- Joined
- Jan 27, 2020
Since falling down the lolcow rabbit hole a few years back, one thing has become clear to me: many of the more infamous lolcows have been able to successfully monetize their lolcow behaviour to the point where it could be considered a career in its own right.
DSP, Ethan Ralph, Dick Masterson, Nick Fuentes and a whole bunch of other lolcows have obviously made serious bank over the years. Granted, many lolcows are terrible with money and have pissed it all away, but there are others (mainly political grift lolcows on both sides of the divide) who have spent their lolcow earnings on stuff like fancy houses and whatnot.
In some cases, being a lolcow may even be a second job leading to a change in career. Nick Rekieta is the poster boy for such a transition.
Granted, for every lolcow raking in hundreds of dollars worth of super chats for a couple hours' work every night, there are thousands out there screaming into the void.
As far as careers go, being a lolcow isn't a great career and seems like it'd be very tough to break into unless you can glom onto a more successful lolcow for clout.
The other thing to consider is just how much work goes into being a successful lolcow. How many thousands of hours did the typical lolcow need to grind for until they became successful enough to acquire a large enough fanbase to throw their shekels at them?
It's difficult to compare lolcowing (for want of a better term) with other established career paths, but I'd put it somewhere in the entertainment industry.
In some ways, the lolcow shares something in common with the musician or street performer. They're all busking for a few bits of shrapnel here and there, and most are unremarkable at best. Yet there are a few whose talent is so obvious that they eventually catch the eye of a larger audience. Whether it be an A&R guy hearing a busker with a remarkable set of pipes, the director of an upcoming arts festival seeing some especially powerful interpretive dance on YouTube, or a video platform's algorithm picking up a Let's Play video which is unintentionally hilarious, the end result is the same.
The other parallel between lolcowing and other entertainment pursuits is how fickle an audience can be, and how important it is to make hay while the sun shines. It'd be sad to work so hard for all those years to get to the top of the lolcow tree, only to blow it all on Xanax and Lego.
In the not-too-distant future, I can see more people actively choosing lolcowing as their career path instead of just falling into it in the way people like DSP and Chris Chan did. Sure, an argument can be made that someone like Rekieta or Fuentes chose lolcowing as a career path; I'd argue that they didn't intend to become lolcows, it's just where they ended up.
To be honest, the day when people start putting effort into becoming a lolcow will be the beginning of the end, as manufactured anything always has a stink of astroturf and (((corporate backing))) behind it. Not naming names, but Dylan Mulvaney knows who he is.
DSP, Ethan Ralph, Dick Masterson, Nick Fuentes and a whole bunch of other lolcows have obviously made serious bank over the years. Granted, many lolcows are terrible with money and have pissed it all away, but there are others (mainly political grift lolcows on both sides of the divide) who have spent their lolcow earnings on stuff like fancy houses and whatnot.
In some cases, being a lolcow may even be a second job leading to a change in career. Nick Rekieta is the poster boy for such a transition.
Granted, for every lolcow raking in hundreds of dollars worth of super chats for a couple hours' work every night, there are thousands out there screaming into the void.
As far as careers go, being a lolcow isn't a great career and seems like it'd be very tough to break into unless you can glom onto a more successful lolcow for clout.
The other thing to consider is just how much work goes into being a successful lolcow. How many thousands of hours did the typical lolcow need to grind for until they became successful enough to acquire a large enough fanbase to throw their shekels at them?
It's difficult to compare lolcowing (for want of a better term) with other established career paths, but I'd put it somewhere in the entertainment industry.
In some ways, the lolcow shares something in common with the musician or street performer. They're all busking for a few bits of shrapnel here and there, and most are unremarkable at best. Yet there are a few whose talent is so obvious that they eventually catch the eye of a larger audience. Whether it be an A&R guy hearing a busker with a remarkable set of pipes, the director of an upcoming arts festival seeing some especially powerful interpretive dance on YouTube, or a video platform's algorithm picking up a Let's Play video which is unintentionally hilarious, the end result is the same.
The other parallel between lolcowing and other entertainment pursuits is how fickle an audience can be, and how important it is to make hay while the sun shines. It'd be sad to work so hard for all those years to get to the top of the lolcow tree, only to blow it all on Xanax and Lego.
In the not-too-distant future, I can see more people actively choosing lolcowing as their career path instead of just falling into it in the way people like DSP and Chris Chan did. Sure, an argument can be made that someone like Rekieta or Fuentes chose lolcowing as a career path; I'd argue that they didn't intend to become lolcows, it's just where they ended up.
To be honest, the day when people start putting effort into becoming a lolcow will be the beginning of the end, as manufactured anything always has a stink of astroturf and (((corporate backing))) behind it. Not naming names, but Dylan Mulvaney knows who he is.
