As stupid as this is going to sound, I think about this quite a bit in terms of writing a blog. I've wanted to do it for a long time and in the past people have been very kind and supportive of my writing. However, when I think about the reality of what it takes to make a successful blog, I get very nervous about it.
I mean, it's dumb because the chances of writing a successful blog is next to nil. And the way to exit the scene is easy: stop writing content. But it's the path that worries me. You need to write a lot of relevant content -- almost certainly more content than you can reasonably think about critically. You will be judged on that content. If you make a mistake or change your mind, then you can be treated very harshly. It seems that the masses have this binary view of their celebrities: genius or moron. The more popular you get, the more people have you in their sights aiming to plonk you firmly in the latter category.
For a long time, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time writing in safe havens like HN comment sections: because I truly love writing. I like thinking about stuff and breaking it down. I like explaining the insights that I find. And most of all, I like the fact that somebody reads what I write. I like thinking that I've connected with somebody else who I don't even know.
I seem to remember a set of rules for writers by Stephen King (although my recollection doesn't seem to match what Google returns to me). In one of them he says to prepare yourself for an unbelievable amount of criticism. It's this that worries me the most. I don't mind criticism, per se, but I don't want to have to deal with a reputation based on ideas formed from my prose.
"He's the dufus who believes that unit tests shouldn't test requirements. What a moron," is fine when I'm dealing with people who know me. It's down right terrifying when dealing with people who are potentially going to interview me for a job :-) A slight miscalculation in how you describe something, a popular misconception arising from rumours of your writing, or even just having a derpy day because you didn't think it through before you put pen to paper... And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
Like I said, it's putting the cart before the horse by a long, long way, but it still stops me from writing, which is a massive shame. Somehow I must overcome it (advice is welcome, BTW!)
I relate to this 100% and at my age I started questioning if I should even continue to be a programmer, but then again, once you had the money and the way of life, it's impossible to toss it away for a very, VERY insecure future where you will be bashed, demeaned, and thrown pennies for stuff you poured your soul into. No thanks. Writing to me should be strictly hobby and no money should be involved because every job eventually burns you out by the mere premise that you are EXPECTED to continue doing it.
Best course of action is probably a pseudonym + random thoughts with an enabled comment section in a new blog. If the comments get toxic, delete/disable the entire comment section and continue writing regardless.
Many writers do the writing just to unload from their heads and souls into paper / electronic documents, and publish 5-10% of what they actually write.
In the end, do what makes your soul feel good, as cliche as it sounds. I am pondering the same thing I suggested and I am sure that I will eventually get to it. Don't forget that very creative and outright genius people "blossomed" past their 35 or even 45 years old mark.
You are not on a schedule. Take your personal development at your own pace.
I relate to this so much. I look up so much to people like Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) and Murat Demirbas (Metadata) and innumerable multitudes of other writers and scholars, I think that I'll never get anywhere nearly as successful with my writing.
But then I realized I very very much don't care about socially-constructed standards of success, and I just stop giving a shit and write what I want, when I want.
This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons for why anonymity is so important. Do you know what you call a person who never changes his view, even in rather extreme ways? Somebody who has the worldview of a child.
I give extensive thought and research to most, and I'd like to imagine all, things I believe. Yet because of this my views change somewhat regularly as more evidence comes to light, or past evidence I relied on is shown to be doubtful. And consequently if you took my views over time as a 'blog', I'd seem to contradict myself constantly over the years - which ironically would be quite well on that path to moron categorization.
I think this is yet another reason any form of social media, under actual identity, is just a bad idea. It encourages people to double down even when they know they're wrong for fear of the evolution of their views being used against them. Get sufficiently far into the spotlight and you'll no longer be able to make a single statement without fear of it being scrutinized, analyzed, and ultimately weaponized against you if possible. And it never ends. Did you hear Einstein was a racist? Yeah, totally. Because the media got their hands on a handful of private observations he wrote in his diary in the early 1920s...
Why not write under a pseudonym? If you don't want people to associate you with every little detail of your writing, the easiest thing to do is to disassociate your writing identity with your offline identity.
Been writing on my blog, on and off, for... I don't even remember anymore (12 years?) I try to write as I am (a bit toned down probably): if I write something that a potential employer might not like, it was going to happen anyway in person (and I'm not so sure a potential employer may be that interested in digging into my writing).
My writing is terrible when it comes to my personal blog. I write much better content in hackernews, because I'm actually conversing with someone.
I think it really depends what you want out your blog. Mine is a personal blog. Its not going to be "successful" and I don't intend it to be. For the record I have 10,000 page views. Because I write it for myself, not anyone else. People mediate, I blog. That's how I reflect on things I learned. I want those experiences to live somewhere outside my mind, because its a lot of cognitive overhead to remember. It could be a blog. Or a vlog. Doesn't matter. But it needs to be public though attached with my real name. I've spent far too long writing under pseudonyms, some having 100k+ views on a page.
