Influencers who leave well paid, essential jobs to travel the world/ make content

[Paramedia]

I seem to have been flooded with new accounts of white women in their 30’s/ 40’s who all seem to have similar stories of leaving teaching, medicine, corporate jobs, law to travel and create ‘content’ either with or without children whilst travelling.
Obviously I am a bit jealous, but I wonder why now? Ten years ago, people would be happy to have a two week holiday and then come back to work. Was that because there was no other ‘easy’ option such as influencing or that we were just happier in our jobs?
I wonder if it’s a mindset, I always hear ‘do what makes you happy’ and wonder ‘but we can’t all do that, all of the time?’. Someone has to be doing the watching, someone has to be working in those sectors and seeking the escapism that those accounts offer? So how do they, ‘the creators’, know that they will be the ones who make it, that their accounts will be the ones people engage with. Or are there enough people that all of the similar accounts can all be successful based on views alone?

I watch some content creators (not sure I'd call them influencers) on Youtube (i have insta and look at it occasionally and post cartoons on it sometimes, don't have Tiktok nor will I)...

I guess it depends on the kind of content they're producing -someone making several videos a week on an interesting topic, that takes me somewhere I can't go - snorkeling through the creeks, lakes, mangroves of the USA for example - around the UK canal network is another - or teaches me something I don't know - how to use gold leaf, how to use acrylic ink, how to draw people because I suck at drawing people...

Then great, and thats not free money for doing nothing, those videos take time to make, to edit and upload, hours and hours go into making a 20 minute video.

If its just someone putting pics on instagram of their milkshake or their fancy new nails and then trying to scam free shit out of milkshake companies or nail companies... not so much. Not for me.

OK so, no we don't need people to do other jobs like be police or teachers or nurses. Everyone can go and be an influencer and travel the world and live a joyous life. And they should. We all should. We should all live a life where we simply travel and get paid to do it.

Now let's bring this back down to the ground. Economics. Content is worthless. Worth literally nothing. And nobody gets paid for content. People are paid for endorsements. If you take a picture of yourself in Bali and a million people like your photo on Instagram, nobody cares. You get paid nothing. But, if you say to a soda company, I got a million likes for my last photo, and then you do another photo drinking their soda, and lots of people go out and buy it, then you'll get paid something. How do you know you're going to get a million likes and an endorsement deal? You have no idea. Want to try it? Go ahead.

The big companies can't afford to hire everyone to promote their stuff. And some people just don't fit the kind of image they want for their product anyway. Me for instance; I'm pretty boring. Put me in some shorts in Bali, and I'm still pretty dull. Nobody's going to pay me to promote anything, because people won't pay attention, and the product won't sell. Or it certainly won't get any kind of a boost from me, anyway.

So I suppose some of us have to find other ways to make money. Which leads back to police, teachers, nurses and just about every other job. Why now, people are trying to be influencers? People have always been trying to live a great life under the sun where they do minimal work for maximum reward. Content creation is another new way of getting to that goal. It's not going to work for everyone. It probably won't work for most people. But it doesn't mean people aren't going to try it.

And welcome to the Internet. If you're getting a lot of posts from people saying how lovely a life they're having producing content - they're probably trying to sell you a course on how to live that life producing content :)

They’re not funding it through social media though. They’re hoping to in the future, but in almost all cases; they are either renting their homes on Airbnb or have sold and are living off that money. And they’re not going to Asia because it’s the life they’ve always dreamed of, they’re going because it’s cheap.