Why Winning is Still Losing in Web2
How successful creator still get screwed
Hi, I’m Michael. And this is Crypto Creatives. The best newsletter about the Web3 Creator Economy. If you’re new here, consider subscribing. 1 free email every week!
Roughly 0.33% of YouTubers ever make enough money to consider themselves “full time.” I was one of the lucky few. For ~2 years, my only income came from making YouTube videos.
I was living the dream. Until I wasn’t.
The initial excitement wore off pretty quickly. About 6 months into it, my channel started feeling like a job. Not a dream job but a factory job. One that I wouldn’t do if I didn’t have to.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one. Most YouTubers are burnt out, lonely, and depressed. It’s a game that lets anyone play because nobody can win.
Today, we’re talking about why even successful creators are miserable on web2 platforms despite them apparently “living the dream.”
I talk more about YouTube since that’s what I’m familiar with, but this applies to all web2 creator platforms.
The Alienated Soul
Work is a core part of who you are. You’re defined by what you do. It says more about you than anything else in your life.
If you don’t enjoy your work, you will be miserable. You cannot have a happy life without fulfilling work.
And despite how important work is for you physically, psychologically, and spiritually, most people hate their jobs.
Workers are burnt out, depressed, and alone. Critics have pointed out specific ways that work makes you miserable. One of them is by alienating you.
There are 4 ways work can alienate you:
Ownership: you spend all day working on something that you don’t own. Your product is the legal property of someone else (typically whoever pays you to do it).
How you work: you can’t work the way you want despite knowing how best to get the job done. You know a way to do it better but whoever pays you insists on doing it another way.
Working alone: instead of seeing your peers as friends, they become competitors. You see them as enemies because they are competing for the same financial resources you are.
External: you wouldn’t do it if your livelihood doesn’t depend on it. It’s something you’re forced to do by external circumstances instead of intrinsic motivation. Your work is external to your soul.
These characteristics originally described miserable jobs during the industrial revolution. Despite the centuries that passed, they still apply to lots of work around the world.
This includes some of the most respected job titles today, such as lawyers and doctors.
We’re going to focus on how they apply to successful Internet creators. But understand this: most jobs are alienating. It’s not just us. Turns out, everyone really does hate their job.
Alienated Creators
This section is going to feel a little weird. Most articles that talk about successful internet creators attack them. “This moron sits in his bedroom playing video games all day and makes millions of dollars.”
This take normally comes from boomers and neckbeards who don’t know shit about the internet, let alone the creator economy.
Instead, we’re going to explore how even the most successful creators are still alienated. Yes, even the gamer bros that make millions by posting let’s play videos.
Lack of Ownership
Creators don’t own what they create. Despite content requiring real time & effort, it can be deleted instantly for any reason.
You can spend thousands of hours creating videos. Literally years of your life. And they can be gone in the blink of an eye.
1 YouTube employee makes 1 mistake and it’s all gone forever. But as you know, it’s a lot more than just 1 mistake. Thousands of videos are deleted all the time.
To be fair, that’s fairly uncommon. The much more likely scenario is that your video stays on the platform to make someone else money.
Like all creator platforms, YouTube takes a giant cut of your money, 45%. And you can’t negotiate with them. It’s just how it is. Must be nice having a monopoly.
They’ll promote, demote, or delete your video regardless of what you want. It doesn’t belong to you. It’s theirs.
It’s like building a sandcastle on the beach. You spend all your time perfecting the little details making the beach beautiful. But no matter how much effort you give, your sandcastle belongs to someone else. And they’re more than happy to screw you over if it means making a few more dollars.
One of the most predatory things on YouTube is false copyright strikes. Basically, giant media corporations spend all day claiming that you used 5 seconds of their clip in your video. And therefore, they should get all the ad revenue.
They’ve done this with historical stock footage, music, sounds, anything you can think of. They steal revenue from thousands of creators. And you, as a creator, can’t do shit about it.