Normally I lock myself in a room for 3 hours once every 2 weeks. Then I force myself to write about one topic, of the 100 idea drafts I have. Most of these writing topics come from posting comments from hackernews.
> And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
I'd rather be known as a once previous moron than be an unknown no one knows about. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
I can totally relate to this. I have a bunch of notes and potential blog posts in plain text and markdown waiting to be published. I like to write, its one of my most cherished skills. My fear of petty, shallow criticism and my fear of being stereotyped keeps me from publishing them but nothing will ever stop me from writing it. Writing has given me the clarity and stability of thought that nothing else has. Also converting them into posts that someone might need is pretty simple as long as the essence of the thoughts are captured. I'd say keep writing. Publish opinions anonymously and technical/unopinionated content attributed to your real name. That seems the sanest approach I can think of with least side effects.
I have something in common: I find it much easier to write comments, or stackoverflow answers, because I'm not writing into a blank page and I have something to engage with.
I've genuinely considered trying to automatically extract my top N HN comments (I have 36k karma), roughly categorise them, and turn them into a book with extra commentary and thematic linking. I'd call it "Silicon Valley on ten upvotes a day".
I've also considered trying to write a definitive long-form answer for all those people on electronics.stackexchange who get confused by electrons and current flow.
The BBC made a brilliant spoof series on becoming a YouTube vlogger called 'Pls Like'. The whole thing is available on YouTube to watch (not geo-blocked as far I know). It's 6 episodes of 15 mins each.
No matter which country you're from, you'll recognise all the vlogger types in the series: the lifestyle vlogger, the fashion vlogger, the prankster etc. It actually touches on a lot of the issues in the Guardian article: the need for views, the pressure to make content 'viral', sponsored content, rivalry between vloggers. It's all done with a lot of humour while highlighting these issues.
I thoroughly recommend it (and in case you are wondering, the vloggers are all actors, not real vloggers):
I respect people who have the ability to entertain thousands of viewers, I really do. At the same time I’m really happy that wasn’t even an option when I was young. I’m sure I would have spent even more time playing video games if esports, twitch and YouTube had been a thing in the 90ies.
I know, I know, not everyone is alike, but at age 35 I’m really happy that my job involves serious adult challenges, and that my success in life isn’t depending on thousands of teenagers pushing a like button.
The neoliberal condition is in part characterized by the entrepreneurialization of everything, the penetration of Michel Foucault's homo economicus (entrepreneur of the self) into more and more spheres of production, consumption, and everyday life. Increasingly, you're an "entrepreneur" no matter what, whether you're a food truck owner, a freelance designer, an Uber driver, an Airbnb host, a YouTube star. Entrepreneur means a blurring of boundaries, working from home, homing from work.
In my possibly-naive opinion, it wouldn't be such a problem, if only we didn't tie value and self-worth so much on work, both culturally and politically. This entrepreneurialization goes hand-in-hand with the condition of precarity, feeling like you have to work your ass off, have to stay at the top of your game, to keep making a living, because you have no other way to live. It is incredibly dangerous, and it's increasingly defining us, the millennial and post-millennial generations.
>This entrepreneurialization goes hand-in-hand with the condition of precarity, feeling like you have to work your ass off, have to stay at the top of your game, to keep making a living, because you have no other way to live.
It's more of a precarization than an entrepreneurialization.
An entrepreneur has bigger stakes but also a bigger payoff than being paid to ride their car as an Uber for example.
As a clarification, Foucault did not define the term Homo Economicus [1]. He used the concept from Economics to describe the atomization of the individual inside the capitalist state structure, in contest with the "State" as a push-pull with that power structure.
In my experience the frustrating part about YouTube is when the crowd wants content that you're not interested in making.
For instance, I've made a few videos about building clusters from Raspberry Pi's, which I did just for kicks and to have something to play around with. They get more attention than my (imo more interesting) videos about programming or various other electronics topics, to the point that it dwarfs my other views.
So I have to choose between disappointing the majority of my subscribers or making content that I don't actually enjoy or stand by just for the views.
PS: I also learned very quickly that the YouTube comments section is chaotic and is not a recommended place for someone looking for thoughtful critique on their material.
Unless you're relying on your YouTube channel for money, who cares what subscribers want? What's the worst they can do? Unsubscribe. No big deal--you're not trying to make money.
I've put up a few YouTube videos, I've got a few GitHub repos, etc. I don't even care how many likes or views or stars they get. I almost never even go back to the pages. When I publish something on the web I do it because I already finished it, and I think maybe someone else might like it or find it useful. But I'm not going to change what I like to do based on likes or stars. That sounds backwards.
