I suspect that if you add up all the money Youtubers make, and you divide it by all of the man hours people spent trying to make a living off of Youtube, “poverty stricken PhD candidate” would start to seem like a good financial decision.
It’s just like any other fame/luck based career. The top 2% make 98% of the money. Back when blogging was the new hotness, I read that 98% of bloggers would never make a single penny off their efforts. Which seems crazy to me considering how easy it was to build a quality blog and throw AdSense on it, but that was the statistic.
That’s why, with any potentially lucrative hobby where success is based mostly on luck, you should only do it for fun while you save enough money to try it out for a month or two to see how you like it as a job. But you shouldn’t quit your day job until you have some GOOD evidence that you’re not going to be dirt poor if you pivot to doing your hobby full-time. You need a good following and a GREAT safety net before you make the jump.
It was possible to make money with a blog. I had a niche one for years, I didn’t make much, but nonetheless I got money from it.
Then Google changed how Adsense worked and paid.
It then became impossible to make money unless, you guessed it, you were the top x% of bloggers.
I supported my family with my blogs for around 6 years. Then things started changing, and I didn’t like what they were changing to. I have zero interest in creating vapid bite-sized blurbs, or YouTube videos. So, I sold the sites and moved on with my life. Granted, the transition wasn’t as seamless as I made it sound just now. It got hard, and I was broke as fuck for a while. It ended up working out well for us in the end though.
Our society rewards fucked up behavior if you are a celebrity or if you are rich or good looking. Then you get a pass.
Others are expected to do what they are told.
Blame the algorithms, but yes otherwise you are correct. Being an intransigent shithead is a pathway to success in this world. The bully is rewarded endlessly while the victim is stigmatized.
All of history’s greatest figures in our mind are people with the biggest body counts. Napoleon killed a whole generation of young men in Europe and was basically his era’s Hitler. Today he has Fanboys who rush to defend him online.
That’s why Putin invades Ukraine and dgaf about bodies because he’s playing to an audience 300 years in the future who also dgaf about the victims anymore than we care about Napoleonic war casualties.
We are a species of savage assholes and we survive today as the beneficiary’s of that legacy.
Yes, it’s interesting when you realize this. Kind of turns a switch in your brain and you suddenly think about things very differently.
It’s called “Americanisation”.
Welcome to the academic precariat.
I was expecting Toby McGwire. I’m pleased with the switcheroo.
