The Rise and Fall of a Teenager's Massive Meme Empire (nytimes.com) 179
An anonymous reader writes:
The New York Times just profiled 15-year-old "businessman" Rowan Winch, who made up to $10,000 a month from his Instagram feed. ("He planned to purchase a Tesla next year, when he's eligible to get his driver's license.") Rowan started by re-selling goods he'd bought online, eventually creating an online storefront that acted as a middleman for third-party retailers, but it was his meme accounts that brought him online fame, and what he really wanted: clout. "Rack up enough while you're young, and doors everywhere begin to open," the Times notes. "College recruiters notice you. Job opportunities and internships come your way. Your social status among peers rises, money flows in. Even fame becomes a possibility, if that's what you're after...."
His Instagram account gave him a feeling of helping others on a daily basis. ("His mother said that when she would try to restrict Rowan's phone use, his followers would send DMs protesting her parenting decisions...") Then in July his account was shut down as part of Instagram's great meme page purge. "A lot of my friends think I've become depressed, and I think that's right," Rowan said. (His mother tells the Times "he's not in a healthy state.")
From the article:
His parents have tried to get him to engage with life offline. They've urged him to get an hourly job at the hot dog shop by their house, just for social connection. "Any extracurricular activity, sports or a physical job, not selling something on the internet," Ms. Winch said.
But he loves the internet. He created a Discord server called The Fallen with over 200 other teenagers whose meme accounts were also deactivated, mostly in two major waves over the last 12 months. He started a podcast. He still posts to his personal Instagram account, with 60,000 followers, and two other meme pages with 120,000 followers and 197,000 followers. But losing [his Instagram account] was like suddenly getting fired from a big job. Rowan's identity was so intertwined with the page, he's still trying to figure out who he is without it.
Lately, he's been thinking he might become a YouTuber...
His Instagram account gave him a feeling of helping others on a daily basis. ("His mother said that when she would try to restrict Rowan's phone use, his followers would send DMs protesting her parenting decisions...") Then in July his account was shut down as part of Instagram's great meme page purge. "A lot of my friends think I've become depressed, and I think that's right," Rowan said. (His mother tells the Times "he's not in a healthy state.")
From the article:
His parents have tried to get him to engage with life offline. They've urged him to get an hourly job at the hot dog shop by their house, just for social connection. "Any extracurricular activity, sports or a physical job, not selling something on the internet," Ms. Winch said.
But he loves the internet. He created a Discord server called The Fallen with over 200 other teenagers whose meme accounts were also deactivated, mostly in two major waves over the last 12 months. He started a podcast. He still posts to his personal Instagram account, with 60,000 followers, and two other meme pages with 120,000 followers and 197,000 followers. But losing [his Instagram account] was like suddenly getting fired from a big job. Rowan's identity was so intertwined with the page, he's still trying to figure out who he is without it.
Lately, he's been thinking he might become a YouTuber...
Youtuber in the real world? (Score:2)
Any extracurricular activity, sports or a physical job, not... something on the internet
Just write your memes in sharpie and stand on the corner, duh.
Decadence (Score:5, Insightful)
Young people in the west have too much resources, too much distractions, too little brains, and too little parenting.
Re:Decadence (Score:4, Insightful)
(*) Because they have 7 siblings and parents work in workshop 12 hours a day...
(**) Because teens will be teens
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They might actually have too much parenting, and not enough distractions. They might not even be utilizing available resources.
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Re: Decadence (Score:2)
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You got me to look at the website, but no English there. Any of them translated? Might give weight to your argument in the actual reply.
(I've been reading Chinese science fiction lately. In English, sadly.)
Re: This is Americans, specifically. (Score:2)
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Re: This is Americans, specifically. (Score:2)
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Across Europe, for middle-class born and raised people, having more money is generally not THE goal anymore. The eternal hunt for richness is usually something specific to people below middle class, who haven't learned what "I have enough to live comfortably" means.
