(upbeat music) - All right, so here we go. The next question we have, question about your dislike of the words content and content creator. She explains more. - Hi Cal, my name is Tina and I'm in academic medicine. You've mentioned on the show several times about how you hate the word content and content creator.

I find that I don't like these terms either, but I can't quite articulate why. Can you explain further as to why these words just don't sound right, considering your deep life and deep work philosophies? Thank you very much. I'm a huge fan of the show. - All right, I'll be quick on this answer.

I think the content and content creator terminology, the context in which it is often used is in a very sterile business technique optimization type context, right? So when you hear content creator, you're imagining that you're gonna be watching a YouTube video about optimizing your subscription numbers for your YouTube channel or something like this.

When you think of content or content creator, you think of people saying, "I want you to smash that subscribe button, and hit the bell." And so anyways, it's sterile and business focused, where I tend to focus more on the craft itself, the Steve Martin advice of be so good they can't ignore you.

That you're not a content creator who's trying to meet a content schedule. You're trying to instead craft a book that hundreds of thousands of people are gonna feel like changed their life. You're not trying to optimize readership numbers. You're trying to write an article that is gonna change the way a whole segment of the population understands an important issue.

So I like to put the focus concretely on the actual artistic thing you're trying to create, and put as much energy as possible into making that as good as possible. And then all the other stuff, it comes along, but it's kind of on the side. I don't know. I mean, yeah, there's some stuff you have to do, but that's not the focus.

The focus is producing the good stuff. Now, Jesse, you've been teaching me about some of this stuff, right? So you're helping me get videos online. You will admit to the audience that I know very little about YouTube or videos, and I practice what I preach. I do not know any content creator information.

- I'm not, I'm okay with YouTube and stuff. I have a channel in another field that's decent. But all in all, yeah, I mean, I can attest to that. See, I guess that, okay, one other, I don't wanna go long, because I promised to be short, so I'll be short here.

But I think there's also a, there but for the grace of God go I type fear I have, which is there's a very specific job in the world of people who work in written or visual mediums, which is being a YouTube personality. And they are really beholden to these algorithms.

I guess if you make money off of YouTube advertisements, it really matters if your videos get recommended, right? I guess that's where a lot of views come from. And there's all of these little things that matter for the algorithm to get your video shown more. And obsessing about these things really probably makes a very practical difference to how much money you make.

And so to me, when I see my son watching like Minecraft YouTubers, I'm like, what a hard job, man, this is a smart guy. Like, I'm wondering if he should go to med school. (laughs) I mean, because like, they have to do this all day long and get subscribers and this and this bell.

I don't know what the bell does, but if they don't do this, it's not gonna get recommended. If it doesn't get recommended, they're not gonna be able to pay their heating bill and they have to like render videos all night long. And like, I don't wanna do any of that.

So for me, I'm also, I think, just in a self-protective way, saying like, I don't want anything to do with that world. I care about my books. Like when it comes to metrics of success, how many copies my books sell and podcast listeners. I think downloads of the podcast is very important.

I like this medium, it's distributed, we control it. I think it's given us a great relationship with the audience. And if YouTube videos help those things, that's great. But I really, I think once you go down that line of trying to serve the YouTube algorithm, it's a Faustian bargain.

- A hundred percent. I think the gamers, they have a tough lifestyle. I mean, they probably don't have the best diet in the world. They're probably not exercising that much. Their backs probably hurt all the time. But some of them make bank. So I mean, as long as they're not blowing all the money, maybe they're okay, but who knows?

I completely agree with you though. - Here's my counterfactual though. Let's say we take, let's say everyone who in the last five years made a serious run and let's just focus on one game at a Minecraft YouTube video, right? Like where they're doing it almost full-time. Now, if we took all those people and said almost anything else, like try writing books, try starting a software company, like just get your college degree and try to go into banking, I bet we'd have the same income distribution.

There'd be like a small number of people who made a lot of money and like some other people, most other people, actually it would probably be a better distribution. You'd have a few people that made a lot of money, but a lot of money would be more than the best YouTubers make.

And then almost everyone else would have at least a stable middle-class lifestyle where with the YouTubers, probably the curve is much more brutal that like 80% can't even pay their bills with it. But it would be the time demands of, I don't know, I ran a software company or a banker would probably be better than the worker.

I guess my counterfactual is like, is this actually opening up, 'cause I don't think it's a better lifestyle. It's a really hard job. Is it really opening up like more income-making opportunities than, these are smart kids, than other stuff they could do. - That's probably more rational thinking than they went into, they probably first started doing it and then realized they might be able to make some money with it.

And then all of a sudden it was like a snowball effect. So like people were doing it. - And there's a tension. - And I don't think that they would ever even wanna begin starting an accounting firm or doing some sort of thing like that where they have to report to work and do whatever.

- Yeah, but you could be, they're all tech savvy. Most of these guys, I bet could build up pretty good computer programming skills and work, I don't know, half the year on contract and have the other half the year completely free and probably have as, maybe it's just not as much fun.

Maybe I'm not a romantic. - Some of them might be, I think a lot of them might be. Like my good buddy who has like an online business plays games all the time. He doesn't do videos, but I mean. (upbeat music)