Know what? Not me. Know why? Because it's all gonna come crashing down eventually. I used to want to be a YouTuber. Tried for years to get big. Then I watch as all these people who actually make money from YouTube have to hold their tongues and tie themselves in knots to not get demonetized and I'm like "JOKES ON YOU, I WAS NEVER MONETIZED TO BEGIN WITH!". Same thing with Twitch. No king reigns forever and when your e-fame finally dies down you won't have a marketable skillset to survive.
i'm in this same boat with a caveat: unless something huge and earth-shattering happens to livestreaming as twitch knows it and it suddenly becomes an explicitly exclusive clique/'career', they'll keep a not-insignificant part of their audience as they get older, and if they're serious about keeping their faces on screen they'll be able to coast by on that for the rest of their lives.
still, i agree. being likable is a quality that very few public figures think is necessary now, so here's what we have: horrible, demented, deranged people spewing total insanity. the modus operandi of wokeness isn't going to last forever. take anita sarkeesian and zoe quinn for example. i believe that darksydephil and jim sterling are nearing their respective cliff drops, too. for a lot of them, they have no way of generating income or 'making it' besides begging for it. i'm not optimistic about today's creators being remembered in history as anything but whoopee cushions, but if they can turn themselves around, reject being an NPC, i'm all for it.
if they can't, so be it. i enjoy warming my hands at any dumpster fire.
I'm interested in how these guys try to stay relatable to their audience while sitting on lots of money. Income was always an icky topic for content creators because most of the audience isn't that well off.
the only way forward is to be real and honest with yourself, for your entire life. the main way to fit in as your life and circumstances change is to just be true to your core motivations and goals, adapting to your surroundings. very few of them seem capable of reinventing themselves because they've been machines all their lives and they get angry in very petty ways.
what happens when an unassuming normie suddenly becomes successful? they often become extremely uncomfortable with themselves. Notch became a billionaire, and very quickly had no idea who he was or what he was doing in his existence. who he was, was no longer 'acceptable' for a man of means. but he had no idea what a man of means should look like. so of course he had an awkward phase like living in a mansion and doing things that got him teased and mocked. but in his case, at the core, he was and still is no longer doing what he always did.
in fact i have no idea what he's doing besides probably shitposting on a forum somewhere. the last i ever heard of him was donating money to the speedrunner convention and some very sad people participating in that event found ways to snap at him. if he's decided to quit the internet and just live out his days in comfort and wealth, more power to him.
compare that to Tony Hawk. what is he doing? exactly what he always did. he's just not competing anymore, and he's doing what he did simply at a larger scale. what's Joe Rogan doing? well, he's not matched for likability. he's extraordinarily popular and authentic, and he has the unique trait of being hyper-masculine yet very nurturing.
many of the most popular creators and streamers online have twisted views of what a person of 'their personage' and 'their means' is supposed to look and act like, and the facades they construct have never come off as genuine or believable at all. crit1kal's sex toy fascination has never been entertaining. to me, it's an edgelord doing bizarre things because hey, he's an edgelord, and oh! look how aloof he is about it! even if you had a great time there, something's not quite right about it. at the end of the day, you forget all about it, and are left wondering who or what you're even watching.
bit like a Gatsby party in that respect.
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