One time, I created a 3+ hour documentary. I spent months researching and writing the script. Thousands of hours adding visuals, animations, stock footage, etc. I poured my soul into it.
A few weeks after release, some media corporation got to claim all the ad revenue because I used 15 seconds of historical footage. It was literally a clip from 1930s Nazi Germany. Why the hell is anyone even allowed to own that?
This happens to some poor YouTuber every single day. And YouTube is more than happy to comply. This has been a problem ever since they launched monetization. And it will never be fixed.
How You Work
One of the big appeals of becoming a YouTuber is freedom. You don’t have a boss. You can set your own hours. Work as much or as little as you want. And do it the way you know best.
But that’s only surface level analysis. In reality, YouTubers are beholden to the algorithm.
On a platform where views = money, a drop in viewership can literally put you out in the streets.
You eventually figure out that certain kinds of videos perform better than others. And it’s rarely what you would consider “good.”
One time, I tried creating a masterpiece. I wrote an original story I was really proud of, created original ambient background music, and got help from fellow YouTubers to play parts of other characters.
It was the most work I ever put into a single video. And it barely cracked 3k views. It was a total flop.
After becoming more cynical, I took a different approach. I started covering general topics. “Crazy ex-girlfriend stories” for example.
And I would use stories that were sent in by viewers. The result? Some of the most popular videos I ever created.
The most popular video I ever made cracked 2 million views. And it was the laziest video I ever made. That video took me less than an hour to make. Literally.
I wasn’t proud of it. In fact, I honestly felt kind of embarrassed. But it worked. It made a lot of money. That single video made more money than the next 100 videos combined.
This is a dilemma that every YouTuber faces. You either become a dancing monkey to please the algorithm, or you don’t make enough money to continue.
Have you ever criticized a YouTuber for being too extra? Just remember, they have to be. Because if not, the money goes out the window.
No matter how successful you become, you are ultimately subservient to the algorithm. Or the platform at large.
Even if you start by creating something that is an authentic expression of art, it will eventually be coerced by financial reality.
You don’t hear about this much because most YouTubers wouldn’t admit it publicly. But I have known more than a few creators who feel exactly this way behind the scenes.
In practice, you have no control over the videos you create.
Working Alone
Humans are inherently collaborative creatures. We love working together. One of the big problems on creator platforms is that every other creator is an enemy.
There is a finite number of views any given day. And if someone else gets those views, you don’t.
Think about it. Platforms like YouTube are inherently competitive. It can’t not be. And it’s a winner take all game.
It’s really easy to be friendly with other creators. It’s really difficult to authentically be their friend. It’s a zero-sum game. And on some level, everyone understands this.
External
Most YouTubers start with their passion. They create videos they want to see in the world.
But once you make that jump to full-time, nothing is the same.
Even if you started with something you love, you’ll hate it sooner or later. It won’t happen immediately. It’s gradual. But it will happen.
You wake up one day and realize that it’s no different than any other 9-5. You’re just grinding away. But the pay varies widely and you don’t have health insurance.
It becomes external to you. Something on the outside.
Before my YouTube channel, I loved horror. But now, it’s something I would never consider dabbling with, even a little.
Becoming a full-time creator will take away something you love and make you hate it.
That’s the most alienating part of it all.
Final Thoughts
This is the bitter reality of the creator economy. It’s mostly a scam. And even if you win the jackpot, you’ll still end up screwed.
It breaks my heart to think about the next generation of creators. Kids these days say they wanna be YouTubers when they grow up. It’s sad to think they’re going to have to learn all this the hard way.
Do you think the web3 creator economy will be better? And how so?
Drop a comment cause I’d love to see what you think.
Oh god. This is why I deleted my YouTube channel and I would never go back. It’s sad to see people abandoning something they love because of lack of support from the paltform and their audience. I hope we solve this with Web 3, at least we’ll be working together to build something we can call OURS.