In addition to what others have said, I think the fact that people can make a living from very very niche content is novel. Arguably, it works so differently that it could be considered a new sector.
> By "lauding celebrities", all we're accomplishing is consolidate consumer attention into fewer content production channels, solidifying the position of the platforms where these celebrities operate.
I think you're on point about the platforms, but not about the channels per se. In the past, you basically got to watch what 60-year old guys in the executive suite thought was appropriate, whereas now you can watch a lot more types of stuff. And I think people are wising up to the power platforms had. I think when OnlyFans said they were banning porn, people quite rapidly found new platforms to move to. Building these platforms has also become cheaper and easier, especially in the last 2-5 years IMO.
I mean, cable was already in the niche catering business in the 90s. Gordon Ramsay or Jacques Cousteau or Mythbusters are all quite niche IMHO. I'd be willing to acknowledge that the existence of gaming/mukbang/etc content creators nowadays is merely the entertainment industry catching up with the fact that the world is a lot more vast (and dare I say mundane) than TV would have you believe.
As for platform power and user choice, I think people have a misconception about how much "power" they have, considering that search results and recommendations are entirely at the mercy of the companies that provide them and they're very much aggregated by user profiles, much like cable had "hundreds of options" that are in actuality largely curated to target audiences.
There are a variety of niche old videos that I can no longer find on youtube. The long tail does disappear for no rhyme or reason (actually, if you understand the logistics of live/cold storage and the scale at which youtube operates at, it totally makes sense). It certainly isn't like the napster days where you could in fact find that one ultra rare file that only one person in the world was seeding.
As for content creator mobility, I don't consider twoset's presence on tiktok any more novel than hollywood getting into home video. Content creators and distributors interests' don't always align and there has never been an actual monopoly on distribution channels, even despite the existence of large media conglomerates. It's just the individual players that are different, IMHO.
> By "lauding celebrities", all we're accomplishing is consolidate consumer attention into fewer content production channels, solidifying the position of the platforms where these celebrities operate.
I think you're on point about the platforms, but not about the channels per se. In the past, you basically got to watch what 60-year old guys in the executive suite thought was appropriate, whereas now you can watch a lot more types of stuff. And I think people are wising up to the power platforms had. I think when OnlyFans said they were banning porn, people quite rapidly found new platforms to move to. Building these platforms has also become cheaper and easier, especially in the last 2-5 years IMO.