Re: This is Americans, specifically. (Score:3)
Your comment just shows that you have a cartoonish view of the US. "Urmaghurd, people in Finland will laugh at you for wasting money". Wow. Shocking. That, like, totally never happens in the US.
I've met upper-class kids from Finland on my travels around the world. They enjoy the same benefits that the rich anywhere else do. A carefree life full of opportunities, and the ability to fly first class to an exotic location any time they feel like it. Does the average Finn have those opportunities? Would
Re: This is Americans, specifically. (Score:3)
What those rich Finnish kids _DON'T_ do is flaunt their wealth.
Its regarded as _extremely_ offensive, bordering on anti-social behaviour - a fast way of losing friends and failing to influence people.
For what it's worth, most African rappers sing about respecting your parents, going to school and working hard to improve yourself, whilst middle eastern ones are singing about social equality. The American fixation with money for its own sake is generally regarded as highly corrosive and enabling corruption.
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Say what? One bad teach ruined your kid for life? Yea there are bad teachers out there, but that goes for every country around the world. If a kid is 'ruined' because of one bad teacher then I would say the kid was really ruined by the parent (probably starting at a very early age).
Re: Decadence (Score:2)
Memes and tiktok are creative behaviour. When I was younger it was bands or theatre - but only the cool kids were welcome.
The glorious thing about punk rock was that it demonstrated _anyone_ (including the uncool/shy kids) could pick up a guitar or create a look and really not have to care about "pleasing" their supposed peers or parents.
Very much a case of "if you take the oddity in every crowd and put them all in a crowd of their own, what have you got now?" ( the answer is 'critical mass' by the way)
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Well, you should be a CEO/boss then. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or even better: A shareholder.
You get to push people around to work for you, all day, and call that "Waaahhh! Want! Want!!" 'hard work' and 'shouldering the risk' and 'leadership', to justify stealing half the money thos people earned. You even get bailed out by socislizing your losses;
Oh, and the best part: When poor people try to get free money like you, so they don't starvr and literally die, you get to call them "moochers". lol
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Athletes have always become obsolete in their 40s. Do they have a high suicide rate? I don't see any stats suggesting so.
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Athletes have always become obsolete in their 40s. Do they have a high suicide rate? I don't see any stats suggesting so.
Most athletes become obsolete after they turn 21. Only a tiny fraction turn from college to professional athletes
But overall, no, the suicide rate among athletes tends to be lower than that of the population they represent. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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I don't know about stats per se, but a lot of former/post-peak athletes have problems.
Drug abuse, alcoholism, spousal abuse, a couple former pro athletes here in my state have gotten involved with fraudulent business ventures.
Some of it is due to CTE, but some of it I think is due to losing that "elite athlete" social standing and some element of the loss of easy money, especially for the ones that had only minor pro careers.
A lot of athletes are like rock stars even earlier than high school. They're diale
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I thought they usually went into real estate, like Joe Rudi did locally here. :)
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The shutdown of these accounts in most cases isn't because they're not successful. They have an audience and customers. This depriving people of a self earned income is purely about ho
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Who says that's a boomer? Could be someone younger than you.
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It's a meme. Not that I disagree about the OP stimulating his(?) own ego but that's more fitting for the zoomer meme IMHO.
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Re: Pandering for attention is way out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
If you use the word snowflake, you've bought into a dim worldview.
LOL, wasn't it you who posted, "Ok, boomer" a little earlier? Why yes, it was you. Do you have any idea how stupid this makes you look?
Re: Pandering for attention is way out of contro (Score:2)
To single out influencers as having "wrong values" when the economics say it's right, that's just a foul opinion.
You're basically saying "hey, if I can make money doing it it's totally cool, and you're foul for telling me it's immoral". If you seer nothing wrong with that you're either an ignorant child, or a completely amoral adult.
