You'll Never Be Rich

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Over the past decade, there’s been a growing epidemic of excess. Influencers on social media flaunting expensive cars, designer clothing, big houses (so you wanna be a rock superstar), and then, of course, the extremely lucky Youtubers, TikTokers, and so on and so forth, who make it big because they hit the algorithm correctly. But, in all reality, this is a small amount of people who do these things. Becoming rich and famous is not something the average person, or most people, will ever attain. It’s like they say, you have more in common with a homeless person, than a billionaire.

And that’s true.

I’ve been “making content,” all sorts of things, for as long as I can remember now. I hit it very minimally “big” in 2022 with some NFT project I was drawing by hand, and then I lost all of it within 6 months. Albeit, it was only 10,000 dollars, and I was able to buy things I didn’t have, that I needed. But, like life does, as soon as good things happen, bad things follow. And all of that money was gone in seconds. And now I’m in debt because of it (car repairs, sick pets, failing hardware).

About two years before that, I had a bestselling album in the darksynth sector of Bandcamp. Am I rich? Am I famous?

No, and no.

Shortly after having some big success in music, I was systematically removed from the synth/retro scene by bad actors who, to this day, still look to control this tiny niche of a music scene. However they see fit, to whatever ends they decide. It’s a copy, a carbon copy, of the real, actual music scene. And it blows nuts, and tons of ass.

I’ve been running a Patreon since 2012, and recently shifted over to Ko-fi and Liberapay. I’ve been working on a new album, a book, tons of Python scripts to make my website cooler, and my Mastodon instance more dynamic and interesting. I’ve been writing, forever, doing web design even longer. And I’m just about as broke as I was a decade ago. Just, now I have more bills, and a full time job that hardly pays for it all.

I live paycheck to paycheck, and I’ve been paying on debt for almost three years that never seems to go away. And soon, soon! I’ll have education expenses coming my way, as the buffer period starts to run out, and I start owing on classes for a major I didn’t even finish (computer science, physics, front-end development).

And I have an inkling of a suspicion that this is how a lot of people are living. A lot of people in this country owe a billion companies a ton of money, and at the end of the month they’re, like me, probably left with mostly peanuts to push around so that they can do things that bring them some kind of joy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you should keep making things. Keep making silly little videos, keep drawing, keep making music, keep writing, keep creating. But don’t do it in the pursuit of extreme amounts of money and fame. The only people in the world who are rich beyond their wildest dreams were either lucky, or perpetuators of mass amounts of exploitation and pain.

Sure! Maybe one of the people reading this will get lucky, and you’ll have your wildest dreams come true, but for most of us? The life you’re living now is probably the way it’s going to be for a long time, if not, for the rest of your life. And that’s okay.

It’s not the luck that’s letting you down, it’s the system.

If every single person were rich and thriving, nobody would be. Being rich depends on other people being poor. And that’s why everything is so beyond screwed up, in 2024. A system that demands some people suffer, so that others can live in permanent comfort, frickking sucks ass, by design. And it’s not your fault!

So buy that Mocha Cappuccino, and subscribe to Max and watch Lord of the Dragons or whatever, and write that book, and then post it online so some soulless algorithm can copy and paste it into an uninspired jerkwad’s publishing machine. Wander around in Second Life and pretend you own a home, and then start a band. Play some music, make 40 albums, move to New York, and–

You know what, just do you.