‘You can’t pause the internet’: social media creators hit by burnout
Their jobs are seen as glamorous but the new reality for many is workplace stress and ‘complete fatigue’
Cool, I have workplace stress and complete fatigue from sitting in an office dealing with bullshit all day and I don't get paid millions fucking around on YouTube and tiktok. You can't pause any job. Stfu
Funny. I follow some creators, but if they don't post I'll just check back later, and the content will still be relevant.
If your followers just leave you if you don't post, your content is probably shallow and doesn't really add much value to the world.
The algorithm is also fucked, but you use it to your advantage when you can, so can you really complain about the downside? This is what you choose to work with.
That being said, making good content is hard and really time consuming. So I get that there is stress.
But I believe if you make good solid content that suits you and your style, you don't need to get into a pissing contest with the algorithm. Upload when you want, make what you want and you will attract viewers. They are out there, and they will find you through searching.
Yeah most of the content I watch is still useful years later. Now it may not be super current since tech changes so fast, but still useful. If you have to stay in someone’s face all the time to stay memorable, you’re not memorable or relevant.
If your audience will disappear because you go away for 5 minutes you were probably not providing anything of value in the first place
first of all these people are basicly making others buy crap they dont really want. second: this is just an article about young workers, who work too much and cant seperate their private life from worklife. could have been an insightful newspiece if it werent for guardian and the usual forced buzzwords.
My lord the amount of “I have a REAL job” in here is too damn high. I work 8 hours a night, 40+ hours a week, in an automotive plant. My job can be very stressful, and physically demanding. So what?
I don’t sit here and whine about people that stare at their screens (IT, developers, etc) all day. Are they really doing any work? After all, they are not performing physical labor.
How is it that different for people who create content? I’d argue that they do more work, as they have to set up, film, edit and market their work.
See how silly this sounds? A job is a job. Unless you own your own business, you are making money for someone else.
It's easy to try on that pair of shoes. Those ignorants should go ahead and try building a community, try creating a video with some genuine effort regarding its content and - especially - edit it in an appealing way.
Heck, I was doing some Blender rendering for fun as a hobby and am occasionally recording some demo videos of a project I am working at for my supervisor. Sometimes it takes about two hours to edit a fucking 10 minute video. This is just a huge amount of work. No wonder any creator, who has reached a sufficient level of income, hires editors.
I also think a big part of content creator burnout is the 'everything is content' mindset. If you work in a factory or an office usually you can go home and not be at work any more. When hanging out with your friends or being with your family also becomes content and therefore part of your job, the mental toll clearly becomes unbearable.
Yeah man, that shit can be hard and time consuming.
I used to do a podcast. Each episode was around 12 minutes. I'd spend a good eight hours a week on those 12 minutes, around my actual job, and would get about ten people listening. And you know that within half an hour of hearing it, they've forgotten it and moved on to the next thing in their queue. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for that.
You aren't wrong. But being a social media influencer is something almost no one would accidentally fall into. People who do it intentionally are doing it to chase a dream of fame and fortune and glamor - but because there is a limited amount of attention in the world and it is highly concentrated, you are really rolling the dice on a dream if you decide to commit to it. There is a very high probability that even if you put your whole heart and soul into it and did everything perfectly, you will still never achieve much more financial success than a child's lemonade stand.
It's basically the same thing as wanting to be a blockbuster film actor or a rock star or an NBA player. If you are struggling and unsuccessful... Well yeah, that's exactly what everyone told you would happen. Go get a different job. And if you are successful and famous and making tons of money - "oh no, boohoo, it must be so hard to be successful beyond your wildest dreams."
Maybe for the top tier influencers, but there are a ton of people making a reasonable living just by doing it what they enjoy. For example, strategy game streamers:
There are plenty more who are popular because of their skill at what they stream about and are competent enough at keeping people's attention. If you're the best, people will come to you, it's not always just luck. A lot of people get there through luck, but a lot earn their way too.
At least in some cases, it might just be wholesome advice. The fact that you have "a job" and a whole different persona from that and they're two separate things that sometimes intertwine probably brings you closer to us in administrative tasks (in the end, IT is by definition always something administrative rather than actually productive) than me as in an IT guy with an influencer. Because ultimately, your actual identity is your job, and by conclusion, your whole life is performative, which sounds REALLY exhausting
Won't someone think of the poor influencers!? Sorry, "creators". Just like Van Gogh and Stanley Kubrick.
