The rise and fall of Creators

Throughout centuries, we see repeated patterns of rise and fall of empires. Ray Dalio, one of the most intelligent minds in finance, observed this too in his book about the changing world order. I think similarly, we can observe this too in the creator space. Some of the most amazing creators eventually fade into the background as other new rising creators step in and steal the limelight. While we see the rise and fall of attention, there’s also the hidden phase in the early beginnings, of how creators build up their following by learning and practising the craft, until one day they suddenly blow up and everyone knows about them. Their videos go viral, shared again and again, and people look up to them. I think I’m still in the slow build up phase, though I’ve seen some early signs of engagement with some of my videos taking off, but there’s still so much more I could learn and wish to do that I don’t consider myself yet at the peak. But I also don’t want to waste my good efforts from earlier and should try to capitalise on those early successes to avoid appearing old or out of date since my last good videos.

Growth compounds quickly after a long slow build up period of learning the craft. That’s generally my observation across many creators whom I study and follow. When I look back behind the curtains, I look at their early videos to understand what they did in the early days. Many people who’re envious about their work would compare themselves with those top creators in the prime, when it’s not really a fair comparison, because we’re comparing our early days output with someone else’s peak game output. Rather, we should look at what those top creators did in the early phase, how they built up and gathered a following, and what we could learn from them too, and of course from their latest viral videos too as there’s always something to learn there too.

But what I’m more concerned about is when the fall happens. Views gradually decline as the community matures. Some viewers seek new content. Others just stop watching entirely. Creators themselves go through life changes and interests shift. It’s a bit of a mix of a push and pull. But the world’s best creators I’ve seen continue to reinvent themselves and compete with everyone else to stay relevant. They basically even compete with their previous selves to try to outdo what they did before and do it even bigger and better this time. Lady Gaga comes to mind as one of my favourite music artist. Even though she became world famous already for her pop tracks “Bad Romance” or “Poker Face”, she continued pushing for years and got into acting that eventually led to “Shallow”, one of the world’s most, if not the most awarded song in history. I don’t think she’s slowing down anytime soon, but I think the time of fall will eventually come for all of us, just as death would. People slow down as they age, interests change, and enter into a new phase of life. I think it might be sad to think of it, but that’s how life happens and at least we make the best out of it by doing the best we can every day every time.

So while we can make these observations of the rise and falls of creators over time, we should continue to focus on our growth journey and what’s ahead of us. Make the best use of the resources we have and try getting more and doing more for people around us. Basically we know the best time to start an investment is yesterday (hindsight beats foresight) but the next best time is now.