Capitalism Ruined My Sense of Creativity -- or -- How Creative Success Isn't What I Thought It Was (And How My Total Failure On YouTube Gave Me Life)
The way I used to think about success was absolutely, unequivocally, one hundred percent totally fucked.
If you follow any prominent YouTuber, you’ve probably seen a trend that blew up over the last five years: burnout. (It even got mainstream coverage! Congrats, you silly YouTubers! You finally made it!)
Burnout isn’t exclusive to YouTube, but for me, YouTube always embodied that unique intersection between creative expression, social media, and financial reward. Which is to say, whatever your art is, you can probably make videos about it, post them on YouTube, and eventually (maybe) make money.
That is ... if you don’t burn out first.
Because Capitalism ruined creativity for the everyman, and the way we think about creative success is totally fucked.
As I look ahead at the blank slate of 2024 and consider what creative focus I should dedicate the year to, I keep chewing over this bastardized concept of “success.” Why should I write another book if I’m not making money from my existing novels? What’s the point of diving into a vlogging routine if I’ve already torched my channel in the eyes of The Almighty Algorithm? Why pursue audiobooks if the audience isn’t there? I love writing screenplays, but it’s not like I’m ever going to sell one, and the single feature film I have produced has been viewed less than 3k times.
This same argument gets repeated for comic strips, stop-motion animation, and all the other creative art I’ve pursued.
I’ve spent over two decades chasing creative “success.” Corporate career aside, I’ve made virtually no money and found little audience. The few accolades I’ve earned are forgotten in the sands of time.
Because my concept of “success” is totally fucked, and I’m sure yours is, too. The good news is that it’s not our fault: along with the literal monetization of creativity by YouTube, social media at large has brainwashed an entire generation that everything is “content” and the value of said content is measured with likes, tweets, and other totally meaningless, totally made-up virtual forms of transactional capitalism, better known as “engagement.”
Does your art even exist if it’s not posted on the internet? Are you even creating if you’re not shooting up those sweet social media dopamine hits?
And when we build entire creative enterprises like the YouTube creator economy on this ephemeral bullshit, it’s no wonder that burnout looms over everyone.
I had my personal heyday on YouTube from 2009 to 2013 (with a pandemic-inspired reunion episode in the summer of 2020 -- all the mainstream shows were doing shitty webcam-based specials, so I thought I’d show them all how the OGs did it). I built a community of collaborators around a simple concept: episodic scripts were written with generic characters that (almost) anybody could step in front of a camera and record lines for. Footage was submitted, and I would edit together episodes of people talking to each other over their webcams.
I produced the cumulative shows (“Webcams;” its precursor, “Talking Heads;” and a series of spin-off one-off mini-series for bigger partner channels), wrote the lion’s share of the scripts, collaborated with co-writers, developed other writers and talent, performed, and edited virtually everything. The concept allowed for original, episode-unique musical pieces for both the intro and outro credits, as well as custom intro graphics -- all created by our collaborative community of talent.
Like I said: it was fucking great. It was magic in a bottle that, if not for my own lack of vision and professional management, could have grown into something as massive as it was magnificent.
Although, at the time, I was plagued by my inability to “breakthrough” with Webcams, in hindsight, I think I might have lucked out. Yes, the entire run of my YouTube experience was about chasing views, never more so than the Webcams days. Still, it’s easy to see how Webcams exploding could have resulted in not only burnout but also the bastardization of my -- and my collaborative community's -- passion project.
(This is the part of my commentary where I start sounding like an asshole justifying my failure on YouTube ... but stick with me! It really is about how we’ve failed to properly define success!)
Art needs to be created. And as difficult as it is for me to admit, art doesn’t need to be consumed. (Seriously, I’ve struggled with the “what is art without an audience” conundrum for as long as I’ve created.) We only need to look back to childhood for validation: as kids, we didn’t draw pictures or make stupid little videos to get likes on the internet. We made our art because we could.
Because ... art needs to be created.
Sure, it’s nice to get paid for our art, and it’s nice to have artistic expertise validated, but correlation is not causation. And the more our artistic expression is tied up with Capitalism (either financial or the bullshit Capitalism of social media), the more fragile that artistic expression becomes.
As artists -- or, rather, everyman artists -- why are we fucking ourselves over with this bullshit definition of success? Why do we continue to allow our creative expression to become entangled with Capitalism? Why do we allow the purity of our creative journey -- the simple joy of making -- get bastardized by the get-rich-quick, millionaire-to-be snake oil of Social Media Capitalism?
These aren’t trick questions.
We all got suckered.
After all, it’s only the goddamn American Dream.
But the truth is that when you take Capitalism out of the equation, “success” is easy to define. It’s “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”
(I actually prefer the second, “archaic” definition, as it speaks a little more poetically to the creative endeavor: “the good or bad outcome of an undertaking.”)
Creative success has nothing to do with views, monetization, likes, or retweets.
It has nothing to do with the flapping gums of bullshit accolades or comments.
And creative success has absolutely nothing at all to do with algorithmic rankings.
With Webcams, I wanted to make a YouTube-based television show.
I fucking nailed it.
And you can, too.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s really fucking hard. It takes a lot of work, time, and commitment. A little bit of talent doesn’t hurt, either.
But yes, it’s fucking hard.
Almost as hard as turning a blind eye toward Capitalism.
The upshot? You have literally never tasted a creative freedom so damn sweet.
Fuck social media. Stay creative.
Happy 2024.
Love,
Krumbine
