In social media, what is considered famous?

YouTube has been demonetizing more and more accounts by the year. I think there was a time to make money off it - I don't know if Google AdSense existed in the John D. Villarreal days - but now is not that time. People are exhausted by partisan politics and I can't imagine making time to watch it and fill someone else's wallet in doing so.

I have kicked around trying to make a buck off it with goofy mashups and such - but who the hell has the time for it? I think it would also suck terribly being tethered to a social media account for 16 hours a day (or longer).

 

I know gamers are still making bank with livestreams and videos.

 

It blows my mind that people watch other people play video games. I get tutorials or reviews, but not game play.
Yeah, yeah, I know; I watch people fish, folks watch other folks play cards, people watch people do any number of things.... but still.

 

This has always fascinated me, too.

I've written about this from a few different directions. In my sports days, I got deep with a handful of Olympians in fringe sports, the ones you barely even know exist even in an Olympic year. Social media is one of the main ways they pay the bills. I talked to one of the local guys who was actually pretty good at it, and he lamented how much work it took.

"I worked my ass off all day training, and now I need to go take a fucking sunset mountain bike ride to get some Instagram content? It kind of sucks. Am I an athlete or an influencer?"

He only had 40,000 followers on Insta, and he worked hard. He at times hired a photographer to come along and get that shot of him silhouetted against the horizon as he climbed to the mountain peak, or other similar awesome shots. He always made sure you could see the brand of the mountain bike, or that his branded tent was in the foreground for that sunset shot, etc. Brands considered him a great influencer because he always did such a good job tagging them and showcasing their gear, and I know he got money, not just gear.


I've also written about "farm YouTube" and it seems to be developing slower than sports social media, but they get shitloads of interaction and tons and tons of followers. I met with a family who has 500,000+ YouTuber follows, and they WILL get noticed in a shopping mall, not so much so where they can't go about their lives, but maybe a few times a week if they were out and about in a rural-ish MidWest area? Not constant, but persistent.

People drive by their middle-of-nowhere farm real slow and take pictures out in front all the time. There's always a significant line for autographs and selfies when they do public appearances. Hundreds of kids ask really specific questions about the "characters" in the videos, or the equipment, or the sheds, etc.

I don't know if they are getting much cash at this point, but, for instance, I know they got free tires on their combine, which is funny, but ya know, not an insignificant expense if you're a farmer. They definitely can't stop farming yet, though. And they work hard on it, producing a couple well-edited videos a week.

Worlds kind of collide when you get into the Farm Simulator game, which has a pro circuit and has tons of players around the world. People recreate the farms of some of these YouTubers, and then "farm" on their equipment, their land, etc. in the game. Which leads to more fans, and more slow drives in front of their house, etc.

 

Faulty if x, then y reasoning on my part. Should have done my homework.

 

Which format?
To my daughter, Insta is the gold standard. Tik Tok seems the easiest to get followers and YouTube might be the most work.

 

Instagram.

 

I’m trying to get my kids to do videos of them watching other people watching people who play video games. I swear it would be good.

 

Instagram is the only social media I do, and by that I mean actively use. I like it because I want to quickly scan photos of fish people have caught, silly wildlife, etc.
I do look at twitter during my morning news scans, but I haven't tweeted in years.

That having been said, I avoid Facebook like the plague, but I sold a car yesterday on Facebook Marketplace in under two hours. Seriously. I posted photos of it, and in less than two hours, I had a hand full of cash, and it was off my hands. I had 42 people message me in that time, and there were 2500 page views. It's nuts.

 

I complained about this to my oldest one time, and he said, you watch other people play football. I didn't have a response and have never really questioned it since.

As a gamer, I am not above looking up how to get past a tricky part but have never gone much beyond that. Have watched a live stream a time or two and thought it was entertaining enough (mostly for the interactions between people), but never enough to just do it.

 

I'd consider watching people play craps about like fishing shows; it's sort of a tutorial, or you could pick up tips and ideas.
I can't for the life of me figure why a person would want to watch someone else play slots.