This piece is such a refreshing (and slightly brutal) wake-up call about the creator economy. The casino analogy is spot-on—social platforms dangle the hope of virality just enough to keep creators hooked, but the second you stop feeding the machine, you disappear.
It reminds me of that Adam Mosseri statement about followers not mattering anymore. The platforms don’t want creators to build an audience they own; they want to keep everyone dependent on the algorithm. It’s the same reason they push AI-generated content—why deal with human burnout when synthetic influencers never complain?
The “Creator vs. Creative” distinction hits hard too. Social media makes it easy to confuse posting with actually making something meaningful. The grind culture of “post daily or be irrelevant” is exhausting, and even top creators are admitting it. MrBeast saying he ignored his mental health for the grind? That should be a huge red flag.
This whole essay makes me want to step back and rethink: Am I creating something I care about, or just pulling the slot machine lever?
I know exactly how you feel. I've been a music producer for 5 years now, last year I started having enough beats in the vault to upload one every day so I committed to it. I still upload every day it's been 7 months and every day I upload on Beatstars and my YouTube channel. I thought if people could see the caliber of my consistency they would tap in a little more, but I feel like it only made my followers more lost somehow. In this dilemma, I have found myself stuck in the rat race or casino as you describe it. I'm not gonna stop posting because then people would never hear about my music but I also feel like idk how much longer I can keep doing this putting my all out there just for it to get completely ignored and unseen. I used to think our greatest fear as artists was people telling us our art was shit or bad, but our biggest fear should be that nobody ever even sees our art to begin with.
That last line really hits—our biggest fear isn’t people hating our work, it’s them never seeing it at all.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: the best work outlives the algorithm. Keep making what you want to make, not just what the machine wants. Thanks for reading!
So are we creators or are we gamblers?
That's the real question...
This piece is such a refreshing (and slightly brutal) wake-up call about the creator economy. The casino analogy is spot-on—social platforms dangle the hope of virality just enough to keep creators hooked, but the second you stop feeding the machine, you disappear.
It reminds me of that Adam Mosseri statement about followers not mattering anymore. The platforms don’t want creators to build an audience they own; they want to keep everyone dependent on the algorithm. It’s the same reason they push AI-generated content—why deal with human burnout when synthetic influencers never complain?
The “Creator vs. Creative” distinction hits hard too. Social media makes it easy to confuse posting with actually making something meaningful. The grind culture of “post daily or be irrelevant” is exhausting, and even top creators are admitting it. MrBeast saying he ignored his mental health for the grind? That should be a huge red flag.
This whole essay makes me want to step back and rethink: Am I creating something I care about, or just pulling the slot machine lever?
I know exactly how you feel. I've been a music producer for 5 years now, last year I started having enough beats in the vault to upload one every day so I committed to it. I still upload every day it's been 7 months and every day I upload on Beatstars and my YouTube channel. I thought if people could see the caliber of my consistency they would tap in a little more, but I feel like it only made my followers more lost somehow. In this dilemma, I have found myself stuck in the rat race or casino as you describe it. I'm not gonna stop posting because then people would never hear about my music but I also feel like idk how much longer I can keep doing this putting my all out there just for it to get completely ignored and unseen. I used to think our greatest fear as artists was people telling us our art was shit or bad, but our biggest fear should be that nobody ever even sees our art to begin with.
That last line really hits—our biggest fear isn’t people hating our work, it’s them never seeing it at all.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: the best work outlives the algorithm. Keep making what you want to make, not just what the machine wants. Thanks for reading!
Well done 👍
Thanks, Jordon!
Love this♥️👏