avatarSmillew Rahcuef

Summary

Top creators often focus on teaching creation rather than creating themselves due to the lucrative market of self-interested individuals seeking success in their own creative endeavors.

Abstract

The article explores the phenomenon of top creators shifting their focus from creating to teaching others how to create. This shift is attributed to the self-centered nature of people in wealthier societies, who are more interested in creating their own potentially viral content than appreciating the work of others. The creator market capitalizes on this by offering courses and content that promise to unlock the secrets of successful creation, despite the reality that time, effort, and luck play crucial roles. The article identifies a "vicious circle of shitty creation," where the ease of creating and the lower quality of content being produced discourages high-quality creation. It also discusses the "creator's conundrum," a three-step process where creators initially fail on their own, seek out courses for success, and ultimately realize that persistence and luck are the true determinants of success. The article suggests that genius creators have three options: creating platforms for other creators, continuing to produce their own work, or teaching through cohort-based community courses.

Opinions

  • The author believes that people's self-centeredness leads them to prioritize their own creative efforts over appreciating others' work.
  • There is a critique of the market that exploits the desire for success by selling the idea that creation can be taught through courses and tricks.
  • The author points out that the ease of creating content and the desire for viral success contribute to a decrease in the overall quality of creative work.
  • The "vicious circle of shitty creation" describes how the market incentivizes even talented creators to produce lower-quality work for greater financial return.
  • The "creator's conundrum" reflects the misconception that there are shortcuts to creative success, when in fact, perseverance and luck are key factors.
  • The article suggests that the demand for learning how to create successfully is so high that even talented creators might find it more profitable to teach than to continue creating at a high level.
  • The author acknowledges their own status as a "shitty creator," implying that the journey to becoming a successful creator often involves producing a lot of subpar work.

Why Top Creators Create Less and Talk about Creating Instead?

Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash

People are interested in themselves more than anything else.

Now it’s always a spectrum. Nobody is 100% self-focused, nor can we find saints 100% helping others. However, in richer countries, people seem more on the self-centered side.

This means there’s a huge market to be addressed.

The creator market is an excellent example. Instead of creating, some of the best creators spend their time teaching others how to create. Why is that? Because that’s where money is. Also, scale.

Let’s deep dive.

Since people are self-centered, they would rather invest their time creating some shit of their own instead of enjoying the beautiful art created by others. Of course, the goal is to create something viral / incredibly successful that will attract all the spotlights on the creator (you).

This has two negative consequences.

First is what I like to call the vicious circle of shitty creation

People create some shit. Other people see the shit and think they can do the same shit, or even some better one. They indeed can. It’s even easy. Therefore, more shit appears.

Conversely, some geniuses create beautiful stuff.

But not so many of their followers take the time to appreciate it because they’re busy creating their shit. That, plus the incredible amount of shit around, makes the geniuses less likely to spend time crafting their masterpiece.

Indeed, they don’t need to reach 100% quality to be loved. Compared to all the shit around, reaching 85% is enough to be called a genius. The advantage is that the time needed to create a 100% masterpiece is the same as the time needed to create five 85% ones (it’s not linear).

And even if the 100% masterpiece sells for more than an 85% one, it’s again non-linear. More or less, the price of five 85% masterpieces equals the price of three 100% masterpieces. There you go. In the same amount of time, you made three times more money.

And here goes the vicious circle of shitty creation.

Geniuses are incentivized to produce some shittier stuff, and everybody else thinks they can produce shit and make money. Hence, on average, creations get shittier.

The second negative consequence is called “cohort-based community courses on how to become a better creator”

These courses exist because there’s a market.

It’s explained by what I like to call the creator’s conundrum.

It has three steps.

  • At first, people are completely delusional and think they can do it all by themselves. => Doesn’t work.
  • Then they stay delusional and think there are some tricks they can learn to become virally successful by enrolling in courses. => That’s not true.

That’s not true because people had it right in the first step. They can do it all by themselves. It’s just that it takes time and luck. And I won’t blow your mind if I tell you that our society isn’t very patient in general (see Tinder, divorce rates, and Uber to name a few).

  • The third step is to realize the tricks taught in the cohort-based community courses are just common sense and that time invested and luck are the real game-changers. These are what will make you virally successful.

Now, what can genius creators do?

I see three options.

  1. They can create a marketplace like Medium/TikTok/YouTube for creators to showcase their (often shitty) creations.
  2. They can keep on creating 85% to 100% stuff that, hopefully, will get them enough money to pay for the basics and maybe more if they get lucky.
  3. Or they can go the somehow easier way and create a cohort-based community course to address the HUGE demand from shitty creators stuck at stage 2 of the creator’s conundrum.

Disclaimer

I’m a shitty creator. I produce lots of shitty articles. I don’t mean it as an insult but as a reality check. Creating lots of shitty stuff is anyway a mandatory step on the way to becoming a genius. Here’s hoping you’ll become one and create beautiful art.

This story exists thanks to a discussion I had with Bob and Preeti. Here are two stories they wrote that I liked.

Smillew has a shitty bio somewhere but he’s too lazy to copy-paste it here. Just do what you usually do after reading one of his articles.

Creators
Creator Economy
Social Media
Social Media Marketing
Writing
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