I can't be the only person who looks at influencers and thinks 'glad it's not me' - at first it's usually a bit of envy or disbelief, but once I think about the effort to maintain an appearance indefinitely for thousands to millions of people .... any envy disappears immediately and I instead get the sense of dread they must feel every day
I keep thinking about the ultra fickle and fleeting nature of fame on platforms like this.<p>The phrase "one trick pony" comes to mind.<p>There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems like most of the creators I see are just turning that 1 trick into as many videos as they can. Which again is just fine.<p>The problem is that once people have seen your cool thing a few times it starts to get old unless it's something that can maintain interest over the long term.<p>The hydraulic press channel is a good example. At first they just smashed stuff with the press. It was new and exciting, and different. You never saw them, and all the videos had a very simple format.<p>As they progressed, the format had to shift to maintain people's interest because we've all seen a hundred things crushed in a hydraulic press. They started doing a bunch of different experiments and things, and the current hydraulic press channel, and their beyond the press channel is much more involved.<p>That shift to regular videos and monetization requires a lot of dedication, while the early videos were probably mostly for fun, and done to share that fun with others.<p>At the end of the day, people are having to ask themselves tough questions about what people will watch. Often, the answer will be disappointing without significant effort, a fresh new idea, or a lot of... talent.
Well as influencer/soc med star you're a source of dopamine kicks. As that inevitably becomes boring the crowd moves on to the next sucker.<p>That part of social media has always seemed to me a self-serving scheme to pit people's happy chemicals against each other. The crowd looking for cheap distraction, the creator spurned on by quick-found fame.<p>No substance, no creation out of authentic well-being, no sustainability.
Speaking as a young creator who's burnt out on multiple occasions--it's definitely a real concern. Heck, I haven't posted to my account in almost six months after my last short-film-making sprint ended in January. I'm taking a hiatus and working on some other projects, but I also can't wait to get back to posting videos regularly. I miss it even though it's tough sometimes.
> “I get to the point where I’m like, ‘I have to make a video today,’ and I spend the entire day dreading the process,” he said.He’s hardly the only one. “This app used to be so fun,” a TikTok creator known as Sha Crow said [...] “and now your favorite creator is depressed.”<p>That's the unfortunate truth about turning your hobby into a business: at some point, it stops being fun and turns into a job.