Also, I wanted to mention another strange phenomenon.
Younger people (I'm 33, so I'm old as heck) have been sold on the streamer / influencer route just as much as my (and previous) generations were sold on the musician / artist route. Their whole trick is to make it look easy, when in reality the bands or artists (or in this case, streamers) worked harder than everybody else in order to get where they are. They took the crap jobs, they got stalked, made fun of, bullied, harassed, or had a beer bottle thrown at their head at least once. They also likely toured themselves sick for a decade, depending in which scenario we're going with.
It's a rough path. Let's just put it that way! In my old(er) age, I'd much rather take the safer route than that stuff, but there's no harm in giving new things a go!
Yeah, I will second this.
Even the ones that make big money work harder than you might think.
I dont follow social media and whatnot, but I do follow a lot of Youtube, and am familiar with some big earners on there. And what I often see is people wanting to be just like them, because it's oh so easy, but... yeah, no, that's not how it works.
For instance, one of my favorites is Markiplier... the guy makes millions on there. And that, to many, sounds easy: play video games, be funny, get the big bucks... right? But this means a lot of hours doing this (way, way more than you'd think... dont expect to have much free time doing this), a lot of pressure to constantly be humorous (and that's not easy), a lot of time spent coming up with new content ideas (because the #1 thing to avoid as a Youtuber is getting stale... that can entirely kill your career all at once, and coming up with GENUINELY new stuff so you're not retreading too often is REALLY hard), the need to constantly appear in a really good mood even when not, ya gotta be able to push through stress like it's not there, the actual content can take way more effort than it appears (many big Youtubers, and even mid-sized ones, will have actual editors working with them, because they do not have the time to do all that editing themselves), and the bit that I personally would find the most problematic: The need to absolutely ignore any and all physical/mental symptoms (such as chronic pain) in order to keep producing content. And the need to constantly INTERACT with others... regardless of wanting to or not.
Granted: It helps a lot, with something like that, if you really, genuinely enjoy what you're doing. But while that might sound like a super perfect job, well... I know how some channels are, and how very FOCUSED many are, and I gotta say, if I needed to make, oh, I dunno, League of Legends content every bloody day because that's expected of me, I'd have gone totally mad long ago in a way that even customer service jobs never managed.
And all of that is AFTER you spend all that time climbing the ladder. Like any of these people you're gonna start at the bottom and chances are, the numbers aint gonna climb very fast, and you're making no money whatsoever while at the bottom. But they simply kept doing it anyway (for most, it starts as a hobby... NOT a goal).
Also every bit of that is not even considering stuff like dealing with potentially dangerous fans or whatever, or all the travelling, or things like that.
That's all JUST Youtube. Who knows what loopy behind-the-scenes stuff someone on a different platform may have to do? Remember: the only thing that you, the viewer, sees is the final result. The final HEAVILY EDITED result. You dont see whatever went into making it. There are times when even something that is like, 1 minute long, could have taken 2 days to set up.
My point is: These sorts of jobs often seem like they're just so simple, so EASY, no work involved. But it's usually a lot more than you'd think. That's the case with a lot of things, really. Heck, I'd had that idea about video game development, when I was your age. It's video games, right... it's gotta be constant fun... right? Hah! I've since been able to do some game-dev work (indie) and I gotta say... it's brutal. And that's WITHOUT "crunch". I cant imagine what the guys at the big studios go through.
What's that saying, grass is greener on the other side? Yeah. Always that. Just trust me on this.
Also: You're 18. You're literally just starting out. You arent exactly 95 and having any reason to wonder "why did I work at a Walgreens all my life" or something.