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Re: Pandering for attention is way out of control (Score:2)
Pityful (Score:4, Interesting)
Thinks he is a leader, proves he is just another devotee.
Shows many symptoms of narcissism.
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... and explicitly a follower.
I read the article (Score:5, Interesting)
As many gen-X'er, I feel totally alien to the world of social media. But for once I read the article from beginning to end. I'm left with four unshakable thoughts:
1/ $10,000 / month for producing essentially nothing of value? Really??? Hell, even $100 would astonish me. Then again, the owners of News of the World and other such rags earned a lot of dough doing the exact same thing in the pre-internet age. But they weren't minors...
2/ God the internet is stupid, and getting stupider by the day
3/ Welcome to the real world Rowan
4/ Social serices need to have a chat with Rowan's mom
Re: I read the article (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I read the article (Score:4, Insightful)
Social media is great because you can find pretty much anything on there, it really is the “long tail” of content. And it’s not like the platforms are losing money on quirky and inexplicably popular channels like these, it’s something else. Maybe they don’t want to be a boring “platform” anymore, no one wants to be a mere platform or conduit. So: we have social media and even ISPs getting into content creation, and social media suddenly feeling the urge to brand, clean up, and curate the content on their platforms up the wazoo. With “demonetising” being the worst kind of insult. It’s basically saying: “We’ll continue to host your content that draws in tens of thousands of viewers. But we don’t like the fact that you are making any money with that, so we will put a stop to that”.
And it’s bad news for the viewers as well: like any content creator, these people like to be paid for their work, and it’s unlikely they will continue to devote the many hours that requires if they have to do it for free.
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Well, the fact is that the platform yanked it away from him. That might seem unfair, but they are a business. He might have been getting eyeballs on his "content", but that means someone else is getting less eyeballs, other channels which actually have original content, and are worth more dollars per eyeball. So, he was siphoning some value off, but he may have even been destroying physical value for the platform in the process.
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other channels which actually have original content, and are worth more dollars per eyeball. So, he was siphoning some value off, but he may have even been destroying physical value for the platform in the process.
It's not exactly a zero sum game, and it's likely that the people watching the guys content might have zero interest in the other "higher value" channels. I also don't think that there is that much difference in advertising costs around each of these channels, unless you're talking about viral clips or content with a lot of steady followers from a good demographic; content with a very high viewership commands higher ad prices. It may be that some stuff with only short term appeal is eating into the conten
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And what exactly was stopping him from making his own page with ads and sticking his memes on there
The fact that running your own website puts you out of the reach of recommendation engines [indieweb.org], as IndieWeb proponents admit.
Also Facebook has in the past made "Free Basics" deals with ISPs not to charge data tolls to those ISPs' subscribers for traffic to Facebook's own properties (Facebook.com, Instagram, and WhatsApp).
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Viewers and a bankroll that should be sufficient to hire a webmaster along with hosting.
Re: I read the article (Score:2)
Re: I read the article (Score:2)
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No, you can't. Unless you're buying the entire building. Condos are the paid-for-and-"owned" version of an apartment. But you really don't "own" that either, since you don't own the building it's in or the property it's on.
Also a mortgage usually costs more than rent, but you eventually will actually own the property when paid off instead of owning a pile of "rent paid" receipts, so it's worth it.
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I only simply stated that the purchased form of an apartment is called a Condominium.
My post was purely informative, I'm not sure why you got all defensive and for some reason read into my post that somehow you think that I think I'm somehow 'special' as you so deftly put it.
Go psychoanalyze yourself for a while, see if you can figure out where your life went wrong, and why you feel the need to denigrate someone at random on the internet who is simply providing factual discourse for your benefit.
Or are you
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1/ $10,000 / month for producing essentially nothing of value? Really???
No value except for the 10k per month you mean?
Seriously dude how the hell can you be surprised that someone can make money in entertainment? People have been doing so since money existed.
