A classic case of survivorship bias. The successful creators on social media are very limited in number, but have above-average visibility, creating the illusion that anyone can do it.
It often takes a combination of the right content niche, loyal audience and, above all, the right timing in relation to trends to achieve long-term success in this area.
The freedom of meaning of the content is due to the fact that in this medium, an offer financed by advertising is only about the attention of the audience. Controversial or nonsensical content can be planned and lead to success with comparatively little effort.
The level of income of these social media giants is therefore justified according to the risk-reward ratio. In order to actually make any real money with social media, the influencer must statistically be in the top percentile of their peers. Many earn nothing, a few earn something and very, very few make a living from this activity. If you compare this with the average salary of academics, who, if they pursue a discipline that is in demand, have a comparatively zero risk of not being able to live with the income from their work, the actual situation becomes much more visible. If we look at the “average” influencer in our minds, we also have to set our standards for academic careers accordingly high, in the top few percentiles.
The academic also has no risk of a random shitstorm sweeping away his main source of income and is very likely to get loans much more easily.
With regard to the justification of the high income from these sources, this discussion can also be put to the test in another way. In our latitudes, the heir has also usually done “nothing” for his often extraordinarily high standard of living. Income and individual performance are therefore decoupled from one another through completely different mechanisms. Personally, I am also aware of more cases of “lazy” heirs to wealth who contribute very little to society in terms of value creation than influencers who are successful from one day to the next and live a carefree life.
So why get upset about it? There is value creation, even if only seen in the abstract. Work for money.
Written by a successful academic with several social media side projects in the past and present.
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