‘Stop Eating Lady Gaga’s Oreos’

Adam Mastroianni, writing at Experimental History:

Once the attention economy built out its financial infrastructure, however, overnight fame suddenly went from painful to profitable. The YouTube Partner Program (2007), Stripe (2010), and Patreon (2013) all made it easier to turn eyeballs into dollars. The first wave of internet celebrities peaked too early to cash in, but subsequent waves became icons rather than pariahs. Just as the Americans who lived through the Gilded Age watched industrial moguls build business empires, we watched tweens become millionaires in their bedrooms. They got Andrew Carnegie; we got Mr. Beast.11

As a result, the attention economy is the one corner of the overall economy where people are still feeling upwardly mobile. 57% of Gen Z (and 41% of older adults!) saythey would like to be influencers. And why not? You are not going to escape the underclass by driving an Uber or dusting the server racks at a data center, but you might be able to do it by posting mukbang videos.

I think this is why we now tolerate such blatant greed among famous people: we think we have a chance of becoming one of them. We once saw ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires; now we see ourselves as temporarily unknown celebrities.

Thought provoking. Still working out just how much of this I agree with, but it left me thinking.