One thing that perplexes me a bit is the weird veneration given to “content creators” these days, especially in gaming communities and similar. Does anyone have good insights into this? In particular, I’ve noticed that a lot of it is very easy to do (having done so myself), and also that people don’t much do it.
An example:
There’s a game that I play and do streams for sometimes. A while back I decided it would be cool to run an online ladder similar to the ones that I’d seen in a few other games. It was very easy to set up and probably took me a few hours of not-very-focused work, then once I ran it a bunch of people signed up and we had a tournament with streamed commentary for the top players at the end.
Recently I started playing another game, enjoyed it, and decided to duplicate my league format from the first game. This time it probably took me like 30 minutes to set up since I mostly just had to rewrite the rules from the first game. Already people are signing up, thanking me for organizing it, etc.
I don’t get it. What’s the big deal about stuff like this? I basically just copied a format that I’d seen others use successfully and adapted it a bit. It didn’t take any technical skill whatsoever to do and many others could have done the same thing I did—but nobody did.
Is the big thing about “content creators” just one of those “these are the people who bothered to show up” things, or what?
(I feel similarly about “maker culture”—but at least there there’s often some more interesting technical skill involved!)
From a market-equilibrium perspective: the amount of social status given to these content creators is high because in most cases that’s the only compensation they’re getting, for (in some cases) a quite significant number of hours. The reason there aren’t more people using their time to claim those status-rewards is because, for a similar amount of effort, they could instead be making salaries.
In the case of video game streaming, many people already spend a lot of time playing video games. I think OP’s point is, if it’s time that a person is already spending doing the core task of streaming (i.e. playing games), then why not stream it for a minimal (according to OP) amount of added effort
If 1 in 100 people have the type of agency to “do stuff” that means smaller communities will often wait to get most STUFF, because there’s only so many people and there’s lots of “stuff” you could do. E.g. for this game, I’m sure there’s other stuff you could have spent your half hour on to give back to the community, you just happened to want this.
I think in these small communities people are rightfully happy about ANYONE using their free time to add to the commons.
As the communities get bigger, the low hanging fruit is taken and you start to have to create better content to be appreciated, e.g., getting popular on mainstream Youtube takes more than a few hours and requires more investment in content quality.
Sure, here’s the most recent completed one. I just used the same site I was familiar with from an old Netrunner league, it’s trivial to do. (This doesn’t show the tournament I ran at the end but that wasn’t especially hard either, I just sent people their pairings on Discord etc.)
Looking at myself, as someone who has done things adjacent to streaming in the past, and who has played a lot of video games at various times in my life, it may be informative to think about the reasons I don’t stream:
The computer I used to record me playing on died, and now I have a new computer which runs a different operating system, and I don’t want to spend the time to get everything set up again. I think there are a good number of things that are relatively easy to do on an ongoing basis, but which involve high enough up-front costs that I don’t do them
I also have a general aversion to installing software on my computer, since my experience seems to be that computer performance is inversely proportional to how much stuff is on it
My understanding is that streaming console games requires extra hardware. While I already have this hardware, this may discourage potential streamers who are first considering streaming
I have mixed feelings about pursuing social status via online media. There’s a part of me that loves these kinds of things for obvious reasons, but I also have three holdups:
Looking for attention feels vain, and I sometimes feel that it makes people perceive me in a way that doesn’t align with who I consider myself to be.
There exist incentives in the space of “content creation” that don’t align with my values, and when I created content in the past, it led me to interact with other creators who didn’t understand why I intentionally ignored these incentives, and pressured me to act in ways that I didn’t endorse
Cancel culture is a thing, and getting popular through online media makes one a target for cancelling. I have clear memories of a creator I respected getting cancelled, and I was very scared by the treatment he got from the mob. I would rather not find myself in such a position, and therefore I am reluctant to put myself in a position where people might readily want to cancel me
My computer is a desktop, and it is located in a different room from where I play video games. Putting aside streaming, I would have no reason to rearrange my setup, and doing so would probably decrease the quality of my experience, both in terms of playing games, and non-gaming related things as well
There’s some amount of expectation to follow a certain schedule when streaming, whereas right now, I can play games whenever I want, and I have no obligation to play at a certain time
There’s some amount of expectation that streamers will put in extra effort to engage with their audience, or otherwise create a more interesting experience for their audience, which means that time spent streaming isn’t perfectly isomorphic to time spent gaming alone.
I don’t think this is a complete list of reasons, but all of these are reasons why I don’t stream even when I’m already spending time playing videogames.
One thing that perplexes me a bit is the weird veneration given to “content creators” these days, especially in gaming communities and similar. Does anyone have good insights into this? In particular, I’ve noticed that a lot of it is very easy to do (having done so myself), and also that people don’t much do it.