I've never once in my life did something as a hobby and asked myself "How can I optimize for how many people will like/use this?"
"I also learned very quickly that the YouTube comments section is chaotic and is not a recommended place for someone looking for thoughtful critique on their material."
YouTube's comments are some of the absolute worst I've seen on the web. It's interesting that YouTube has made no effective efforts to improve their quality.
You'd think the site as a whole could benefit tremendously from quality comments, but apparently that is not a priority.
I like writing about math and physics, but the views on my Ethereum articles are 500x higher, I measured. But that's how the world works. If you want money or attention, you have to serve people.
I have an YouTube channel, mostly for personal stuff. I did some effort to record some videos about several subjects, none had more than a hundred viewers. Then, in a sudden, a very shaky and short video with a Mallet steam locomotive punctured the Algorithm Wall and had thousands of views per day... I was even making $20/mo off YouTube until the early 2018 changes took place.
And the fact is, divisive content is king these days. Nobody, humans or algorithms, are interested in balanced opinions these days.
How many of the Nazis and other super divisive youtubers do you think are faking it or hamming it up for clicks? I do sometimes wonder "do these people actually believe this crap?" Same goes for totally outlandish conspiracy theories.
Controversy has always sold, but never before has the feedback loop been so tight.
I've unwittingly enjoyed Matt Lee's content on 'Shut Up and Sit Down', a board game review channel. I've always found him, and his colleagues, really good at what they do and find it professional.
I didn't know about Matt's background on Youtube, but a bit of Googling and I found he's had a really rough ride. As well as the stress and health problems others have mentioned, his wife also developed cancer a few years ago and was very close to dying.
All the while he still manages to produce witty, engaging content for a fickle audience. Honestly, the guy deserves a bit more respect for his craft than the comments in this thread are giving.
I don't find this surprising. When I started podcasting in 2005, even doing a weekly 'cast with my friend and co-host was a lot of work. We also had day jobs. But the pressure to create content was still there. These full time youtubers must feel in 100x more, particularly if they have Patreon people to keep happy. We derived no income from our show, and in fact it cost us money to produce.
In some ways I wish some of these monetizing platforms existed when we were around. It would have been fun to see if we could have gone anywhere with it. But then we might have succumb to these issues, as well.
I guess it all comes back to "Be careful what you wish for..."
Reminds me of when I briefly accepted donations from users of my forum. Suddenly it was like my life was beholden to people that had once given me $5. At least when they'd given me $0, it was pretty straightforward to dismiss their complaints and they'd looked silly when they'd demanded more of my free time. But once they gave >$0, the water got murky.
I ended up refunding everyone a few months later and I generally roll my eyes when I see posts like "um why not just take donations?" on HN.
It's just not no-strings-attached money like people seem to think it is. It's more akin to selling a service for peanuts, it rears the same issues.
If my friend wanted to start producing content again, I'd do it in a second. Getting together for a few hours a week to create a ~45 minute podcast was tons of fun, and the conversation was very therapeutic.
I enjoyed the conversation. The back and forth. Many people have suggested I do something on my own, but I have no idea what that would be. And with stories like these, I'm less likely to dive in.
I'm an audio engineer so I enjoy the production end of things, but I enjoy video editing less than straight up audio editing. But people are suggesting I do some sort of youtube channel.
This article is really relatable. Personal story time. I recently had a mini hit on Reddit where I started a community that's about 2800 people who come to me for marketing tips every day. It's both exhilarating and terrifying. Having a community, making content about my passion, and being able to perform is really all I've ever wanted. On the other hand I'm insanely cognizant of losing it at any time. There is no break and I know even a slight lull can stop it before it ever really even gets close to its potential. God forbid I give bad advice, or someone 1 ups me in the comments and I'm no longer the expert. That combined with the fact that most marketing isn't all that interesting has me increasingly searching for more and more all the time ever cognizant I don't want to bore and lose my audience. I've been mitigating this by filming 3 videos a day and embracing an intentionally raw style, but it still requires daily upkeep in addition to my agency which demands 10 to 12 hours anyways. Don't get me wrong I love it and I'm insanely grateful, but there is a lot of stress that surrounds this sort of thing.
Ninja, makes an estimated $500,000 (£384,000) every
month via live broadcasts of him playing the video
game Fortnite on Twitch, a service for livestreaming
video games that is owned by Amazon. Most of Blevins’
revenue comes from Twitch subscribers or viewers who
provide one-off donations (often in the hope that he
will thank them by name “on air”).
There is something fantastically wrong about the way internet economies operate. In the same way so many other sub-economies panhandle, in exchange for absolutely nothing.
> Like all YouTubers, Morton also feels the financial pressure of the system, which typically pays between £1.50 and £3 for every 1,000 views.