If someone calls themselves an “influencer“ I immediately want to punch them in the face.
If your "job" is to convince brainless zoomers to eat tide pods or convince them to try DIY plastic surgery with hammers, maybe burning out isn't a bad thing. Maybe we're just seeing nature healing itself.
I heard someone talking about a content creator they watch, and how that creator basically can't take a vacation without losing tons of followers and potentially a major chunk of their income.
Yep, this exactly. They can never clock out at the end of the day. It isn’t 8 hours of work and you’re done. You’re having to constantly try to innovate. Make tons of content, spend so much time editing, constant filming, constant planning. And if you deviate in your schedule, or upload some content that isn’t interesting, the algorithm punishes you and you may even get people that unsubscribe.
Must be hell when you can’t afford to take a vacation from that content creator life. Can never really “switch off”. Plus the fact that less than 1% actually make it big, and it’s mostly based on luck plus years and years of determination.
It isn’t 8 hours of work and you’re done
That really depends on the type of content. Something like LTT is very much 8 hours and you're done, except the handful of times when there's a time crunch (e.g. new hardware launch). Even smaller creators plan out videos in advance and can create a working schedule.
The hardest part is starting out, followed by finding an audience. Once you get the audience, creating a consistent schedule is the easier part, especially once you can start hiring help.
I hear this all the time but I struggle to see how it is true. How many people regularly trawl through their feed looking for creators who haven’t posted in X days and unfollowing them? It would be a minuscule number. I’m pretty darn selective with my follows and I think I’d do this once a year, tops.
I think creators are conflating the everyday ups and downs of follower counts on their platform(s) as being something more. And I think the platforms themselves are encouraging this mentality because they need fresh content.
As OP specified in another reply, they were talking about streamers specifically. And with them, big chunk of the income comes from Twitch subscribers, which is a monthly paid subscription. If you are willing to pay someone for it, you'll notice pretty much immediately if they miss their scheduled stream and cancel it.
For many other platforms what you said is true, I'm way more likely to unsubscribe from someone when they post a video and remind me I'm still subbed than when they take a break and fade out of my feed.
Just because you do something a certain way doesn't mean everyone does. A huge chunk of these peoples income comes from the random people who find their videos or streams because of the "algorithm". Not from their regular viewers. Those regular viewers allow for a certain amount of steadiness, but they're also more likely to watch videos at a later time rather than right when they're uploaded. Which is a significant drop in revenue for each view.
Boo hoo, losers. Your device has a power switch. Influencers have a warped and inflated sense of the value they create. They can stop at any time and use their skills in other ways.
Making good content is hard, but ‘good’ content doesn’t have an expiration date. Shallow brain-rot content does and that’s what the algorithms reward.
The entitlement that influencers have is nauseating. There are many creators out there laboring in near obscurity and producing useful content all the time for little or no compensation.
They are tools for Zuck and fools for propping his platforms up. It sounds like a hard slog, but they can stop any time.
You're making enemies of your own team. These people are creatives, doing a job they love, and a corporate algorithm forces them to destroy their work life balance to keep doing what they love. And you're belittling them. You need a reality check, these people are not your enemy.
Nah, if you are feeding the Zuck, not my team. The principled creatives aren’t there.
It sucks to try to make a living as a creative. But giving your efforts to support social media platforms controlled by the worst people is inexcusable. Zuck literally and provably helped the fascists gain power.
The creatives I can respect create because they are compelled to. They work jobs and create when they can. They share their work on less shitty platforms and in actual real life.
Yeah sheez. You know what you can’t pause? The flow of customers into the drive through. Internet influencers work on their own clock.
Let’s get an article about fast food worker burnout please.
Do creative people have viable paths to income that aren’t social media?
How does one survive as an artist or a small film maker, when there is no patronage, government funding for museums is constantly on the chopping block, and any form of art you make is going to be uploaded whether you like it or not?
Our society essentially has no paths to success for creative types other than social media - especially with C-suites deciding that they’d rather use the plagiarism machine to make slop than hire actual content makers and artists?
Making things like clip art used to be a job. You used to be able to paint signs. There was work for mid level artists. Now, your options are trying to go viral on social media/hunt for commissions.
but ‘good’ content doesn’t have an expiration date.