An example:
There’s a game that I play and do streams for sometimes. A while back I decided it would be cool to run an online ladder similar to the ones that I’d seen in a few other games. It was very easy to set up and probably took me a few hours of not-very-focused work, then once I ran it a bunch of people signed up and we had a tournament with streamed commentary for the top players at the end.
Recently I started playing another game, enjoyed it, and decided to duplicate my league format from the first game. This time it probably took me like 30 minutes to set up since I mostly just had to rewrite the rules from the first game. Already people are signing up, thanking me for organizing it, etc.
I don’t get it. What’s the big deal about stuff like this? I basically just copied a format that I’d seen others use successfully and adapted it a bit. It didn’t take any technical skill whatsoever to do and many others could have done the same thing I did—but nobody did.
Is the big thing about “content creators” just one of those “these are the people who bothered to show up” things, or what?
(I feel similarly about “maker culture”—but at least there there’s often some more interesting technical skill involved!)
In a world of distraction, focusing on something is a revolutionary act.
Wow, that’s a good answer to a good question.
From a market-equilibrium perspective: the amount of social status given to these content creators is high because in most cases that’s the only compensation they’re getting, for (in some cases) a quite significant number of hours. The reason there aren’t more people using their time to claim those status-rewards is because, for a similar amount of effort, they could instead be making salaries.
In the case of video game streaming, many people already spend a lot of time playing video games. I think OP’s point is, if it’s time that a person is already spending doing the core task of streaming (i.e. playing games), then why not stream it for a minimal (according to OP) amount of added effort
If 1 in 100 people have the type of agency to “do stuff” that means smaller communities will often wait to get most STUFF, because there’s only so many people and there’s lots of “stuff” you could do. E.g. for this game, I’m sure there’s other stuff you could have spent your half hour on to give back to the community, you just happened to want this.
I think in these small communities people are rightfully happy about ANYONE using their free time to add to the commons.
As the communities get bigger, the low hanging fruit is taken and you start to have to create better content to be appreciated, e.g., getting popular on mainstream Youtube takes more than a few hours and requires more investment in content quality.
Hubs. Using connection to create group activities has low hanging fruit right now.
Maybe it’s hard to find stuff, and most effort is going into that, rather than creating stuff.
Or it’s the ideas that are hard to find. (1&3 - you’re connecting people who haven’t had the idea, with it in action.)
People are overly risk averse, even in the absence of any risk?
Do you have any links to stuff like the ladders you mention?
Sure, here’s the most recent completed one. I just used the same site I was familiar with from an old Netrunner league, it’s trivial to do. (This doesn’t show the tournament I ran at the end but that wasn’t especially hard either, I just sent people their pairings on Discord etc.)
Looking at myself, as someone who has done things adjacent to streaming in the past, and who has played a lot of video games at various times in my life, it may be informative to think about the reasons I don’t stream:
The computer I used to record me playing on died, and now I have a new computer which runs a different operating system, and I don’t want to spend the time to get everything set up again. I think there are a good number of things that are relatively easy to do on an ongoing basis, but which involve high enough up-front costs that I don’t do them
I also have a general aversion to installing software on my computer, since my experience seems to be that computer performance is inversely proportional to how much stuff is on it
My understanding is that streaming console games requires extra hardware. While I already have this hardware, this may discourage potential streamers who are first considering streaming
I have mixed feelings about pursuing social status via online media. There’s a part of me that loves these kinds of things for obvious reasons, but I also have three holdups:
Looking for attention feels vain, and I sometimes feel that it makes people perceive me in a way that doesn’t align with who I consider myself to be.
There exist incentives in the space of “content creation” that don’t align with my values, and when I created content in the past, it led me to interact with other creators who didn’t understand why I intentionally ignored these incentives, and pressured me to act in ways that I didn’t endorse
Cancel culture is a thing, and getting popular through online media makes one a target for cancelling. I have clear memories of a creator I respected getting cancelled, and I was very scared by the treatment he got from the mob. I would rather not find myself in such a position, and therefore I am reluctant to put myself in a position where people might readily want to cancel me
My computer is a desktop, and it is located in a different room from where I play video games. Putting aside streaming, I would have no reason to rearrange my setup, and doing so would probably decrease the quality of my experience, both in terms of playing games, and non-gaming related things as well
There’s some amount of expectation to follow a certain schedule when streaming, whereas right now, I can play games whenever I want, and I have no obligation to play at a certain time
There’s some amount of expectation that streamers will put in extra effort to engage with their audience, or otherwise create a more interesting experience for their audience, which means that time spent streaming isn’t perfectly isomorphic to time spent gaming alone.
I don’t think this is a complete list of reasons, but all of these are reasons why I don’t stream even when I’m already spending time playing videogames.