Based on this, creators have to be close to the 1 million views per month mark to be making over $24,000 per year.
It's no secret that YouTube is wildly unprofitable, from every angle. In a way, it's a transfer of wealth from AdWords, so our society is paying for YouTube through ads; just mostly not through the ads on YouTube.
This is an interesting story, definitely worth a click, but isn't it sort of also just the fundamental issues humans face in all pursuits that are based on interest?
I feel like you'd get the same spirit of complaint from a disenchanted musician, actor, chef, or even entrepreneur.
"It's a lot harder than I thought. The market's tastes are fickle, I've got to make stuff to please them instead of things that creatively satisfy me. If I stop relentlessly competing I can't pay my bills"
I'm older than the average youtube star, but I don't begrudge their success or view them as trivial people like a lot of my peers. That said, perhaps it's the _initial_ grand slam success and money that is the aberration (like app store hits at their peak), and the "bad side" is simply a sort of market correction where you've got to do unenjoyable things roughly commensurate with the payoff.
Over the last several years I gradually changed from being very salty and grumpy -- "FFS, these goofy kids get to squeal on air and get rich and buy a house I won't likely have at 50, WTF is that!!!" -- to basically accepting how most of our current world's economy works and I moved to the milder attitude of "hey, if you can make it work then more power to you, and good job!".
I think the only bad thing in this picture is their initial huge success, like you seem to believe as well. This produces very unrealistic future expectations and the cognitive dissonance becomes nigh-impossible to face in the aftermath.
This leads to articles such as this one.
In my eyes everybody should learn to work hard and the value of money but some are skipping these steps with a big initial success and when reality finally kicks in, they are much less prepared to face it.
Sad, but it's part of one's own personal development. Can't be avoided.
I guess any activity that requires repetition becomes bleak sooner or later because brain craves variety. I guess it can be the inner voice telling that by getting obsessed over only one thing, you can miss out the chance to explore other aspects of life.
But as it has been said, everything sucks, most of the time we're simply choosing what sucks less.
> I guess any activity that requires repetition becomes bleak sooner or later because brain craves variety.
You nailed it.
And that's a huge problem for the current economical state of affairs; people start enthusiastically but eventually want to move on. By that time however, they have a family to care for, mortgage where they cannot miss a single installment, are generally tired, and cannot afford to make a decisive U-turn in their lives.
It's extremely saddening, I watched many bright and smiley people turn into grumpy drones because of that tendency. One of the worst things you could see in life. :(
As with everything else there is always a spectrum and this represents the dark end of the spectrum. I follow a bunch of tech youtubers (like MKBHD) who represent the happy side of the spectrum.
How is this different than any other prestigious high performance job? Okay great, you busted your ass and you made it to the top, and now you have to bust your ass to stay there. I also don’t really think it’s fair to attach YouTube to the title. This article can be applied to all social media celebrities in all their various platforms.
I wonder if this is specific to YouTube in any way. E.g., I'd stop visiting xkcd if Randall didn't keep uploading regularly. Most open source projects (including mine) turn into GitHub graveyard because we can't provide even the most basic maintenance and support.
Lots of traditional-media pop stars have also famously burnt out.
In general, it is hard work to cultivate a proper institution that spreads out the load and makes this sustainable. And the skill for managing that is never really taught anywhere. Most "lone artists" don't even realize it's needed until it's too late. And that's where most of this frustration stems from. Culturally we focus too much on that one "big break", or the "eureka moment".
I'd watched a few videos talking about the old-time YouTube content generators in the "Wild West" of the site, compared with the current grind. They tweaked things so it only seems to make sense - monetization-wise - to be a content generator if you're able to keep up with posting high-quality content daily. Myself, I'd want to post great videos that people enjoy, and if the following grows, great! If not, I would just do what I want to do. If something else is more fun, I'll do that. But I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to make YouTube videos a work-from-home paying gig unless you really enjoy whatever content you're generating. And making regular, high-quality videos is a lot of work, not to mention regular, meaningful content that people with engage with. Otherwise, you're just screaming into the void.
I don't like how youtubers feel obligated to produce a certain amount of videos per week. I would prefer one or two videos per month with good quality than three or four per week with clickbait titles.
Who knew hard work can be hard, this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid.
>‘invisible’ labour such as interacting with fans is ‘a major contributor to occupational stress. In many cases it can contribute to PTSD’.
Are you kidding me? they are not fans they are your "customers" or at least your "consumers" public and customer relations are a key part of nearly every business out there that doesn't rely on accidental walk-ins for the majority of their business.
If you can't handle it then hire someone who can or find another business, PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma, what you have here it just a lazy person that realized that omg running a business that serves tens of thousands of people daily is hard.
> PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma
There is a solid kernal of truth here, PTSD generally relies on clear and obvious trauma... That said, CPTSD has lots of nuanced angles, the original quote was "contribute[s] to" PTSD (not "cause"), and I think the required emotional investment to produce content vs horrendous comment content from YouTube commenters has been overlooked.
Particularly on an IT forum: stress stemming from continuous urgency and unending negativity, a la customer support or helpdesk work, is a major problem and a silent killer. Combined with burnout? That's where you get into serious health issues. Chronic stress combined with feelings of helplessness, being overwhelmed, or being attacked cause trauma by themselves. Socially we are terrible at addressing those burdens on our employees, and it stretches into PTSD-ish territory
Reading fan mail? How about rape and death threats? How about invasive comments about how your nipples have been showing more/less with each video? How about abject racism and brutal sexism and blatant trolling about your appearance? That's before we get to unrelenting shit talking about you and your work...
You may very well be right that PTSD isn't always a precise diagnosis of the issue. But if anyone is getting regular death threats based on something important to them over a long period of time, then the nuanced distinctions between life-destroying stress conditions, PTSD, and CPTSD are something they're gonna spend some time discussing with their therapist. That's how our brains work.
To be fair to the Youtube stars, this is exactly why famous authors and actors have publicity agents. The notion of celebrities interacting with the hoi polloi on a daily basis is a brand-new artifact of the Internet age.
What's happening is that today's celebrities are learning why their predecessors locked themselves away in secluded Hollywood mansions and rode around wearing sunglasses in heavily-tinted limousines.
> this reads less like an actual deep analysis and more like people complaining they need to actually put in work to get paid.
That is clearly not what they were saying. That is an incredibly callous way of dismissing someone else's problems.
From the article:
> Lees developed a thyroid problem, and began to experience more frequent and persistent stretches of depression.
There is a well-established link between thyroid issues and burnout. See this comment from Amy Hoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 The deeper takeaway is that burnout is not just someone saying "oh I don't like my job". It is a specific condition with measurable physical effects.
I almost burned out a few years ago. I quit the job I was working in, took a few months off, then looked for a less-demanding freelance job to recover. The thing is, in the "recovery" job, I actually worked about twice as many hours and was about 4x more productive. But it was majorly less stressful - I simply came in to the office in the morning, picked the latest tickets on Trello, worked on them, then went home.
In the previous job, I probably did about 20 hours actual work/week, and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs. But the organisation was in total chaos, with projects started and cancelled all over the place. I could go the extra mile on a piece of work and have it completely ignored, then get chewed out publicly for something I'd had no idea I was expected to do. I tried to be proactive and solve these problems, but it was an exercise in futility and frustration.
Burnout is not caused by "working hard", it's caused by a combination of things, usually some form of working hard and failing repeatedly, especially when the failure was caused by factors beyond your control (such as management politics, or in the case of YouTube stars, the all-powerful algorithm). This has been fairly well-researched and documented. Amy Hoy described it as "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", which is pretty succinct.
(For anyone who wants to learn more - burnout is pretty common amongst programmers and startup people - this is a good resource for overcoming some of the cognitive issues involved: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/).
The Youtubers in the article described their problems clearly and eloquently, it enrages me to hear people callously dismiss them in this way.
[+] [-] mikekchar|7 years ago|reply
I mean, it's dumb because the chances of writing a successful blog is next to nil. And the way to exit the scene is easy: stop writing content. But it's the path that worries me. You need to write a lot of relevant content -- almost certainly more content than you can reasonably think about critically. You will be judged on that content. If you make a mistake or change your mind, then you can be treated very harshly. It seems that the masses have this binary view of their celebrities: genius or moron. The more popular you get, the more people have you in their sights aiming to plonk you firmly in the latter category.
For a long time, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time writing in safe havens like HN comment sections: because I truly love writing. I like thinking about stuff and breaking it down. I like explaining the insights that I find. And most of all, I like the fact that somebody reads what I write. I like thinking that I've connected with somebody else who I don't even know.
I seem to remember a set of rules for writers by Stephen King (although my recollection doesn't seem to match what Google returns to me). In one of them he says to prepare yourself for an unbelievable amount of criticism. It's this that worries me the most. I don't mind criticism, per se, but I don't want to have to deal with a reputation based on ideas formed from my prose.
"He's the dufus who believes that unit tests shouldn't test requirements. What a moron," is fine when I'm dealing with people who know me. It's down right terrifying when dealing with people who are potentially going to interview me for a job :-) A slight miscalculation in how you describe something, a popular misconception arising from rumours of your writing, or even just having a derpy day because you didn't think it through before you put pen to paper... And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
Like I said, it's putting the cart before the horse by a long, long way, but it still stops me from writing, which is a massive shame. Somehow I must overcome it (advice is welcome, BTW!)