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essentially nothing of value... News of the World ... doing the exact same thing
Hey now, Bat Boy has value. Any slacker should know sometimes you need something interesting to read at 4am.
The Sun on Sunday != Weekly World News (Score:2)
First, apparently bat characters don't have enough value to overcome the loss of the Chinese market [slashdot.org].
Second, you might have mixed up a couple tabloid names. News of the World became The Sun on Sunday, not to be confused with Weekly World News.
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Had to look up what gen-X is.. Why do you think your age have anything to do with social media acceptance - other than being able to start your old-man-yells-at-clouds moment with the proper when-I-grew-up tone?
1/ There have always been loads of shit produced with no explicit worth other than providing some enjoyment for some consumers, in fact per definition the world economy is driven by consumers buying something only to be provided worthless temporary enjoyment be it movies, candy, (excessive/unhealthy)
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I have mp3 files older than you.
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I suppose curating content from other people is technically adding value. Entertainment is a big industry. His other business ventures were the same kinds of arbitrage you see on Amazon, but which leveraged his popularity. That is a kind of value-add, though it more closely resembles rent-seeking.
Kids in his age range are not like GenXers at the same age range. Our tastes were curated by massive media campaigns on broadcast and cable TV, where getting a seat at the table took six figures or more. This guy m
In my teens... (Score:2)
I dont see this as much different, except for the income part of it.
It's about "a" teenager, not "the" teenager. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article title makes it sound like this is being a teenager in America.
In the "good olde days", no teenagers were able to monetize their fame to build a road to plausibly be wealthy. Then some teenagers were able to, by being entertainers, or sports stars. Then some were by unboxing things on YouTube or streaming a video game on Twitch. It's basically the modern version of entertainment news, where you're famous because you're famous, until you aren't.
Thing is, the difference between one in a million managing this and one in ten thousand managing this is not really relevant. The vast majority of teenagers aren't doing this. The vast majority of teenagers CAN'T do this at the same time, because someone has to provide the attention. It's too bad this teenager got his rug yanked out from under him ... but for every one of him, there were probably ten or a hundred who never managed to make $10k/month but who spent as much time in the delusion that they might be able to. And thousands more who think this is a plausible thing to do. And ten thousand more who are spending all that time and energy just paying attention to the one in ten thousand.
This kid being a "businessman" isn't the story. The story is the business, and it's a sad story.
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Indeed.
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There is no road to being wealthy here.
There is probably the traditional road of selling workshops to teach you how to become wealthy with a YouTube channel.
Though I guess I have to admit that I don't know if that road leads to wealth or not. You can clearly make a living selling that kind of thing, though.
I like the fact that I'm still ... (Score:2)
... quite old school and paranoid about using a commercial platform as my primary channel, let alone building a business on it. I have my blog and should I decide on being more active online and using it as and income steam I sure as hell am not going to give up control over the entire publishing process to some faceless megacorp that can shut me down in a second and not give two f*cks about it.
Only the paranoid survive. QED.
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Even the paranoid die eventually. Just look at Andy Grove.
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...I sure as hell am not going to give up control over the entire publishing process to some faceless megacorp that can shut me down in a second and not give two f*cks about it.
Unless you control your own Internet backbone, you can be shut down at any time. Your ISP can decide one day that you're more trouble than you're worth, and shut down your access.
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Some modern countries (some in Europe) have laws against this happening. Only in America are basic services (Internet, electricity, health care) under a market system.
Who cares (Score:2)
This is 1 in 100 Million or so and even he is not doing that well.
He understands todays market... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a Generation X like some other commenter in this thread, and I've been around since the Internet was available to the public for the first time, here's my take on his situation (and many others I've been following the last few years):
Many people may claim that what he does has zero value because it can go away as quickly as it came, but he still has value in my opinion, that is because unlike a lot of the older generation - he understands his audience, this is why he gained so much ground in the first place, this is really hard to do.
