If given the chance to gain thousands of admirers for your work, would you take it?
The artists who my colleagues and I interviewed as part of our research on content creators did – and many went on to question whether it was worth it.
Mark, an illustrator with millions of followers, revealed a deep sense of dread about what was once his dream: to make a living creating art and sharing it online. (We used pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people we interviewed.)
“The thing that I got right, that I loved for the longest time and now has almost become the bane of my existence, is creating relatable comics,” he told us. “Now, I’m stuck … I would rather die than make relatable comics, but I’ve built an empire of relatable comics. So what the (heck) am I supposed to do with my life?”
Ironically, the very thing that Mark felt he needed to fulfill his dream – a large, admiring audience for his illustrations – began to feel like a prison. No longer a distant or abstract entity, he now felt inextricably linked to his followers and their reactions to his work.
