Creator Economy Notes pt.1

The democratization of gods, stories, and our humanity

The digital era has allowed for online platforms to enable everyday people to produce and consume content. Producers of content who are able to grow a following of consumers interested in their work give an aura of mini celebrity status, a term we’ve coined as creators.

The Demigods of Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek legends speak of half human, half god beings who roamed the earth. They’re the offspring of the Gods, when they fool around with mortals and end up having surprise kids, who often have surprise superpowers that give way to tales of chaos and hero’s journeys. Some of the most prominent of them include Hercules, Perseus, Achilles, Chiron, Orpheus, all whose stories have been passed down through the generation and casted an aura of lore over the people of Greece as the closest thing they had on earth to being in touch with god-like beings.

Thousands of years later, these demigods still have a prominent place in our present, and their stories remain timeless and attractive. Blessed with their godlike powers and all too human charm, they were fierce warriors and lovers, who’s lives were marked with adventure and whose stories have been carried down through generations to entertain but also serve the purpose of explaining natural phenomena about the world and about ourselves — although our imagination and confidence may make our heads and hearts soar through the sky, we all have an Achille’s heal to be wary of.

I took an interest to the legends of the Greek gods as a kid — my friends and I would gossip about the stories as if we knew them — and when I was in 6th grade, each student in our humanities class was tasked to come up with a new demigod, whose story would explain why an everyday phenomena occurred. It was great fun. My story was about a girl who loved to sing but was banned to do so. She would sneak out of her small village house, late at night when everyone was asleep, walk along the streets until she reached the edge of town, then trudge through the forest and climb to the top of the hill where the stars could be her audience, and sing loud and clear. To not be at risk of getting caught, she would light no torch. The nights were dark, though, and so to see the path to and from the hill, she would wait only for the days when the moon was fullest and brightest to light her way.

I don’t remember the details of what happened, but later into the story she gets cursed to become a wolf (I suppose she upset the Gods), her once beautiful voice drained to a grueling howl, and live out the rest of her life in the woods, where she can be free yet still sing to the moon which once guided her way when she was a human. This was the story of why wolves howl at the moon.

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While just a piece of a mind’s imagination, this activity served as a simulation for how people relied on the stories of other’s lives to make sense of their own. Stories are what is passed down over time and become imprinted within our culture, our learning. As people, we’re programmed to love stories. Before there was writing or language or television, stories were how we could keep the dead alive and teach lessons to our young. They are the fabric of what’s built cultures of the past and present.

What’s more, we become our stories. Our earliest known histories of theatrical performances were in worship of ancient Egyptian gods, but likely, we began reenacting stories thousands of years before that.

The lore of stories is enchanting, and believing in intangible stories, such as our patterned past of religions, offered a means to unite thousands of people who’d likely never communicate with each other directly in their lifetimes. There’s something wonderful about feeling like you’re in the shoes of a hero, about adapting a new identity and transforming for a brief point in time. No one captured this sheer magic better than Walt Disney, who in recognizing the story junkie in all of us created lovable characters and storylines that people of any age could love and enjoy.

Containment to screens

The earliest stories were perhaps told around campfires, huddled with friends and family, laughing and picking at bones from a last meal. The art of gathering in a circle, facing each other, and conversing with one another undoubtably incurs a warm and enriching feeling that we may have evolved to embrace. But, as our minds developed and took on more cognitive capabilities for projective visualization, using both languages and pictures to communicate what once only a living storyteller could allowed our stories to be compressed and distributed across the walls of caves, tablets, and later books and newspapers everywhere. We developed the ability to visually consume a language, project an image in our mind, and see our stories using cognitive abilities alone. As we relied on our imaginations more and more to track our stories and develop new thoughts, our species moved further and further away from other mammals. Writing and art enhanced our storytelling abilities, and the power of our brains.

Enter the era of film.

In 1894, film was born. A year later, the first movie was produced. 38 years later, the first movie was broadcasted on television. Humans for the first time needn’t use our imaginations to visualize stories — we could see them plain as day, heroes that were alive and spoke to us through a screen, all in the comfort of their own homes. It was a major pivot in human storytelling history.

The stars of these movies became our modern day Demigods.

The Democratization of Demigods

Los Angeles underwent a major transformative period in the early to mid 1900s. Movies were the new frontier, stars were born. The city developed around showbiz: sets cropped up along the main strip, Hollywood offered a place to hang. Theaters were everywhere, as they transitioned from main show to the launchpad of movie star careers — a place to show up and get your name out there, in great hopes that some movie or music producer would pluck them from the stage, strap a rocket to their back and send them to fame on a lucky role that would shape the rest of their lives. If our stars were our Gods, the producers were the ones behind the curtain dictating every move they would make. Stars existed without individuality, many without control over their lives or bodies, and became rebellious under the pressure of the public eye. Many lived a true end-justifying-means livelihood. Few were known to have truly enjoyed all that entails in holding the keys of influence.

Enter, the shift.

We had undergone our gods existing only in words, songs, and re-enactments of stories, to living in television boxes in our homes. Then came another, much more pivotal shift, one that would bend the trajectory of entertainment forever: the internet, a web of interconnectivity between people and information that allowed anyone to have a hand in what content displayed anywhere in the world. Like all great turns, this came slow, then all at once.

We descended upon and shaped the internet in a similar fashion as we had left our mark on the world: beginning first with stale stone ledgers marked with text — individual HTML pages incapable of doing anything more than displaying text. Then, Blogger became a printing press of sorts and allowed for anyone to more seamlessly throw their stories onto the internet. Then, an eruption of platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Linkedin, Tiktok, and all of the beloved sites that we call home today. For once, the entertainment industry became open-sourced. Anyone could select their craft and practice it for the world to see. Content became a product, attaining PMF meant trialing your art until reaching a certain point of adoption, and upon crossing the early adopter to early majority chasm, stars were born. They were born in suburbs, dorm rooms, cities, mountains. Location was no longer a gatekeeper of fame: the advent of iPhones allowed anyone, from anywhere, to publish content independent of the once gatekeeping overloads of Los Angeles entertainment. People became followers, self-selecting the producers who they let themselves be influenced by. Producers of content became leaders. They made followers out of passer-bys, and loving fans out of followers. Before us, the entirety of lore once only available for the television celebrities, and before that the illustrious legends of demigods, was now an open grab bag for the masses. At the intersection of these masses and their endless appetite for content was a budding market, and seemingly endless potential for capitalization. The creator economy was born.

The People’s Economy

The creator economy may be the most consumer-driven economy in existence. Unlike other transformative consumer industries — transportation, agriculture, finance — online consumer platforms have achieved the impossible feat of unifying the world, all though 7.65mm thick of glass screens with tiny computers behind them. What the printing press aspired to do, creator platforms have. It’s pervaded borders and boundaries, unleashed artists in the most unlikely of places, and allowed people to own the narrative for their creative lives.

The creator economy is the only industry that’s truly by and for the people, fueled by a rapidly evolving market, and an ever-hungry appetite for distraction, lust, knowledge, and yearn to be closer to those we regard as above other human beings. It’s also a joyous place of art, and as the name suggests, creation of things that have never existed before. It’s the highest peak of both the greatest celebrations of humanity, and a gateway for our greatest sins to fester.

The demigods held up a mirror to society. Creators old the power to do the same, and there exists the ability to create in all of us. Like my 6th grade relic of how wolves howling at the moon came into existence, the opportunity for everyone to build their own artistic truths from scratch is upon us.

This is the first introductory article to a sporadic series of essays on the creator economy. More to come!