Sometimes I get the impression that social media fame is continuing the narrative of the American dream worldwide: strangely enough, many people assume that it happens regularly that someone steps out of their parent’s bedroom, records a few videos, and overnight, without much effort, becomes a multimillionaire – just like that.
This is the absolute exception and has hardly happened at all for a long time. Online, it’s long been like the real world economy: without the support of powerful players, it’s basically impossible for anyone to become successful. It’s a tough business with an endless number of competing content producers, from whom influential financiers can choose the content and the faces to go with it and pocket the lion’s share.
And there is yet another misconception underlying the illusion of quick money: you only earn enough to live on once you have a certain reach – something very few people achieve. Most work hard for ridiculously low amounts, if they earn anything at all.
Consumers, on the other hand, persist in the attitude that the internet has taught them over the last twenty years: they expect high-quality content on a daily basis without having to pay anything for that. They assume that the producers of this content earn good money from it, but in the vast majority of cases - and if there is any money made in the first place - this is not true at all, because it is not the creative people who earn the big, but those who exploit them.
Anyone who believes that content producers can finance themselves through voluntary donations is usually completely wrong — Wikipedia’s fundraising campaigns, in which only a tiny percentage of users contribute anything, are just one example of many, even though Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in many countries around the world.
Auth@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Most youtubers are businesses owned by corporate networks. The person on screen is just the talent pretending to be an organic channel.
rtxn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t understand why people are so shocked and horrified when it turns out that people who do entertainment for a living have been professional entertainers the whole time.
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 1 day ago
It’s because YouTube used to be mostly independent creators, even when people first started making money off it. That was the sales pitch.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Most of them are pretending that they aren’t corporate. YouTubers are generally trying to keep up the illusion of authenticity, which on YouTube usually includes pretending that you’re on your own.
Auth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I dont care if they are a 1 person business or a small team. What im talking about is when a Giant multinational corporation buys up 1000s of youtube channels. I want to watch 1 person or a small team not a big talent corp
Mac@mander.xyz 2 days ago
Veritasium is partially owned by Vulture Capitalists.
casmael@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Is that a true fact?
breakingcups@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Most?
victorz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
99.9999999% of stats are made up.
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yeah, was gonna say this. Like what YTs are y’all watching? My subscriptions and recommendations are randos playing games with their friends, memes, cat vids, and randos talking about interesting topics or the latest shitty Tiktok trend that I can be horrified by. I’m very lost as to everyone only finding these talent/corporate YTs.
I definitely have encountered the corporate YTs in the VTuber community, and I honestly think that’s why I hate Agency VTs so much compared to indie VTs. Watching Hololive/Kurosanji is like watching a bunch of coworkers play Mario Kart. Yeah, you “know” them and “get along”, but only in the superficial sense, cause you have to pay your bills. The shit always blows up later on anyway. Way more fun to watch some random with a mid setup play some obscure horror game by themselves or with actual friends.
perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Obligatory Micro video about it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-rRXWhElI