Want to Make It as a Creator? Be Famous, Go Viral or Go Fuck Yourself.
Here’s the brutal truth about mainstream success: You either need to be famous already, or you need to be willing to light yourself on fire for attention.
That’s it. Those are your options. Yes, there are exceptions, but it largely comes down to those two.
This isn’t about talent.
It’s not about dedication.
It’s not about “providing value” or whatever bullshit LinkedIn influencers are peddling this week.
The top Substack creators aren’t making bank because they’re better writers than everyone else — they’re making bank because they’re Glenn Greenwald and Matt Yglesias.
The hottest new podcasts aren’t growing because they’re better shows — they’re growing because some celebrity decided to start talking into a mic. Or possibly even a celebrity’s wife. It’s name brand recognition all the way down, the creator economy’s version of the Disney Sequel Nightmare.
The math is what kills you. You can spend years crafting thoughtful analysis and cap out at 1,000 subscribers. Or you can post one take hot enough to melt steel beams and wake up to 10,000 followers. You can make nuanced video essays for a decade, or you can film yourself doing something dangerous/controversial/extreme once and get more views than everything else you’ve ever made combined.
This is why hot takes abound.
It’s why writers spend more time trying to go viral on TikTok than actually writing.
It’s why creators post ludicrous tweets trying to suck Elon Musk’s dick.
It’s why our collective intelligence and our ability to think critically is trending to zero. We’re either slack-jawed and drooling over the content of the rich and famous, or we’re buttering our brains with the viral attempts of try-hard would-be celebrities.
And that’s hardly a nourishing diet.
“But I’ll just do one viral thing and then pivot to my real content!”
No, you won’t. That’s not how the machine works.
Once you go viral for extreme (or simply lowest common denominator) content, that’s what your audience expects. That’s what the algorithm will promote. You become trapped by your own success — if success even eventuates , because virality is a fickle beast, and most attempts at manufacturing it fail miserably.
The platforms love this system. Viral content drives engagement, while billion dollar names provide stability. It’s perfect for them that breaking in requires increasingly extreme behavior. It creates a constant stream of attention-grabbing content while ensuring the overall ecosystem remains controlled by predictable, established voices.
But we can’t just blame the platforms, either. We’re all complicit in this mess. Every time we share the outrage bait instead of the thoughtful analysis, every time we pile onto the latest main character of the day, every time we choose the spicy take over the nuanced one — we’re feeding the beast. We tell ourselves we’re above it, that we want “real content,” but our clicking and sharing habits tell a different story. The platforms might be dealing the cards, but we’re the ones choosing to play hand after hand, shoveling this shit down our own throats and asking for seconds. They’ve built the slot machines, but we’re the ones pulling the lever, chasing that dopamine hit of righteous anger or served-up schadenfreude.
So what choices does this leave creators with?
- Maintain your integrity and accept the likelihood of permanent obscurity
- Play Russian roulette with your reputation by chasing viral moments
- Already be famous (sorry, this option isn’t available to most of us)
Even if you “win” this game, you lose. Because once you’ve optimized yourself for virality, you’ve trained both the algorithm and your audience to expect increasingly extreme content. You become trapped in an arms race against yourself, always needing to push things a little further to maintain relevance.
This isn’t just bad for creators — it’s corroding culture itself. When the only path to reaching mainstream audiences is either extremism or pre-existing fame, we lose the vital middle ground where actual dialogue happens. We’re selecting for either the most outrageous voices or the most established ones, with nothing in between.
I believe in showing up every day. In doing the work. In building something real.
But I’d be lying if I said that was sufficient to break into the mainstream.
Not anymore.
I’m quite happy for my audience to be the die hard readers who still give a shit about the written word in the age of short form video and self-imposed idiocracy. My readers are people I love and respect. I don’t need to chase the next trend and become a household name at the cost of my message, my integrity and my self respect.
Maybe it’s the snotty punk kid in me.
Maybe it’s just arrogance.
But if that’s not enough for you — if the goal is a house on the hill and a book deal and an HBO mini series — the honest truth is that the best advice for new creators in 2024 isn’t “create great content” or “show up.”
It’s “be famous for something else first.”
And if that sounds depressing… well, welcome to the attention economy.
The house always wins.
P.S. Yes, I realize this post would probably get more attention if I’d made it spicier. But sometimes you have to write the thing that needs to be written, even knowing the internet’s various algorithms will bury it in favor of someone screaming about how vaccines turned their dog into a Democrat.
