So I have to give props to Twitch here. Twitch literally created an ecosystem and a culture of supporting creators that 99.9% of whom could never be supported by ad revenue alone.
But what I find with all these creative professions is an undertone of... desperation. A lot of people seem desperate to be famous. It’s kind of sad.
Thing is the majority of wannabe Twitch streamers (and this includes YouTube) just aren’t entertaining.
I think they see the top 0.1% and say “I could do that”. What they Do note may be easy but getting there wasn’t. People don’t seem to see the years of building an audience and luck among the way.
Too many people now just see solar signs. 10 years ago (at least on Twitch) it wasn’t a profession. People did it as a hobby.
I imagine this is similar to other fields like acting. So few people are professional actors. The vast majority are working casual jobs for years hoping to get their break and most won’t ever get that break.
At least With field like dancing there’s a barrier to entry. Dancers train for years.
A lot of YouTube creators don’t have any skills. They just want to be famous based in their looks and their lifestyle. That’s the worst kind of fame seeker (IMHO).
Is Twitch any better than Youtube for the creators though? It has the same distribution of top 100 performers who make amazing- to decent- day job salaries and then the other 99.5% are left fighting for scraps. I've watched a few guys do it for years without seeing any growth and grow more disillusioned by the month until it's just a self fulfilling prophecy that no one wants to watch them wallow at this point. They were in the top players of their games too (maybe 95th percentile) but just didn't have the entertainment part down.
My impression at least is that the tail is a bit longer and descends less steeply on Twitch. It seems possible to have a solid middle class income through Twitch as long as you keep on the treadmill. But it also seems awfully precarious. It also seems to be becoming more intertwined with YouTube and using the latter for discovery of the former so who knows which way it’s going.
But what I find with all these creative professions is an undertone of... desperation. A lot of people seem desperate to be famous. It’s kind of sad.
Thing is the majority of wannabe Twitch streamers (and this includes YouTube) just aren’t entertaining.
I think they see the top 0.1% and say “I could do that”. What they Do note may be easy but getting there wasn’t. People don’t seem to see the years of building an audience and luck among the way.
Too many people now just see solar signs. 10 years ago (at least on Twitch) it wasn’t a profession. People did it as a hobby.
I imagine this is similar to other fields like acting. So few people are professional actors. The vast majority are working casual jobs for years hoping to get their break and most won’t ever get that break.
At least With field like dancing there’s a barrier to entry. Dancers train for years.
A lot of YouTube creators don’t have any skills. They just want to be famous based in their looks and their lifestyle. That’s the worst kind of fame seeker (IMHO).