[+] [-] pdimitar|7 years ago|reply
Best course of action is probably a pseudonym + random thoughts with an enabled comment section in a new blog. If the comments get toxic, delete/disable the entire comment section and continue writing regardless.
Many writers do the writing just to unload from their heads and souls into paper / electronic documents, and publish 5-10% of what they actually write.
In the end, do what makes your soul feel good, as cliche as it sounds. I am pondering the same thing I suggested and I am sure that I will eventually get to it. Don't forget that very creative and outright genius people "blossomed" past their 35 or even 45 years old mark.
You are not on a schedule. Take your personal development at your own pace.
[+] [-] elvinyung|7 years ago|reply
But then I realized I very very much don't care about socially-constructed standards of success, and I just stop giving a shit and write what I want, when I want.
[+] [-] TangoTrotFox|7 years ago|reply
I give extensive thought and research to most, and I'd like to imagine all, things I believe. Yet because of this my views change somewhat regularly as more evidence comes to light, or past evidence I relied on is shown to be doubtful. And consequently if you took my views over time as a 'blog', I'd seem to contradict myself constantly over the years - which ironically would be quite well on that path to moron categorization.
I think this is yet another reason any form of social media, under actual identity, is just a bad idea. It encourages people to double down even when they know they're wrong for fear of the evolution of their views being used against them. Get sufficiently far into the spotlight and you'll no longer be able to make a single statement without fear of it being scrutinized, analyzed, and ultimately weaponized against you if possible. And it never ends. Did you hear Einstein was a racist? Yeah, totally. Because the media got their hands on a handful of private observations he wrote in his diary in the early 1920s...
[+] [-] stone-monkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RBerenguel|7 years ago|reply
If you want to write, write!
[+] [-] swaggyBoatswain|7 years ago|reply
I think it really depends what you want out your blog. Mine is a personal blog. Its not going to be "successful" and I don't intend it to be. For the record I have 10,000 page views. Because I write it for myself, not anyone else. People mediate, I blog. That's how I reflect on things I learned. I want those experiences to live somewhere outside my mind, because its a lot of cognitive overhead to remember. It could be a blog. Or a vlog. Doesn't matter. But it needs to be public though attached with my real name. I've spent far too long writing under pseudonyms, some having 100k+ views on a page.
Normally I lock myself in a room for 3 hours once every 2 weeks. Then I force myself to write about one topic, of the 100 idea drafts I have. Most of these writing topics come from posting comments from hackernews.
> And suddenly, you are the moron in the eyes of millions.
I'd rather be known as a once previous moron than be an unknown no one knows about. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
[+] [-] sh87|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
I've genuinely considered trying to automatically extract my top N HN comments (I have 36k karma), roughly categorise them, and turn them into a book with extra commentary and thematic linking. I'd call it "Silicon Valley on ten upvotes a day".
I've also considered trying to write a definitive long-form answer for all those people on electronics.stackexchange who get confused by electrons and current flow.
[+] [-] picsao|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vanilla-almond|7 years ago|reply
No matter which country you're from, you'll recognise all the vlogger types in the series: the lifestyle vlogger, the fashion vlogger, the prankster etc. It actually touches on a lot of the issues in the Guardian article: the need for views, the pressure to make content 'viral', sponsored content, rivalry between vloggers. It's all done with a lot of humour while highlighting these issues.
I thoroughly recommend it (and in case you are wondering, the vloggers are all actors, not real vloggers):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL64ScZt2I7wFF538Kn0TR...
[+] [-] chii|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidstling|7 years ago|reply
I know, I know, not everyone is alike, but at age 35 I’m really happy that my job involves serious adult challenges, and that my success in life isn’t depending on thousands of teenagers pushing a like button.
[+] [-] elvinyung|7 years ago|reply
In my possibly-naive opinion, it wouldn't be such a problem, if only we didn't tie value and self-worth so much on work, both culturally and politically. This entrepreneurialization goes hand-in-hand with the condition of precarity, feeling like you have to work your ass off, have to stay at the top of your game, to keep making a living, because you have no other way to live. It is incredibly dangerous, and it's increasingly defining us, the millennial and post-millennial generations.
[+] [-] coldtea|7 years ago|reply
It's more of a precarization than an entrepreneurialization.
An entrepreneur has bigger stakes but also a bigger payoff than being paid to ride their car as an Uber for example.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
[+] [-] chii|7 years ago|reply
what other way is there to live then?
[+] [-] wybiral|7 years ago|reply
For instance, I've made a few videos about building clusters from Raspberry Pi's, which I did just for kicks and to have something to play around with. They get more attention than my (imo more interesting) videos about programming or various other electronics topics, to the point that it dwarfs my other views.
So I have to choose between disappointing the majority of my subscribers or making content that I don't actually enjoy or stand by just for the views.
