One day we'll all be creators

Creators are no longer just influencers, reality TV stars, adult entertainers or #fitspo evangelists; they’re your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your local bartender and that one guy at Trader Joe’s who always bags your groceries just right. It is a preview of what’s to come.

First, some numbers: Gen Z spends an average of 109 days per year looking at a screen. Eighty percent of our waking hours are spent consuming information, up from 40% in 1980.

It’s possible that the idea of an “important” work of popular art, like the idea of movie stardom, simply can’t survive the transition to the digital era. The journalist and novelist Ross Barkan has done interesting writing on this theme, borrowing from Bret Easton Ellis’s concepts of “Empire” and “Post-Empire” to describe a shift from the post-Wor... See more

Influencers, now a slowly fading cliché in the Internet’s tableau vivant, found success articulating the cult of personality, and marketing themselves as direct-to-consumer-goods. The shift away from this algorithmic surrender can be traced to the macro and micro “creator economies” spawned by the likes of Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans and even Cameo... See more

Posting like an influencer (because we are)

Our audience has drastically shifted, and therefore so has our online behavior. While it would have been embarrassing for me to post about my morning routine to my 300 followers on Instagram in 2015 (who did I think I was? An influencer?), in 2024 no one bats an eye. We’re posting content that gets thrown... See more

Cameo launched CameoX, allowing creators to self-enroll in the platform (before, celebs had to be hand picked and approved). “The amount of fame in the world is exponentially increasing,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a blog post announcing the launch.

In 2024, Patreon creators surpassed 60 million free memberships, held live fan events, increased monthly revenue of one-time purchases by 4X and the number of creators who started chats by 5X, while engaging with their communities and building sustainable businesses

On TikTok Shop, creators only need as few as about 1,000 followers to become an “affiliate.” On the app, they can scour a list of eligible products, request free samples to make videos, and earn commissions — usually ranging from 10% to 30% — if their videos lead to actual sales.

America has fallen out of love with brands and inlove with people. This is evident in every corner of American life — from politics and business to technology and media. People are the new brands.