It came to light recently that the most popular face in the gaming world, one PewDiePie of YouTube fame, earns a reported $4 million a year. $4 million.
With an "M".
I couldn't stomach more than 30 seconds of his Let's Play of South Park: The Stick of Truth but I got the information I needed from it. I don't begrudge the guy for making that much money. Good for him. He gets to be a jack-off in front of a camera playing games for a living. I wish I'd beaten him to the patent on it honestly. Or at least figured out how he did it.
Apparently this brought another round of "'internet celebrities' need to get real jobs" comments which led to this gem from Jim Sterling:
I'm not on the train of thought that "internet celebrities" need to get "real" jobs. There was a documentary on MTV that followed around a YouTube personality called Miranda. The show documented the fact that much of what YouTubers do is very time consuming and can grow to be exhausting with the constant pressure to put out new and original content. Joe Vargas of the Angry Joe Show dedicated a rant of his own as to how the Content ID system clusterfuck was affecting his livelihood. These people are real individuals who have lives and bills and shit to take care of just like the rest of us.
My problem with this lies in the culture of my generation.
I don't really like to throw buzzwords like "culture" around but we are conditioned from a young age that we can be whatever we want to be. If we just work hard and dream big then it will all fall into place for us.
That simply isn't the case.
All people who create content, including us here at The Drakkarium, start out as what is know as freelance. Freelance is basically a fancy term for "you work for free".
The Drakkarium is a bit of a different beast as we are fully independent. I'm sure if Andrew had the funding he would be paying an entire staff to be working under him rather than a group of friends doing this as a glorified hobby.
Once upon a time I wrote for a site called Bleacher Report. Sports fans may have heard of it since when I was actively writing for them as a correspondent and later a featured columnist, they were somewhere in the realm of the #2 to #4 sports site in the United States. If not the world.
When I was offered the gig as a featured columnist I asked if there would be paid opportunities. I was told that after 6 months my performance would be evaluated and that pay could be a possibility. No guarantees, just a "maybe".
Maybe won't pay the bills. Most of us here at The Drakkarium as well as bigger sites like IGN, Kotaku, Destructoid and YouTubers of all kinds have families to support and bills to pay. You can't hand your landlord an IOU every month for chasing your dream and you can't tell the cashier a WinCo that you might pay them the next time you come in. To quote Jim Cornette, "I can hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.".
It does suck to work a 9-5 job every day. I, along with many others, wish we could chase our passions for a living.
Andrew and I hope to one day be able to do what we do here for a living. I don't know about him but I certainly have no delusions of grandeur that we will be the next IGN. We devote the time that we can to it and we wish we had a lot more time to devote to the site. Trying to make something work from the ground up is something that is very difficult and doesn't happen overnight.
To all of you that have the ability to chase your dream and are willing to sacrifice life, love, sleep and food to do so, Godspeed. I wish you all the luck in the world.
But like Jim Ross says to all aspiring professional wrestlers, make sure to have a backup plan because it likely won't work out.
Not every professional wrestler becomes Hulk Hogan. Not every basketball player becomes Michael Jordan. Not every baseball player becomes Babe Ruth. Not every game journalist becomes Jim Sterling and you can bet sure as the sun will come up tomorrow that not every YouTube personality becomes PewDiePie.