Additionally, Mr. Beast and other “content creators” are really just the face of small-to-medium-sized companies with brands established in much lower-competition markets with much lower standards and almost certainly could not recreate that success today as indie YouTubers, etc. Beast had over 250 employees as of a 2023 interview with a former employee. At one point I saw more 3D generalist ads for positions in his thumbnails department than from most huge studios, and they’re not looking for one-off work from freelancers— they’ve got an established 3D pipeline set up and they’re looking for full time staff that have experience with it. For THUMBNAILS. So now, when you’re starting out, you’re competing for search results space and recommendations with corporate, or legacy-media-backed marketing agencies presenting themselves as independent creators. Good. Fucking. Luck.

The only naive “Kumbaya, my lord” perspective around here is that the current “creative” tooling the corporate tech sector is building is positive for humanity’s creative landscape, and they didn’t just take what used to be the largest and healthiest independent creative marketplace humanity has ever experienced and hand it directly to corporate entities and low-effort, low-value bullshit “content” hucksters.