America desperately needs a return to AMERICAN values.
More than half of Gen Zers want to be an influencer — 57% to be exact, according to a 2023 survey of 1,000 Zoomers — but content creators caution it’s not as lax as it seems.
“It’s just constant, Monday through Sunday,” TikTokker Hannah Williams told CNBC. “From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, the internet’s on, so you’re on as well.”
The 27-year-old runs the popular account Salary Transparent Street, which boasts 1.4 million followers. After quitting her job in 2022 to pursue content creation full-time, Williams now rakes in a sizable $125,000 — but at what cost?
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In the Old days,people wanted to be famous athletes or movie stars.
This looks more realistic. TBH
Indeed. Kids regularly wanted to be Movie Stars, Athletes, Singers, Astronauts, and to a lesser extent Police Officers, Firefighters etc.
I can’t think of many kids who start out wanting to be a Plumber, Welder, Electrician or Construction Worker.
That’s the way of things. Kids start out with lofty dreams. And as life goes on. Interests change and reality sets in. For the vast majority of people they either give up on those Childhood Dreams or far less often events outside their control take the opportunity to achieve them away from them.
And they settle into being a Plumber, Store Manager, Welder, etc. Not glamorous or even necessarily fun work. But it’s a steady check.
The problem being. Many in Gen Z. Never quite gave up on those Childhood dreams to settle into the humdrum reality of adulthood. That older generations did.
Their parrents are probably facilitating it.....
Now that many are in harder times, hopefully they send them out to work a real job.
Undoubtedly. A lot in our culture promotes it. From Parents and Teachers telling kids they can be whatever they want to be.
Tired old Cliches like “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Kids Movies about chasing Dreams etc.
No one likes the dismal reality of “You’re most probably going to statistically be one of countless Millions stuck doing a Job you either Hate. Or at best barely tolerate. Surrounded by people you may not like for 40-50 years. In order to keep food on the table and a roof over your family’s head. With scarce amounts of time to spend with friends, family, or doing things you actually like and want to do.”
And then you enjoy a decadel and some change of retirement if you’re lucky. And then you die. And your children repeat the same cycle.
The sad, shitty truth of the world we live in.
I'm a teacher and it's true. Most kids have completely unrealistic expectations for adulthood, and their parents do nothing to set them straight. They all want to be YouTubers, gamers, and professional athletes. That's it. I never see any kids who say they want to be veterinarians or plumbers or anything that's actually useful to society. A few of the girls will say they want to be nurses, but only because they think all nurses make a ton of money and don't realize the amount of training, work, and human interaction involved.
I'm terrified of getting old and having to rely on Gen Z and Gen Alpha to help me.
Sounds like they're also clueless as to how much work goes into being an online "influencer". Even for those who "just stream videogames", it nets very little money if you're not sponsored so most are just doing it as a hobby after getting home for their day job and those who managed to go full time are working 100+ hours a week as it's essentially running a business. Also your entire enterprise can just go poof if YouTube/Twitch/etc decide to deplatform you.
It's because they're handed everything, expect everything and don't have discipline and boundaries.
It used to be a kid could make a rew bucks delivering papers etc, now because of soy and balless men that don't work, all their examples are low-T "clean" jobs in the A/C - with ZERO clue about what things cost and more importantly, how much effort, work and talent it takes to exchange time for said trinket...let alone the basics that all adults are now struggling to provide - no frills, vacations or extras.
They were groomed by government schools to be reliant on government, embracing communism - which sounds great when you know nothing, have nothing and need to gibs.
Sounds like teachers lost their ability inspire. I know my kids complained 10 years ago the example at school was teachers on the internet all day. So my kids were moved to charter schools. A nurse, an aerospace engineer, a cyber security nerd and an entrepreneur who runs his own company after 10 years in the marine corps
I see your point.
But an influncer can be someone who builds something. Elon Musk is a top influncer because he is a builder.
Yes, Elon is absolutely top-tier as an influencer, but the only reason for that (as you point out) is that he first became an icon AS a builder of amazing things. "Being an influencer" was never never his goal (and certainly not his primary goal, or so I believe) -- getting humans to Mars, replacing fossil-fuel vehicles with EVs, bypassing the costly credit-card companies, etc seem to be the type of goals he's always had.
Today's kids want skip all that -- all the hard work building something that benefits mankind -- and to straight to the Big Money just telling others what kind of clothes to buy or whatever.
I like builders. 👍
My President is one.
Come to think of it, he's an influencer too.
And a leader.
And a servant.
Hmmm.
A young person on my last job was always LOOKing online for schools and courses to attend... She never signed up and took a single class. That would require work...
What these aspiring YouTubers don't seem to realize is that influencers who make it big often have talent and work hard at it.
