The Creator Economy Has Ruined The Internet

The creator economy is all the rage these days. Everybody has an opinion on it. Some believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Others believe it’s an overhyped bubble.

I am much more aligned with the overhyped bubble people, but I even take things a step further. I believe the creator economy has been bad for the internet and resulted in shitty average content.

The potential for riches has attracted people into the creator economy. But getting rich off creating content is really freaking hard. In a world with so much competition for people’s attention, there are only a few ways to stand out:

• You’re an expert in some niche

• You’re a top-of-the-line entertainer

• You’re different and more interesting than other people

• You’re controversial

Most people are none of these things. And that’s ok! There are many things that people aren’t excellent at and yet still enjoy. Most people aren’t good enough to be in the NBA, but they can still enjoy basketball. Most people can’t act for shit, but they can still join an improv class. You don’t have to be Mr. Beast to have a good time making content.

But you do need to be Mr. Beast to make a strong living making content, and that’s a problem, because odds are you are not talented, entertaining, smart or controversial enough to make content creation your career. So, what do people do instead?

They compensate with all the hot clickbait garbage the internet is plagued by.

The cringy Twitter threads. The curations. The courses on how to be successful from people whose only source of income are the courses themselves.

It’s all a bunch of cope from the wannabe content creators, because they aren’t actually capable of producing something of quality.

And because of the nature of the internet, we have no choice but to watch this shit take place. That’s the difference between content creation and everything else. I don’t have to subject myself to the LA Fitness pickup game or the amateur improv class if I don’t want to. But, I am forced to see dumb ass thread after dumb ass thread on Twitter.

On some level, this is just how the world works. A group of visionaries start something cool, like the airplane, crypto, or the creator economy, and get rich. People see this happen and want to cash in too, but they aren’t as talented, so they have to make money some other way. Enter small seats, ponzi tokenomics, and Sahil Bloom knockoffs.

Fortunately, the great thing about the free-market is that it eventually flushes this bullshit out (except in the case of small airplane seats, fuck those). I agree with Austin. Content creation is a bubble overdue for a burst. The “creator economy” will become like any other attention economy-focused industry: only the best of the best will make it.