Yes, it does, depending on the topic. If it's video games, like with MOBAs that get updated regularly, all the content for that patch expires after two weeks. Itemization and champion builds change so much that whatever value there was for you to build similarly is lost, and you're left with a mildly amusing thing about how something used to be.
Lol
Get a better job.
You say that but i appreciate their efforts. And wile i will understand and expect creators to work at their own pace, if only the algorithm wasn’t 100% momentum driven AND/OR i could just get front page notification when my subs post something, and didn’t just unsub me for not watching a video for a wile. I am an adult and can manage my own feeds
Get a job*
I currently scrub toilets for a living while I'm back at school for a mid-life career change. I work ten hours tonight, my feet are still a bit sore from my shift two days ago.
Suck it up, buttercup, get a real job. I'm not sharing all of this to sound like I'm better, I'm sharing this to show what a significant chunk of people do for a living, Joe Jobs.
Being a social media influencer isn't a job for most people, it's a vanity hobby.
This is the most boomer take I've ever seen on this website. And that includes what few conservatives have filtered in.
You are better.
No I'm not, walking down that path leads to arrogance and unearned pride. I just live in reality, instead of falling prey to the lies of false riches in the social media popularity contest.
Seek for your own answers and Know Thyself. Please, all of you that are always on social media. Withdraw, do not fall prey to the Siren's Tale of the Glory of Achilles. Instead, seek a good life, one that is quiet, and belongs to you.
Do not become a false god, you cannot live up to that burden.
You're not like everyone else!
Yes I am.
I’m so glad I was young before this stupid reality happened. I have a regular job and no desire for internet fame.
I asked my younger family members what they want to be when they grow up, and being a YouTuber was at the top of the list. I hate this so much.
So no follow-up questions? "What content are you gonna make? How are you gonna promote it? Any backup plans?"
you're just old...
Yeah, and I feel like I'm winning. If you want to be an influencer, go do that.
I imagine that being a content creator as a full-time job is much more difficult than most people realize. Also, the modern work environment is a hellscape, and I can’t blame people who want to avoid it. Still, it’s risky as hell - if the platform you rely on changes its compensation policies, you are screwed, and have even less legal protection/recourse than a McDonalds employee.
I wouldn’t expect a responsible person to take on that level of risk without a safety net. If you’re young and childless, then taking that risk is your call, and it’s unfair for me to judge you. If you’re relying on social media to pay the mortgage for your child’s home, though, you’d better have a backup plan and keep it ready.
You can't turn off any job. We all are burning out in this bitch. At least you're sitting at home making videos.
Okay, not sure how much this matters considering where the world is heading, but:
If they can't get better working conditions because you'll complain (it's not fair, yadda yadda), how will you get better working conditions when they complain (it's not fair, yadda yadda)?
I'm just saying, if you're not willing to play ball, why should I care about your sick pay?
Medicaid is gonna burn up soon. Should I be concerned that you'll be losing coverage, or are we just fully on board with this petty individualism?
You can't pause the internet
Something I had to tell my mom all the time.
"Pause your damn game!"
"Its online, I can't pause it!"
I think they should stop.
Firstly, let's call them what they are, hucksters.
Secondly, I cannot think of anything I give a shit less about than their burnout at making internet videos of themselves.
If you've talked yourself into a world where you must be on social media, you are absolutely fucked. Get out. now.
So they can't keep selling their soul and dignity without consequences.
None of us can. It's just a job, just they get even more shit on because they're more public facing figures.
The responses in this thread are sick. So much vitriol for members of your own class who are just trying to make a living doing what they love and creating things.
I dont give a fuck about their burnout lol. if they love it so much why are they whining about doing it?
I'm in health care, you think illness has a pause button? I chose this, they chose theirs.
in the early days of the internet, I'm talking GeoCities days, I started what would be called a podcast about gaming. I recorded with windows sound recorder and a shitty Logitech desktop mic and then ran it through RealAudio to compress it to a downloadable format.
I shared it with communities online like IRC and BBS's.
I got shit on so fucking much that I quit after my 6th cast. I received so much hate that I honestly thought of self harm.
now, it wasn't right that it happened. but, it happened decades ago before podcasting, live streaming, YouTube, content creators, and influencers were a "thing". my point is, it is a danger of creating anything for the world. if you don't have the skin for it, the world will eat you alive, so get over it.
only use things with pause buttons!
Posting shit on youtube made you tired? Poor you. Go do so real work instead.