsmen as creators in that sense. Thank you for this comment.

Thank you. The "trades" are always underappreciated.

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

#57

Post by gregdoesit »

The whole article feels to me like it’s generated by GPT-3 based on a few prompts. There’s a reference to Forbes article not linked, but otherwise zero things backing up this 1% claim.

The thing that makes this very suspicious is the continuous repetition of the same content, the anonymous writer and the fact that the only other article in this publication is about a tool that’s even better than GPT-3.

GPT-3 certainly has the effect that I have a hard time trusting that anonymous articles that are repetitive are not AI generated any more…

Update: I posted the exact same comment on the article and the author deleted it within two minutes. instead of responding. So yes, it’s likely I was on the money. I re-posted the comment. If it’s not there, you know that this comment is uncomfortable for the author for some reason.

Update 2: my second comment was removed within minutes as well. There’s a commenter claiming they are the author saying they used ChatGPT to generate parts of the article. Does not explain why they keep deleting my comment and not disclosing that this article is AI-generated.

Update 3: posted a third and final comment asking the author to not delete this comment and answer if the article was verenigde by ChatGPT. Comment also deleted within minutes.

This all underscores how it’s becoming hard to trust anonymous authors even now, and how this will just get worse.

If a GPT3 article can generate so much discussion on Hacker News, without most people realizing we are arguing about the output of an AI, GPT3 is ready to go mainstream.

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

#58

Post by danbruc »

factsarelolz wrote: post #54
danbruc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put another way, being a creator can just be the marketing or top of funnel for other activities. Then, I would argue, you are not a creator, you are just running your own ads for your actually business on YouTube. This is not to say that it is a bad choice, you might really enjoy it, it might be more cost efficient than other ways of advertising or whatever.

> you are not a creator You are creating content to drive traffic to a service or product. Are influencers not creators? Is making an ad not creation? Interested in your definition of creator. Thanks!

As I said elsewhere, I actually hat to look up what the creator economy is supposed to be exactly. I understand it as producing online content for a living and therefore I would argue that this content should be the primary source of your income in order to make you a proper creator. Does someone in the Microsoft PR department become a creator because they are filming stuff on the campus and put it onto their YouTube channel? There is however probably a grey zone somewhere, where the content that you are producing and other stuff or services you are selling become so intermixed that it is hard to separate them.

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

#59

Post by factsarelolz »

danbruc wrote: post #58
factsarelolz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are not a creator You are creating content to drive traffic to a service or product. Are influencers not creators? Is making an ad not creation? Interested in your definition of creator. Thanks!

As I said elsewhere, I actually hat to look up what the creator economy is supposed to be exactly. I understand it as producing online content for a living and therefore I would argue that this content should be the primary source of your income in order to make you a proper creator. Does someone in the Microsoft PR department become a creator because they are filming stuff on the campus and put it onto their YouTube…

> Does someone in the Microsoft PR department become a creator because they are filming stuff on the campus and put it onto their YouTube channel

Yes. Microsoft also has specific "evangelists" that create content. Briefings, presentations, talks, videos, blog posts, etc.

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

#60

Post by wakana »

gregdoesit wrote: post #57

The whole article feels to me like it’s generated by GPT-3 based on a few prompts. There’s a reference to Forbes article not linked, but otherwise zero things backing up this 1% claim. The thing that makes this very suspicious is the continuous repetition of the same content, the anonymous writer and the fact that the only other article in this publication is about a tool that’s even better than GPT-3. GPT-3 certainl…

I posted on this thread earlier too: Hi! I am the person that wrote this, and used GPT-3 and a few other writing tools to help me wordsmith it. All the points, however, is original work and not AI generated. I am not a native English speaker, so I have been using these tools to avoid awkward sentences/paragraphs. (Clearly this has not been the outcome I was hoping for)

As for the erroneous citation to Forbes: there were two links, one to Forbes and the other to Digiday to backup the next point in the outline I wrote. While transferring the content from Huggingface to the substack editor, I missed that in the proofreading.

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