But... they can do exactly that. You can whip up a few pages in HTML with pictures and put on Github or shared hosting. Heck, you can even use a publishing platform like WordPress if you're not technically inclined. Each time you use your pot for a family dinner, you jot down the recipe and you publish it. Boom: you've created content!
So, what's the problem then?
It's how the goalpost for defining success have shifted. You're only successful if you are a full time writer of crock pot recipes, and you can leverage your content as a jumping board for wider fame. Which means you spend your days in the kitchen, churning out recipes, you market your content, you strike a branding deal with a crock pot manufacturer, etc. etc. etc.
This is an impossible and unrealistic standard. It's also the standard by which influencers, streamers, Instagram models and so on hold themselves and each other.
The other implied assumption here is that a source on crock pot cooking is only reliable if supported by a professional expert who does just that full time. But if you use this bar to assess quality of content, you risk missing really valuable and great crock pot information out there. Moreover, that expert? Maybe they are paid to push a brand of expensive crock pots; whereas the next hobby cook does the exact same thing in a pot that costs a quarter of the price.
"Oh! But creative creators ought to be paid for their hard work!"
Tough luck. This was a challenge long before the Web was conceived. Few artists, painters, writers, playwrights, sculptors,... were financially independent. Either they were wealthy themselves (nobility,...), or they were lucky to work for wealthy patrons (historically, patronage was a way to display power). Plenty of creators scraped - and are scraping - by with odd jobs. Plenty of now famous writers had other means of income at the start of their careers.
Kurt Vonnegut, for instance, was manager of a Saab dealership, a public relations officer for GE and volunteer fire fighter. Harper Lee was a reservation clerk at Eastern Airlines while she wrote in her spare time, until her friends gave her, aged 30, a note on Christmas 1956: "You have a year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." They all had pitched in and gifted her a year's wages. That's what allowed her to write To Kill A Mockingbird.
So, when you look at the body of famous artists, and how things worked out for them, you want to be aware of survivor bias.
Sure, UBI would support many more creative endeavours such as they are. But it's no silver bullet. If anything, there's this prevailing idea that it's somehow easy, and preferable, to make a full time, financially independent living by publishing digital content (text, video,...) on the Web. This is a gross overestimation of what the Web can do for you. It just creates unrealistic expectations and sets people, especially young people, up for disappointment if it doesn't work out.
By no means does that mean one shouldn't be creating content and publishing on the Web. But please do it for the right reasons: because it's something you deeply enjoy doing above all anything else.
So, what's the problem then?
It's how the goalpost for defining success have shifted. You're only successful if you are a full time writer of crock pot recipes, and you can leverage your content as a jumping board for wider fame. Which means you spend your days in the kitchen, churning out recipes, you market your content, you strike a branding deal with a crock pot manufacturer, etc. etc. etc.
This is an impossible and unrealistic standard. It's also the standard by which influencers, streamers, Instagram models and so on hold themselves and each other.
The other implied assumption here is that a source on crock pot cooking is only reliable if supported by a professional expert who does just that full time. But if you use this bar to assess quality of content, you risk missing really valuable and great crock pot information out there. Moreover, that expert? Maybe they are paid to push a brand of expensive crock pots; whereas the next hobby cook does the exact same thing in a pot that costs a quarter of the price.
"Oh! But creative creators ought to be paid for their hard work!"
Tough luck. This was a challenge long before the Web was conceived. Few artists, painters, writers, playwrights, sculptors,... were financially independent. Either they were wealthy themselves (nobility,...), or they were lucky to work for wealthy patrons (historically, patronage was a way to display power). Plenty of creators scraped - and are scraping - by with odd jobs. Plenty of now famous writers had other means of income at the start of their careers.
Kurt Vonnegut, for instance, was manager of a Saab dealership, a public relations officer for GE and volunteer fire fighter. Harper Lee was a reservation clerk at Eastern Airlines while she wrote in her spare time, until her friends gave her, aged 30, a note on Christmas 1956: "You have a year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." They all had pitched in and gifted her a year's wages. That's what allowed her to write To Kill A Mockingbird.
So, when you look at the body of famous artists, and how things worked out for them, you want to be aware of survivor bias.
Sure, UBI would support many more creative endeavours such as they are. But it's no silver bullet. If anything, there's this prevailing idea that it's somehow easy, and preferable, to make a full time, financially independent living by publishing digital content (text, video,...) on the Web. This is a gross overestimation of what the Web can do for you. It just creates unrealistic expectations and sets people, especially young people, up for disappointment if it doesn't work out.
By no means does that mean one shouldn't be creating content and publishing on the Web. But please do it for the right reasons: because it's something you deeply enjoy doing above all anything else.