> When lamenting the "old Internet", a lot of people forget that the vast majority of the people creating content on it were gainfully employed with strong career security.
Hasn't this been the case for most of history? "The Arts" were historically disproportionately populated by aristocrats, their families, the idle wealthy, and people who could afford to dabble and create and not worry about their art bringing in money. Only very recently has this idea taken hold that it should be possible for any old person to create art and have that somehow finance his or her life. Not saying one is better than the other, but I think making a real living from art is a relatively recent invention.
Actually artists did make a living from art, they were just a few and under the protection of those with big wealth. Now everybody and their mother wants to be an artist, and for what is worth, many more can do it - it's just the definition of "artist" kinda switched from "lives from art" to "creates art" because we can finally have that time and resources to do it. And then some compare themselves to the old artists and thinks why shouldn't we live from art too - forgetting the amount of networking and ass-kissing a medieval artist had to do to earn a living at the court. So what is really new is the concept "doing art for art's sake but expecting to get paid".
Hasn't this been the case for most of history? "The Arts" were historically disproportionately populated by aristocrats, their families, the idle wealthy, and people who could afford to dabble and create and not worry about their art bringing in money. Only very recently has this idea taken hold that it should be possible for any old person to create art and have that somehow finance his or her life. Not saying one is better than the other, but I think making a real living from art is a relatively recent invention.