PS: I also learned very quickly that the YouTube comments section is chaotic and is not a recommended place for someone looking for thoughtful critique on their material.
[+] [-] ryandrake|7 years ago|reply
I've put up a few YouTube videos, I've got a few GitHub repos, etc. I don't even care how many likes or views or stars they get. I almost never even go back to the pages. When I publish something on the web I do it because I already finished it, and I think maybe someone else might like it or find it useful. But I'm not going to change what I like to do based on likes or stars. That sounds backwards.
I've never once in my life did something as a hobby and asked myself "How can I optimize for how many people will like/use this?"
[+] [-] pmoriarty|7 years ago|reply
YouTube's comments are some of the absolute worst I've seen on the web. It's interesting that YouTube has made no effective efforts to improve their quality.
You'd think the site as a whole could benefit tremendously from quality comments, but apparently that is not a priority.
[+] [-] mjfl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ce4|7 years ago|reply
https://xkcd.com/202/
Also this Theoatmeal comic sums it up as well (the Mona Lisa comparison must be about Youtube's comments imho):
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things
[+] [-] epx|7 years ago|reply
And the fact is, divisive content is king these days. Nobody, humans or algorithms, are interested in balanced opinions these days.
[+] [-] pandapower2|7 years ago|reply
Doubt they ever were.
[+] [-] api|7 years ago|reply
Controversy has always sold, but never before has the feedback loop been so tight.
[+] [-] durzagott|7 years ago|reply
I didn't know about Matt's background on Youtube, but a bit of Googling and I found he's had a really rough ride. As well as the stress and health problems others have mentioned, his wife also developed cancer a few years ago and was very close to dying.
All the while he still manages to produce witty, engaging content for a fickle audience. Honestly, the guy deserves a bit more respect for his craft than the comments in this thread are giving.
[+] [-] Ricardus|7 years ago|reply
In some ways I wish some of these monetizing platforms existed when we were around. It would have been fun to see if we could have gone anywhere with it. But then we might have succumb to these issues, as well.
I guess it all comes back to "Be careful what you wish for..."
[+] [-] always_good|7 years ago|reply
Reminds me of when I briefly accepted donations from users of my forum. Suddenly it was like my life was beholden to people that had once given me $5. At least when they'd given me $0, it was pretty straightforward to dismiss their complaints and they'd looked silly when they'd demanded more of my free time. But once they gave >$0, the water got murky.
I ended up refunding everyone a few months later and I generally roll my eyes when I see posts like "um why not just take donations?" on HN.
It's just not no-strings-attached money like people seem to think it is. It's more akin to selling a service for peanuts, it rears the same issues.
[+] [-] Ricardus|7 years ago|reply
I enjoyed the conversation. The back and forth. Many people have suggested I do something on my own, but I have no idea what that would be. And with stories like these, I'm less likely to dive in.
I'm an audio engineer so I enjoy the production end of things, but I enjoy video editing less than straight up audio editing. But people are suggesting I do some sort of youtube channel.
Ah, who knows! :-)
[+] [-] jsonne|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judNell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|7 years ago|reply
Based on this, creators have to be close to the 1 million views per month mark to be making over $24,000 per year.
It's no secret that YouTube is wildly unprofitable, from every angle. In a way, it's a transfer of wealth from AdWords, so our society is paying for YouTube through ads; just mostly not through the ads on YouTube.
[+] [-] menacingly|7 years ago|reply
I feel like you'd get the same spirit of complaint from a disenchanted musician, actor, chef, or even entrepreneur.
"It's a lot harder than I thought. The market's tastes are fickle, I've got to make stuff to please them instead of things that creatively satisfy me. If I stop relentlessly competing I can't pay my bills"
I'm older than the average youtube star, but I don't begrudge their success or view them as trivial people like a lot of my peers. That said, perhaps it's the _initial_ grand slam success and money that is the aberration (like app store hits at their peak), and the "bad side" is simply a sort of market correction where you've got to do unenjoyable things roughly commensurate with the payoff.
[+] [-] pdimitar|7 years ago|reply
I think the only bad thing in this picture is their initial huge success, like you seem to believe as well. This produces very unrealistic future expectations and the cognitive dissonance becomes nigh-impossible to face in the aftermath.
This leads to articles such as this one.
In my eyes everybody should learn to work hard and the value of money but some are skipping these steps with a big initial success and when reality finally kicks in, they are much less prepared to face it.
Sad, but it's part of one's own personal development. Can't be avoided.
[+] [-] pandapower2|7 years ago|reply
>creators feel disposable ... in the knowledge that there are younger, fresher people waiting in the wings to replace them.
That sounds a lot like actors in particular. Today's hot new star is tomorrow's has been.
[+] [-] biql|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdimitar|7 years ago|reply
You nailed it.
