Reclaiming Joy in the Creator Economy
A collection of reframings to escape the content creation rat race
Let me start off with an honest confession: I’m quite burned out by the constant pressure to put out content, make this content as valuable as possible, “grab” the attention of new people, stand out in an ocean of information overwhelm, see the content/art/ideas/theories I worked so hard on be used to train AI, frame and thereby “sell” my passion in a way that will generate money, and compete with those doing the same thing when I actually want to befriend them because they are my people and this thing can make one feel quite lonely… 😤
It feels to me as if I’ve exited one 🦡 rat race (the corporate/business/startup rat race) only to enter another 🦡 rat race (the content creation rat race).
“Everywhere we look as creators today, the gravity is just pushing us toward making for other reasons than why we set out to make things in the first place.”
Jack Conte, Founder of Patreon
What seems to have happened in the last 5 to 10 years or so is that the creator economy has become increasingly aligned with the economy at large, where dynamics such as hyper-productivity, industrialism, automation and scale, and rising inequality (those at the top reap most of the rewards) have become commonplace.
In short: content creation – or “making stuff on the internet” – feels increasingly like a corporate job.
The good news: Things are changing! Both the landscape of the platforms – i.e. the places where we share our content – and people’s approaches to content creation and consumption are transforming.
So, in classic Creative Destruction fashion, I compiled a collection of particularly thought-provoking perspectives and reframings that’ll be useful to anyone “making stuff on the internet” but who wants to do it beautifully, dignifiedly, and sustainably.
We’ll dive into:
From Content Creation To Self-Expression
From Audience Building To World Building
Mass Content Assembly Lines vs. Boutique Content Workshops
Performance-driven vs. Resonance-driven
From Selling Yourself To Transferring Enthusiasm
Putting these reframings together for you has not only been extremely interesting to me but actually also helped me massively improve my approach to “content creation”. This isn’t only useful to creators though, there’s also a lot in here for any organization or individual trying to put themselves out there on the “information superhighway,” as we Germans would call it. 🤪
I also put together a little re-framework (scroll down) to help you get an overview of all the perspective-shifting elements.
Here we go: