hobbies and online recognition
Reflecting on current and past online time, I see that brand deals, influencers and virality have kind of negatively affected people’s view on hobbies as well as getting recognized for your work or impact online.
Of course eyeballs and sponsors are not the only way to be recognized (prizes, scholarships, thank yous, recommendations etc.) but it’s something the current system and culture place a lot of value on. Not a position I am in because I have no socials or product, but it seems like the culture on these platforms (and even things like Substack) convinces you that you deserve to be reimbursed for time spent on a hobby and makes people think about their own freetime as having monetary value; then when they don’t blow up on socials despite trying, they often treat it as if something is withheld from them that they are entitled to. That can get pretty toxic.
If you don’t view your creations that way and don’t even want to blow up, people think you’re wasting your potential and “opportunities”. I think it has really warped people’s perception of hobbies and interests, like “if no one sees it and it doesn’t make money or get you famous, what’s the point?” That’s sad.
I assume this is driven not only by the few with exceptional success that show off, but also a narrative pushed by people and companies that profit off of anyone trying to make it online or capitalize off of a meme - just look at what kind of vultures memes like Hawk Tuah attracts who want to make it even an even bigger thing to get a cut of the success. All those content teams and managers and PR are always searching for new people to “represent” that need to pay them.
It also seems like if you don’t take weird, hypocritical, soulless and occasionally predatory brand deals due to your viral post, someone else will seize the opportunity by reposting/tracing/copying your style or posts and getting it sooner or later. I’ve also seen that if you don’t market your works yourself or agree to work with some brand, they will just steal your designs with minor changes and make money off of your work anyway. They might try to legally protect what you came up with, like that person who tried to trademark “very demure, very mindful” before the creator did.
If you believe many users, the creators that were copied without acknowledgement, reference or compensation or the ones who deny deals are supposed to be thankful anyway because “at least someone gets to use it”, “exposure” (of the design only), “it’s their fault for not selling it first”, “people would kill for their opportunity”; a surprising amount of people perceives it as selfish if a creator wants to gatekeep their creations as if they should be selfless and just care for the art being shared and loved… and all of that is so silly. That is simply not the world we have created out there and it’s unfair to hold these things against small creators while big multimillion dollar businesses sue others out of existence over copyright.
Taking or not taking a brand deal shouldn’t make you lose control of your creations and efforts, even in a roundabout kinda way.
But the current situation means if you care about your online work getting recognized on social media in a certain way and try to survive off of it, it’s basically like you have to agree to sell out, to accept partnership, to be okay with anything thrown your way, else deal with loss and the blame and ideas of what could have been. At least that kind of thing is normalized on these platforms and seeing everyone else do it seems to make people’s values crumble over time as they feel like their own integrity holds them back from being “successful”.
I see that with all those people who started out with concepts like decluttering, anti-hauls or saving money, and now their accounts are telling you to buy stuff because it’s “minimalist” and they’re advertising DoorDash that’s a huge waste of money. All the people making videos about bad tech and AI slop who have sponsorships for the shittiest mobile games you have ever seen. It’s hard on people to put values over money when money is so tight and side hustle or self-employment propaganda is everywhere.
Such a disgusting cultural phenomenon - ads everywhere, hidden or not, slapped in the middle of everything, monotone voice, company-prepared and approved text and completely unfitting to that person’s brand or personality. And getting the impression that for too many people, the hobby cannot be done without something sellable coming out of it, a perfect product for the shop, with an aesthetic video accompanying it that’s blowing up. Being stolen from without credit by capitalist giants and it’s supposedly your own fault for sharing where they can see.
I wonder when we’ll leave that behind.
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Published 02 Jul, 2025