Do It for You

FEATURE | HANGA / CRAFT

Written by Joshua Black | Contributing Writer

Illustration by Scarlett Kean | Contributing Illustrator

As a child, I spent so much of my spare time creating art. Animation, comics, YouTube videos, video games — if I liked it, I was making it.

With so much passion, it felt like I was destined for a flourishing career in the creative arts. Yet as I became a teenager, then a young adult, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the goal to be great. If I were to stick with something, it better be worth posting, selling, or becoming a career.

Today it seems self-doubt is the least of your worries; the challenges of unfathomable competition and AI have made establishing a career stupidly impossible. 

So I gave up… and I feel so damn relieved.

With my own story and ramblings on the state of the industry, I hope to give those pursuing art a new perspective as to why this was not such a depressing thing for me. Hopefully ,it lets you see the silver lining of the state of the world, and if you realise you’re cooked, hopefully it doesn't leave you in a panic attack.

I first want to talk about the internet. It is what gave me so much inspiration and tools to be creative, but in the end, it’s what ruined me.

Gen Z/Alpha are the generations that have been rug-pulled by the internet. We witnessed it become a gateway to independent professional creation, only to have that gate slowly block up with slop, bad practice, and content farms by the time we got old enough to have anything worth saying.

I made a YouTube channel in 2012. This year was the turning point for YouTube, when it started investing heavily in higher-quality content and its creators. Seeing better quality content was pretty inspiring for me, and I was seemingly in the majority.

A poll in the US found that one in three kids wanted to become YouTubers when they were older.

However, that only means more children with dreams to give up on. According to YouTube, over 20 million videos are uploaded daily to their site. How could anyone plan to stand out?

It would be redundant for me to complain that being a content creator is no longer niche, and therefore it’s more competitive. But it seems that there are two depressing responses from those who still want to give it a go: sell your soul for maximum slop output, or continue screaming into the void without an end in sight, and these sites favour the slop.

There is a clear incentive for these sites to prioritise whatever gets the most interaction, and a clear incentive placed for creators to follow suit. All major content sites are now designed to trap you in a binge of short-form doomscrolling, and they’re proud: YouTube flexes that their Shorts are now averaging over 70 billion daily views. With tutorials on making AI slop and Shorts/reels content farms also raking in millions of views, it's obvious the days where actual artists have a chance of finding an independent career are long gone… so where should they turn to?

As a skilled creative, the mature response to the changing face of the internet would be to accept that window of opportunity as a fad, and to look for stable employment in your preferred industry. However, from my experience, I only have more bad news. 

Not only is the creative industry one where you now need to pass through Dante’s Inferno to find a job that doesn’t pay in peanuts - or, god forbid, “experience” - but when you get that job, you’ll likely find management assumes that you should be grateful to be there, (as in, happy to take ambiguous forms of exploitation) and is eagerly awaiting an update in AI worthy of replacing you. 

There is not a single bone in my body that is content with AI bullshit taking work away from skilled artists. Besides the obvious, being annoyed at smug rich dorks too high on quarterly earnings to remember what being a human is, I find it frustrating because what AI produces is, by definition, NOT ART!

Excuse the cliché, but Oxford Dictionary defines art as: 

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

A computer using algorithms to produce something predictable is the exact antonym of art.

Though in finding this definition, I feel I need to ask, is the creative industry about art, either?

When did you last get the sense that a non-independent film or TV production actually cared primarily about beauty or emotional power, and not marketability and safe profits?

I have come to terms with the fact that some people don't care about beauty or emotional power; some really do just like watching whatever new thing The Rock is in. But when coming to terms with that, I have to wonder, is “creative industry” about art at all?

Could I ever get creative fulfilment from crunching on a project that’s only following industry conventions to sell marketable plushies, or to appeal to my dad's Netflix when he’s on his couch five beers deep?

If you are reading this and currently studying in a creative field, I’m sorry. I can only feel bad that you are not as grumpy, old, and bitter about the world as I am. However, here comes the silver lining I promised you. 

I’ve been talking so critically about the state of professional creativity, but it’s important to remember that that’s not the point of art at all. You haven’t lost self-expression, and that’s probably all you really need to be fulfilled.

There is a societal pressure that pushes too many creatives into seeking the wrong forms of validation: whatever craft you begin should be profitable, or whatever art you make needs a ton of views and likes online to be worthwhile.

This lets so many people get sidetracked by the grindset of opening an Etsy, or the impulse to make their creative work their career, and robs them of the simple joy of the process.

This happened to me, and it robbed me of joy for years. As part of my failed journey in the creative industry, I went to film school and made a couple of documentaries. I never showed anyone because I thought they were simply not good enough. But years later/a few months ago, the school asked if they could put my last film on their YouTube channel. I was flattered and said yes, shared the link with my friends, and they loved it.

When they reacted so positively, I felt all the same impulses return: Go back to uni! Start a YouTube channel! Go be a video journalist!

But then those same doubts returned: would I still be as good? Do I really have what it takes? How could I succeed in this economy?

And it was here that I saw things clearly, the enjoyment from my closest friends is ALL I ever needed.

The internet lets the whole world be your audience, the industry lets your skills be legitimised professionally, but do you really need either of those things to express yourself? If you enjoy making something, maybe just enjoy it. If you feel proud, show your friends, or a club, or at most a competition or festival. You’ll find more joy making things for you and your community than you will receiving death threats online or working past midnight because your production team miscalculated the delivery date.

Because, sure, with the way things are headed, it may soon be near impossible to profit, as entry opportunities are shrinking by the hour. But that can’t take away your pens, your camera, your voice, it can’t take away your Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons.

As a child, I spent so much of my spare time creating art.

I’ve been missing the point of why I did this my whole life.

I've "given up on my dreams", but now I can’t wait to enjoy making shitty doodles, films, and art again. What kind of fucked up dream would take that away?