Conversation

The teachable newsletter is increasingly indistinguishable from prosperity gospel 😐 The “creator economy” has acquired a permanent aftertaste of Napoleon Hill desperation. The target audience of the platforms now is apparently financially desperate people, not “creators” per se
Image
10
97
If “creation” were this kind of deeply joyless hustle for me, I’d rather quit. But the platform marketing isn’t wrong. The Desperates are the core, sadly. And if you’re mainly in the audience you know the median thing is coming from a place of desperation.
1
34
If you’re in a bad place financially, and looking for a way out in the creator economy, my sympathies. Tough spot if you’re crying and hurting on the inside and the only way you can think of to make a living is effectively laughing, singing, and dancing for others.
3
30
Only suggestion I have is to try and make your out-of-desperation money in a way that doesn’t require performing emotions that are the opposite of the way you feel. You’ll only get grinder output that way and pay the cost later in voidbucks.
2
28
This is especially toxic for teaching, which is why I suppose it struck me as incongruous. Teaching in an aggressive sales-quota mode works well for certain vocational genres but not as a general attitude for most things we consider worth teaching and learning from each other.
1
14
To be clear, I’m a bad person to take advice from here. Teachable is my least successful medium. I make enough to cover the platform subscription and a bit of pocket change with a couple of purely passive courses that haven’t been updated or offered live since 2017 😆.
Replying to
Haven’t been able to either develop ideas with Sustainable Excitement™ that suit the medium, or been sufficiently nerdsniped by the medium itself for that to be it’s own reward. Video feels like an unbearable chore. Maybe either/both will change. Not holding my breath.
1
6
Qualified reco for an antidote to accepting hustle-porn desperation as unavoidable: Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided, which has a good historical account of where this culture comes from. My review from 2010. Flawed book but appropriate here.
2
10
Don’t mean to dunk on whoever wrote that copy. This insidious attitude is in the water now. Unless you reflect critically on what you’re saying, this is the kind of copy that will pour out of you easily when your boss expects the promo newsletter out on time.
3
9