I follow a YouTuber The Filipina Pea, she has 335,000 followers and is making a great living now. The only influencer I ever donated to, I sent her my GoPro I never used... Why? Early on she actually climbed up a coconut tree and picked a coconut... My wife's family own coconut trees and zero of them would climb one. Pea puts a lot of work into her pro-expat channel and it has paid off for her.
Yeah some of those I follow are honest about how running the channel is a lot more work than their 9-5 job ever was. Also the smart ones have side businesses as they know they could get deplatformed or just lose popularity so the YouTube money went to get the other business off the ground.
I'm married to a Filipina as I'd looked for a wife from there... In 2010 the number of bloggers from there could be counted on one hand. Now there are hundreds... One of the better ones quit vlogging for a few years then came back. His channel is now lost in the sea of creators. I think he has a very small core of followers still.
I had channels twice with only a few videos on each. In the end, one was too much work, and the other Google would de-platform anyways...
Starting energy systems engineering school at OSU in a week! I love how little competition I'm gonna have once I hit the job market!
The reason is because that whole generation was entertained in school not taught anything of any real value, just enough to function. They were basically trained to entertain people since they were in kindergarten.
I disagree.
Thank God gen z wants to break away from the single biggest cabal lie, work.
They are misguided but the ones who make it past the precipice will be more ready for the awakening than a lot of people amongst the traditional republican base.
Being awake is not easy.
That's an interesting point of view, and I certainly agree that the relentless push towards soul-crushing careers is something that needs to go.
Work itself, on the other hand, is necessary for any society to function. Nothing makes it to the market without work; medical services (real ones) don't appear out of thin air, and so on. Your house doesn't get built without SOMEONE doing a LOT of work.
Work doesn't need to include regimentation or blinders or abdication of family duties, and while it sometimes means long hours it doesn't have to, depending on one's career path.
I disagree with your disagreement. They're not awake, they don't want to work at anything.
Homeschoolers are more likely to have realistic visions of how the world works, and are more likely to be entrepreneurial. They will produce value in fundamental jobs or self owned businesses providing critical services
They’re brainwashing all of the American Gen Z - to become influencers. Because if we want doctors and lawyers, they’re just gonna import them 🤷♀️ the same ones that are eating cats and dogs
Can we do away with social media and maybe, just maybe people will learn vernal communication AGAIN!
Well, there’s always the Military, they will teach, educate, make you upstanding young adults or there’s prison they will do the same thing however the out come be grim example is Hunter Biden
Influence what exactly?
1000 is an awfully small pool.
The new plandemic -- InFLUencers?
Still yet, I love the citizen journalists and Real Americans.
We will survive because 99 perce t of them will fail and find their bellies empty. Then they'll golfing a job. Some will even go learn a trade. They gotta have something to influence for, not everybody can go the jack ass route amd get wealthy.
I view this as a mostly positive development in reaction to conditions, as I see some comment favorably on this: there's probably more to unpack about it
part of the problem is the destruction of a lot of traditional jobs, for example due to overregulation of the industry and schooling, there are doctor shortages: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/the-physician-shortage-isnt-going-anywhere
with more deregulation this would lead to fasting and cheaper and freer schooling and more freedom to enjoy being a doctor
Without this, being a doctor becomes unenjoyable basically, as well as other essential jobs like lawyer, engineer, and so on
On the other hand, being an "influencer" could be basically like being an activist or teacher or writer, making use of social media
This can be very profitable and give people freedom to create and make a greater impact actually than some traditional professions (especially due to their overregulation)
Naturally though some "influencing" is not as productive and is akin to simply being a celebrity; which young people have often wanted to be in the past, as another person also comments
So basically you have both a bunch of traditional necessary jobs are circling the drain in becoming more unenjoyable and unprofitable, along with "influencing" seeming more profitable and enjoyable in contrast
The solution seems to be simple deregulation of schooling and industries in these kinds of businesses, but as this continues to not happen, these alternatives like "influencing" seem even more attractive
So I'd expect influencing to become even more attractive as time goes on and for less people to sign up for these traditional career pursuits, possibly until the boomers start to go out of power and shortages become worse enough until deregulation is forced to correct the industries and schooling?
Interesting observations.
I fully agree: deregulation of schooling and industries is necessary, at least if we're talking government "regulation", which always devolves into corrupt control, paid for and orchestrated by the highest bidder or largest bully.
Regulation belongs (and only works well) in the private sector, as with the original Underwriter Labs (now UL) and the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), both formed in the late 1800s.
This is why Walmart is importing computer programmers from India into Bentonville Arkansas. No whites want to program for Walmart, thus it has to go far afield to get technical individuals. The whites want to use Walmart's electronic department to purchase platforms to watch themselves upon.
No it's that the whites don't want to work for the low wages that Walmart wants to pay and they know they can import and abuse H1-Bs instead of paying for local talent. This has been going on for twenty years now and is a big reason why I abandoned that industry 15 years ago.
Also, once they get into management, they often seem to have pretty strong hiring biases.