And that's a huge problem for the current economical state of affairs; people start enthusiastically but eventually want to move on. By that time however, they have a family to care for, mortgage where they cannot miss a single installment, are generally tired, and cannot afford to make a decisive U-turn in their lives.
It's extremely saddening, I watched many bright and smiley people turn into grumpy drones because of that tendency. One of the worst things you could see in life. :(
[+] [-] pavanlimo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarjoura|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kragormonkey|7 years ago|reply
In general, it is hard work to cultivate a proper institution that spreads out the load and makes this sustainable. And the skill for managing that is never really taught anywhere. Most "lone artists" don't even realize it's needed until it's too late. And that's where most of this frustration stems from. Culturally we focus too much on that one "big break", or the "eureka moment".
[+] [-] amarand|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elboru|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|7 years ago|reply
>‘invisible’ labour such as interacting with fans is ‘a major contributor to occupational stress. In many cases it can contribute to PTSD’.
Are you kidding me? they are not fans they are your "customers" or at least your "consumers" public and customer relations are a key part of nearly every business out there that doesn't rely on accidental walk-ins for the majority of their business.
If you can't handle it then hire someone who can or find another business, PTSD? from what? reading fan mail? even if it contains death threats you can't get PTSD from that there is no trauma, what you have here it just a lazy person that realized that omg running a business that serves tens of thousands of people daily is hard.
[+] [-] bonesss|7 years ago|reply
There is a solid kernal of truth here, PTSD generally relies on clear and obvious trauma... That said, CPTSD has lots of nuanced angles, the original quote was "contribute[s] to" PTSD (not "cause"), and I think the required emotional investment to produce content vs horrendous comment content from YouTube commenters has been overlooked.
Particularly on an IT forum: stress stemming from continuous urgency and unending negativity, a la customer support or helpdesk work, is a major problem and a silent killer. Combined with burnout? That's where you get into serious health issues. Chronic stress combined with feelings of helplessness, being overwhelmed, or being attacked cause trauma by themselves. Socially we are terrible at addressing those burdens on our employees, and it stretches into PTSD-ish territory
Reading fan mail? How about rape and death threats? How about invasive comments about how your nipples have been showing more/less with each video? How about abject racism and brutal sexism and blatant trolling about your appearance? That's before we get to unrelenting shit talking about you and your work...
You may very well be right that PTSD isn't always a precise diagnosis of the issue. But if anyone is getting regular death threats based on something important to them over a long period of time, then the nuanced distinctions between life-destroying stress conditions, PTSD, and CPTSD are something they're gonna spend some time discussing with their therapist. That's how our brains work.
[+] [-] CamperBob2|7 years ago|reply
What's happening is that today's celebrities are learning why their predecessors locked themselves away in secluded Hollywood mansions and rode around wearing sunglasses in heavily-tinted limousines.
[+] [-] throwaway9922|7 years ago|reply
That is clearly not what they were saying. That is an incredibly callous way of dismissing someone else's problems.
From the article:
> Lees developed a thyroid problem, and began to experience more frequent and persistent stretches of depression.
There is a well-established link between thyroid issues and burnout. See this comment from Amy Hoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063 The deeper takeaway is that burnout is not just someone saying "oh I don't like my job". It is a specific condition with measurable physical effects.
I almost burned out a few years ago. I quit the job I was working in, took a few months off, then looked for a less-demanding freelance job to recover. The thing is, in the "recovery" job, I actually worked about twice as many hours and was about 4x more productive. But it was majorly less stressful - I simply came in to the office in the morning, picked the latest tickets on Trello, worked on them, then went home.
In the previous job, I probably did about 20 hours actual work/week, and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs. But the organisation was in total chaos, with projects started and cancelled all over the place. I could go the extra mile on a piece of work and have it completely ignored, then get chewed out publicly for something I'd had no idea I was expected to do. I tried to be proactive and solve these problems, but it was an exercise in futility and frustration.
Burnout is not caused by "working hard", it's caused by a combination of things, usually some form of working hard and failing repeatedly, especially when the failure was caused by factors beyond your control (such as management politics, or in the case of YouTube stars, the all-powerful algorithm). This has been fairly well-researched and documented. Amy Hoy described it as "training your brain to associate hard work with failure", which is pretty succinct.
(For anyone who wants to learn more - burnout is pretty common amongst programmers and startup people - this is a good resource for overcoming some of the cognitive issues involved: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/blog/burnout/).
The Youtubers in the article described their problems clearly and eloquently, it enrages me to hear people callously dismiss them in this way.
[+] [-] raverbashing|7 years ago|reply
It's the same with actors/actresses, I'd say it could be even worse.
Open Source developers suffer some of this as well, no wonder Linus has to "bang on the table" once in a while. It is to cut on the BS
[+] [-] 0xBA5ED|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umvi|7 years ago|reply