I've been working in advertisement and IT for as long as I can remember, and every single advertisement bureau I know of are looking for this kind of golden insight into what makes the young audience tick today, but 99.9% of them are completely unsuccessful at this, if they where any successful at this - they would rise faster than any company quicker than you can spell ice poseidon.
Kids like that are NOT useless, he will most likely find his way into advertisement and can use his skill and abilities to connect with an audience there.
Of course, we generation X'ers have a hard time understanding how this works, but I've been following these teenagers since PewDiePie got his breakthrough.
There's no simple success formula other than you gotta have drive, this applies no matter what business you're into. He was a young entrepreneur, he quickly found out how to use the system to his own advantage and keep his audience captivated with what they like.
However - we will see many young IRL and Youtube entrepreneurs fall now, because the big bastions from the past (Cable TV, Big old media, Magazines etc.) have been struggling with not being in control of what they used to rule before, they don't get todays youth at all, and they're mad about it. Until now - youtube and other media platforms have literally been owned by anyone with social skills and the insight into how to control these and use it for profit.
They're all changing the rules of how the platform works, and they ride the "won't anyone think of the children" excuse and it works, this is essentially changing youtube and other media platforms as we know it, because they want to control who's the recipients of their targeted advertisement, disguised as protecting the children from advertisement, but in reality they just want to be in control themselves.
As a few of you already know, youtube was "forced" to change its policies by the COPPA recommendations, which forces every single social media channel to abide by the new, somewhat unclear rules, and enables COPPA to be able to fine every single social media channel owner heavy fines up to 42K$ each violation, a violation as simple as not marking their content "for kids, or not for kids", which is near impossible as you may not know entirely who will watch your content, but more aggressively - place the burden of the COPPA restrictions on each individual.
This is a recipe for disaster, and it will be in full effect in January next year. Millions of content creators are now protesting, and the old media are literally clapping their little greedy hands to finally get total control over content, where they can decide who watches what once again. Goodbye freedom as we knew it.
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If you're not sure if it is for kids or not, it is not for kids.
Being for something is active. You would know.
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If you're not sure if it is for kids or not, it is not for kids.
Being for something is active. You would know.
Did you just come up with that? That's like saying "I don't want to do it" and "I want to not do it" (or "I don't like it" and "I dislike it") always mean the same thing. Or are you explaining the legal definition of "for kids" that is pertinent to COPPA guidelines?
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If you're not sure if it is for kids or not, it is not for kids.
The Federal Trade Commission's COPPA enforcement division would disagree.
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Yeah, i'm not convinced you've created value just because you made money. In this case, it most likely means less viewers elsewhere on the platform, and the platform worked out that his "content" had a low dollar value per view.
Content "creators" such as this guy have been able to spam *lots* of low-quality content, since they don't create any content themselves, thus they can make money off sheer quantity alone. but it means the platform is losing viewers for the more valuable, original content. These peop
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To put this in perspective: imagine I make a pirate TV streaming site and put adverts on it. I claim I'm "creating value" since the money is rolling in, as a reason I shouldn't be shut down. Guys like this are basically doing the same kind of thing.
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(point being: i'm actually destroying value, since only less reputable companies will be willing to advertise on my streaming site vs a legit streaming site, so the actual ad money per view is a lot less than a legitimate site would get. So there's less value generated for the show, even taking my profit into account)
Re: He understands todays market... (Score:2)
Great, swap one disease for another (Score:2)
If you base your business model on depending on a large corporation, don't be surprised if you get fucked. It is that simple. Because the likes of Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and whatever other antisocial media mills are out there can and do change their conditions at a whim and to their own advantage.
You're a product. Even and especially if you're their content creator. They will buy and sell you as they please. Rely on them and be prepared to be dicked over.
