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‘You can’t pause the internet’: social media creators hit by burnout
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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My lord the amount of “I have a REAL job” in here is too damn high. I work 8 hours a night, 40+ hours a week, in an automotive plant. My job can be very stressful, and physically demanding. So what?
I don’t sit here and whine about people that stare at their screens (IT, developers, etc) all day. Are they really doing any work? After all, they are not performing physical labor.
How is it that different for people who create content? I’d argue that they do more work, as they have to set up, film, edit and market their work.
See how silly this sounds? A job is a job. Unless you own your own business, you are making money for someone else.
It's easy to try on that pair of shoes. Those ignorants should go ahead and try building a community, try creating a video with some genuine effort regarding its content and - especially - edit it in an appealing way.
Heck, I was doing some Blender rendering for fun as a hobby and am occasionally recording some demo videos of a project I am working at for my supervisor. Sometimes it takes about two hours to edit a fucking 10 minute video. This is just a huge amount of work. No wonder any creator, who has reached a sufficient level of income, hires editors.
I also think a big part of content creator burnout is the 'everything is content' mindset. If you work in a factory or an office usually you can go home and not be at work any more. When hanging out with your friends or being with your family also becomes content and therefore part of your job, the mental toll clearly becomes unbearable.
You aren't wrong. But being a social media influencer is something almost no one would accidentally fall into. People who do it intentionally are doing it to chase a dream of fame and fortune and glamor - but because there is a limited amount of attention in the world and it is highly concentrated, you are really rolling the dice on a dream if you decide to commit to it. There is a very high probability that even if you put your whole heart and soul into it and did everything perfectly, you will still never achieve much more financial success than a child's lemonade stand.
It's basically the same thing as wanting to be a blockbuster film actor or a rock star or an NBA player. If you are struggling and unsuccessful... Well yeah, that's exactly what everyone told you would happen. Go get a different job. And if you are successful and famous and making tons of money - "oh no, boohoo, it must be so hard to be successful beyond your wildest dreams."
Maybe for the top tier influencers, but there are a ton of people making a reasonable living just by doing it what they enjoy. For example, strategy game streamers:
There are plenty more who are popular because of their skill at what they stream about and are competent enough at keeping people's attention. If you're the best, people will come to you, it's not always just luck. A lot of people get there through luck, but a lot earn their way too.
At least in some cases, it might just be wholesome advice. The fact that you have "a job" and a whole different persona from that and they're two separate things that sometimes intertwine probably brings you closer to us in administrative tasks (in the end, IT is by definition always something administrative rather than actually productive) than me as in an IT guy with an influencer. Because ultimately, your actual identity is your job, and by conclusion, your whole life is performative, which sounds REALLY exhausting