> I disagree. Twitch/YouTube/TikTok didn't create a new kind of millionaire. They're simply celebrities.
Yes and no. They are celebs, but definitely a new style of celebs. They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill. They could be your neighbor or the dude next to you in a supermarket, and you wouldn't know. Furthermore, they are millionaire working from home, growing from home, with average equipment and average products. This is something which never happened before, not at this scale.
Though, to be fair, there are also some actual skilled people growing into this space and celebs from other areas are breaking in too.
> There is no "new industries", it all still falls under the entertainment industry umbrella,
Yes, obviously. But the type and quality is completely different to established entertainment. It started with people with the bare minimum of entertaining-skill who established this. People who wouldn't have been able to succeed in the classical entertainment-industry. And this absolutely is a change. For the industry itself, it also is a change, because those people are cheaper and have a different angle to play at. This is more on the quality-level of a tupperware-party that somehow went up to a global scale.
> They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
You've clearly never been to a restaurant in LA or NY. These are chock full of "average Joes" working as bartenders and waitresses just waiting to "make it" in movies, tvs, commercials.
Many of the top twitch streamers have legitimate "skill", it's just not the skill you might be referring to in classic entertainment. For example "360 no scope sniper kills" might be the equivalent of "funny one liner quips".
I think you're blurring some lines. I don't imagine Ben Levin (a friend of the much more famous Adam Neely) is a millionaire, and I certainly don't imagine either of them are anywhere on the same level as someone like MrBeast, who actually employs a crew much like a TV show might.
It certainly is as easy as ever to get started, but I think this idea that anyone can just pick up an iphone camera and become a millionaire is a bit disingenuous. As the article alludes, it does take effort, sacrifice and probably a healthy dose of luck to get somewhere in the industry, especially with how crowded it has become.
I don't know Ben Levin, but IIRC MrBeast did started as the average Joe and just grew big. And yes, of course the lines do blur over time. If the new creators become big, they start stepping into the realms of professionality and are beginning cooperations with old industry, creating content for the new and old spaces. But they usually still have the average joe-vibes, because that's how people grew with them, how they see and remember them. But also because they continue maintaining this vibes, as this is their habit of working.
> but I think this idea that anyone can just pick up an iphone camera and become a millionaire is a bit disingenuous.
Obviously not everyone can do that, but this is how almost everyone from the new industry started. I would say, it's simply the difference in culture, between old industry professionals trained schools and such, and the self learners of the new industry. Though, old industry is now moving in this space too, so it will change with time.
> They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
Absolutely, provably false.
It takes a lot of skill to constantly produce content at the rate that millionaire twitch streamers do. Most of them own youtube channels as well, which requires additional time to process, edit, and mix videos, depending on what they're doing with it.
It also takes a high level of creativity in order to come up with new ideas for streams, keep the audience engaged while playing the same game for hundreds of hours on end. This means doing giveaways, interacting with the audience without offending them, planning contests, negotiating advertising deals with game-makers for promo-streams, etc. etc.
It's an incredibly demanding gig, that, at the very least, requires a pretty insane schedule, or being really passionate about the job. Most people would burn-out at their rate, and a lot actually do.
Maybe some streamers get help in production and orchestrating their stream, but for most it's more than a full-time job commitment.
Those average Joes you mentioned? They get 1-2 viewers, who are usually their closest friends. This the skill ceiling for "barely any special skill" people. If they stream a game that just came out, they may break 10 viewers once in a while. That's about it.
> It takes a lot of skill to constantly produce content at the rate that millionaire twitch streamers do.
Well, that's disputable. Most content-sources are delivered externally, in form of games and stuff they can react too. It's not like they sit there and think up something fresh by themselves for 8 hours a day. Though, yes, they have some naturally skill in socializing which they hone over time. But still I would not say it goes beyond the skill of any other natural socializer which exists in any community.
> Most of them own youtube channels as well, which requires additional time to process, edit, and mix videos, depending on what they're doing with it.
Which is most of the time not done by them. Usually they pay people for this. And to be fair, Videos of streamers are usually not really masterpieces either. They are optimized versions of their streaming-content. A good youtube-creator has significant more skill there. They occasionally also create far higher quality of content than most streamers.
> It's an incredibly demanding gig, that, at the very least, requires a pretty insane schedule, or being really passionate about the job.
How many streamers do you actually know? Well scheduled is not really what I would call most streams I've seen.
> Maybe some streamers get help in production and orchestrating their stream, but for most it's more than a full-time job commitment.
If you are a fulltime-streamer, earning money, then they pretty much all get help to some degree.
> Those average Joes you mentioned? They get 1-2 viewers, who are usually their closest friends.
Not really. They are many dedicated hardworking people with similar skill-levels even on the lowest levels. Success in streaming depends far more on luck than skill. Though, luck is also a skill in some way, so hard to say...
But the skills I was talking about are not the ones you are getting naturally but being alive or just doing stuff long enough to acquire them. Obviously if you stream long enough you get a bunch of skills and knowledge automatically, which any non-streamer is missing yet. But that is nothing special.
Special is stuff not everyone has or can acquire on it's own. Like a professional who went through a long professional training, reaching a level of quality a normal selfmade-streamer never can reach. Or someone which a career outside of streaming. There are more and more people like that hitting the platforms. Many entertainers with decade-long careers came in the pandemia to twitch and youtube, searching for new playgrounds and displaying skills which leaves any big established streamer in the dust.
> They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
What's your evidence for this? I don't watch a ton of streaming, but to me it looks hard to do well. If they're truly average people, how do you explain the big differences in popularity?
> They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill.
This is not true. It is no more true for streaming then for acting, hosting tv show or entertaining in bar via magic tricks or playing music. The ability to produce entertaining streams is a separate skill. Not just in game skill.
> This is something which never happened before, not at this scale.
At the time when live music was a thing, there were definitely few thousands musicians able to live from it. Which is as large scale as successful streamers seem to be.
> growing from home, with average equipment and average products
Really, no more true then about musical instruments of the past.
Yes and no. They are celebs, but definitely a new style of celebs. They are your average Joe, with barely any special skill. They could be your neighbor or the dude next to you in a supermarket, and you wouldn't know. Furthermore, they are millionaire working from home, growing from home, with average equipment and average products. This is something which never happened before, not at this scale.
Though, to be fair, there are also some actual skilled people growing into this space and celebs from other areas are breaking in too.
> There is no "new industries", it all still falls under the entertainment industry umbrella,
Yes, obviously. But the type and quality is completely different to established entertainment. It started with people with the bare minimum of entertaining-skill who established this. People who wouldn't have been able to succeed in the classical entertainment-industry. And this absolutely is a change. For the industry itself, it also is a change, because those people are cheaper and have a different angle to play at. This is more on the quality-level of a tupperware-party that somehow went up to a global scale.