The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Remember, the good news is there’s no more posts till next Tuesday thanks to yet another holiday in New Zealand. If I knew I’d be having this big a break at the start of the year, I’d have moved here 6 years ago when I first had the chance.

It’s utterly mad, which is the perfect segue to another example of madness.

Have a look at this:

That, my friends, is apparently a genuine tweet.

Someone believes a video made by Mr Beast somehow proves the creator community is the ultimate in power, influence and success because – according to them – it got more views in less time than the original Netflix show.

How many flaws can we spot in that statement?

Look, I’m not doubting the creator community can have incredible influence over culture.

I’m not doubting the creator community can attract incredible amounts of ‘views’.

I’m not doubting the creative credentials of Mr Beast [who I do enjoy following].

But apart from the fact the Mr Beast video actually took 10 years and 7 weeks to make as it required Squid Games to be written, produced and streamed prior to Mr Beast being approached by a company to ‘re-create it’ for his channel … not to mention it didn’t make nearly as much money, or have as great an impact on sales of Van’s as the original … literally copying something someone else created is the absolute opposite of what ‘creator community’ is supposed to mean.

Don’t get me wrong, the creator community is a brilliant thing.

I genuinely love it.

But there are millions of people who are putting in so much effort to make ‘content’ and often only end up with a few likes rather than real revenue. And even those who do make it big, still earn less than the biggest stars of ‘traditional’ film making – so the promise of the community may not be as bright as some think it is.

At least right now.

I’ve blanked the name of the person who wrote the tweet to protect their delusion, but it kind of reinforces my post from last year about the fine line between entrepreneurs and parasites.

In the 80/90’s, a number of UK up and coming comedian created a group called ‘Comic Strip ‘.

The comedians were Rik Mayall, Jennifer Saunders, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders and Alexei Sayle.

So basically the foundation of British comedy television for the next 30+ years.

Anyway, Comic Strip was basically a creative vehicle for them to make a bunch of programs for Channel 4.

One of them was called Bad News, a ‘rockumentary’ about a fictitious heavy metal band trying to hit the big time. Yes, the premise sounds awfully like the movie ‘Spinal Tap’ … however Bad News came out the year before that seminal movie, so it’s just a bizarre coincidence.

So in the show, the guitarist, Vim Fuego – played by Ade Edmondson – tells the interviewer that he is a better guitarist than Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

His reason for saying that is because he could play the solo to Stairway To Heaven when he was 13 but Jimmy couldn’t even write the song until he was 26.

Later in the program, he said John Lennon had visited him in a dream and gave him a song. He decided to call it Imogen. And when the interviewer said the name – and the melody – were suspiciously like the Lennon classic, Imagine … he claimed he’d never heard of it.