Nothing wrong with his ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
...just his execution. The Internet is a real economy, and society is slowly adapting to it. Just as some people made good money in land rushes hundreds of years ago, today some folk make money in various sorts of online rushes. Also the same: you can lose your fortune as fast as you made it.
This specific problem with Instagram is a problem of not owning your own site. If you stake your fortune on someone else's service, you are at their mercy. It's not clear to me just why Instagram wanted to be rid of memes, but it also doesn't matter. Their service, their choice. Moving to YouTube doesn't solve his problem at all: he needs to start his own site, or Mastadon node, or whatever - something under his own control.
Re: Nothing wrong with his ideas... (Score:3)
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The market value of something is not what you personally would pay for it. It's what the highest bidder would pay for it. So as long as someone out there is willing to pay for what he was making, it has value.
So many people don't seem to understand this. I had it driven into my skull in the 1990s when the Pokemon cra
Re: Nothing wrong with his ideas... (Score:2)
The problem with centralized services (Score:2)
And this is why I don't fear the robots (Score:4, Informative)
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Just like money itself ;)
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No we can't. People don't make money out of thin air, they make money out of entertaining whether that be intellectually, or pandering to some bizarre poorly understood emotion.
e.g. Some dude out there is making a fortune opening boxes. I will literally bet my Youtube career over the fact that no one in the world is interested in watching me do something similar.
Despite what people think, no we can't just make jobs out of air because for the majority of us then answer to the question of "Are you not enterta
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For every person making millions as an "influencer", there are millions of people trying to do the same thing and making pennies a day.
My impression is that the only jobs safe from automation are in entertainment. Ask all the people waiting tables in Hollywood how that typically pans out.
This is how it all works (Score:2)
They become powerful by enabling you.
Then once they become powerful, they don't need you any more, and they kick you to the curb.
IG, FU
Out with the old (Score:2)
2019, you suck. I'm ready for a new year.
Article doesn't address why his account was closed (Score:3)
Laughable (Score:2)
These young whippersnappers, in our times these guys had only a couple of hundred followers but they were real.
When push came to shove, they actually ate the pudding.
And now get off my lawn.
Learn your lesson (Score:2)
Don't base your business on someone else's business. It means you're always enslaved to their whims.
Not all it's cracked up to be (Score:2)
"Rack up enough while you're young, and doors everywhere begin to open," the Times notes. "College recruiters notice you. Job opportunities and internships come your way."
So, now that he's made lots of money but lost his Internet notoriety, how are all those opportunities working out?
Someone Else's Platform (Score:2)
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Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy made content that people enjoy watching for whatever reason. But you might say that he wasn’t in the business of content creation; he was in advertising. Something that our society values greatly, apparently.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Well he was drawing eyeballs, sure, but the platform probably worked out that they could divert those eyeballs somewhere else that the advertisers were willing to pay "more money per eyeball". Opportunity costs. i.e. *he* may have been making money but the platform as a whole could be losing money due to the glut of low-quality content that said advertisers didn't like.
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Not just "improves in some way", actually improves the utility of the platform itself. People aren't going to use instragram *less* if trash channels are shut down, they're going to migrate to les trash channels. Those less-trash channels are also worth more to advertisers and produce more original content, so shutting him down reduces redundancy (since he copied everything), increases platform revenue and puts more money into original content creation.
Re: Oh well (Score:2)
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Care to tell me what a "real" job is? Is there something like that left in the US? A job that actually produces something people want?
Because no, pencil pushing in an office or taking other people's money for a walk isn't a real job either.
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Oh god. Shut up. You think that is just an AMERICAN thing? Yeah, I get it. You were born in perfect Europe. We all know you guys sit around all day reading Keats and discussing life intelligently and aren't into money, or power. THIS IS ONE KID. The biggest Youtuber of all is from Sweden. So just shut up. Maybe travel a bit and you will see people in other countries are not all alike.
Re: Do Americans really believe that? (Score:2)
Re: Empire? (Score:3)