There’s a Catch-22 in the creator economy, and it goes like this:

Publish consistently and relentlessly, so that you get enough attention, so that you get enough followers, so that you can monetize your work, so that you can create full-time, so that you can publish consistently and relentlessly.

Writer ✍️ https://paragraph.xyz/@driftless | Creepy stories 👁️ unnerv.ing | Poems ⚡️ // /writers // /poetry // /literature 

/cameron for content experiments. I help Creators grow faster @ seemore.tv + /seemore. Posts at creator3x3.com.
Dev + Veteran + HBS. 
seemore.tv/cameron 🫡

Yes, I think they're right. There's a big structural problem here.

But, I also think it goes deeper than that? Aligning creative work with economic rewards has been historically difficult (mostly because creative work is post-economic). 

Not sure structural changes fix the main problem (but it would certainly help).

I genuinely think it’s a structural business model problem. 

Ads are the primary incentive for existing creator platforms which (with today’s tools) make quantity the focus and creators bear the brunt of that labor on behalf of Big Tech 

Hoping we can do something about it soon 👀

Writer, senior editor, music journalist, labor/commons advocate, GenX eldergoth, Zorbsplainer. Cohost of /slowcore-hq. https://tinyurl.com/Black-Stone-Wordsmith

Thanks, Danica. I was thinking about some of my future moves. Where I should publish my writing and how often. It got me thinking about how absurd the recommended publishing cadence is for most platforms for creative work. 

It's a path to burnout that I've been feeling—and noticing in others.

Indeed, and this is an apt way to frame it. I once called this "the Patreon catch-22 hustle," but of course it's not just Patreon. 

I agree with @cameron that there are structural issues here and we need different business models for creative work. 

If you'd like to say more, Tom... what prompted this cast?