> According to the article, many of the 'famous' YouTube stars do not bring in a fair amount of money, so they must rely on day jobs that they cannot keep because of the fame.

A "fair amount of money" for creating music and videos doesn't mean "enough to not have to work". As an analogy, if I made crafts or something and sold them online and they weren't so successful that I could quit the working world, it wouldn't be inaccurate if I were to say "I make a fair amount of money on the side from my hobby". Note that I'm using the word "fair" in the sense you'd say something is "fairly big", not in the sense of justice (a much more complicated discussion).

> Whether you find it 'sad' or not is not particularly relevant.

Jesus christ dude, do you just click on random comments on the page without reading the thread they're part of? The parent comment of this thread is me disagreeing with the article title's characterization of the economics as "sad". There is quite literally nothing more relevant to this discussion.

> It appears you don't empathize because you believe the opportunity they are given to pursue their passion outweighs the struggle of funding that passion. They disagree.

This is 100% wrong, in more than one way (200% wrong?). First off, the comment you're responding to and quoting isn't talking about the financial cost of creating. If you bothered to actually read the thread, you'd see that we covered that in _the very first comment_, and no one is really in disagreement in this thread that the financial struggle of artists of all kinds is a bummer. We're talking about what costs in particular are unique to Internet-famous creators, (ie what makes it 'sad'), and the answer is the cost of fame.

Secondly, let's say I go along with your random change in subject and start talking about the financial costs of creating not being worth the opportunity for people who are currently creators. This is also completely wrong, pretty much by definition. The people who _aren't_ still YouTube (et al) creators are the ones that decided that the struggle of funding their passion is not worth it. The ones who are still doing it, by definition, have decided that the costs are worth it.

You've completely misunderstood the article, this entire comment thread, and the comment you're responding to, so I'll summarize part of it for you here:

I find it as sad as anyone (and more than many) that people have to get jobs and aren't free to pursue their passion if it doesn't happen to be lucrative[1]. This is a completely different discussion, and one that often comes up on HN. It usually involved discussion of post-scarcity economies, basic incomes, etc. That has precisely nothing to do with the "sad economics" of Internet fame in particular. Hence my original contention that the author is essentially complaining about the same problem (people have to get jobs instead of follow their passion), and to make the article more clickbaity, pointing at a solution that doesn't go far enough and pretend that it's causing the problem. Specifically, the fact that lower-gated revenue sharing for online creators doesn't allow them to live off their work is an incomplete improvement on the previous gatekeeper system where you had to get lucky and be connected and convince a record exec that your passion is worth it.

[1] this is particularly sad in the arts, where our current system isn't particularly good at valuing its positive externalities. Which isn't to say that I have a perfect solution for arts funding...