Who Creates the Creators?

Social media unlocked new possibilities for internet users to create themselves in their own desired image like never before. But even the creators have to answer to a higher power.

*Editor’s note (the editor being me in this case): This piece was originally commissioned and written for Wired, as part of a “new tech lexicon” series that would unpack contemporary internet and technology terms. My piece was conceived of as a sort of glossary entry for the word “creator.” Over the course of a few months in 2023, I went through multiple drafts with my editor, wrapping up final edits at the tail end of summer. This was slated to go up in the fall, I filed an invoice, got paid (yay!), and then my editor and their whole vertical got axed and this never saw the light of day.

I shopped the essay around while I was still freelancing, but to no avail. Unfortunately, this is a fairly common situation in the world of media when publications are in a constant state of pivot. (the unusual part is that I got paid at all, to which I thank my editor for allowing me to invoice well before it was supposed to run). In the wake of the TikTok ban and reinstatement this weekend, I thought now was a good of time as any to publish it here.

In the opening scene of Bo Burnham's 2018 film Eighth Grade, protagonist Kayla Day films a heartfelt video for her YouTube channel encouraging viewers to be themselves. “A lot of people call me quiet or shy or whatever, but I'm not quiet,” she says earnestly. “I just choose not to talk at school.” To her disappointment, her classmates later vote her “Most Quiet.” But back on her own channel, Kayla can present herself as the bubbly and outgoing teenager she feels she truly is.

Kayla, whose views barely crack the single digits, is no influencer. But she is a creator, simply by virtue of having a channel. When YouTube first offered up the word “creator” in 2011 it was a rough attempt to label the category of users who uploaded videos to the platform. The term has grown in popularity in the last decade, in part for its ability to encompass YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokkers, and all other current and future social media stars both big and small. And crucially, it offers an attractive alternative to “influencer,” which has come to connote social media's most parasitic qualities: its ability to harvest our personal lives for monetary gain, turning us into blind followers who pull out our credit cards at the commands of the algorithm.

Creator is—at face value—more neutral. Creators create things, and the term offers no judgment on the impact of their actions. The label connotes the ability to fashion ourselves in our own desired image, one of the internet’s most alluring assets. As Kayla shows, social media seemingly lets us present ourselves on our own terms, crafting our world exactly as we wish to see it.

Creating elevates the humble netizen to a divine creator of their own universe. These writers, producers, editors, and stars of their own reality have birthed something wholly new into existence. Deeming them "creators" recognizes their power. But for all their autonomy, creators do not draft themselves ex nihilo. No matter how large their audience or influence may be, creators still exist on platforms built by other humans and subsequently subject to the same human foibles as the world outside their camera frame.

And it’s not just the tech CEOs and dedicated coders who create the creators. The viewers consuming content are giving life to creators, too, as the chorus of commenters and followers—far from secondary players—are critical to social media’s functioning. Stanford professor and forecaster Paul Saffo theorizes that the creator economy emerged at the precise moment in November 2008 when the consumer economy met its demise. When the stock market crashed, we simply could not buy any more stuff. But we were not empty-handed: we could offer up our engagement, the core commodity of the creator economy. “Creators are ordinary individuals like you and I, who in the ordinary course of our daily lives often think we’re consuming something and in fact we’re creating,” he said in a 2015 seminar on the creator economy. Online creationism is a collective, neverending project: so long as we are viewing, liking, posting, or sharing, all of us are creators, whether we intend to be or not.

For all these reasons, social media creators come to be both puppets and puppeteers of their online lives. They can only work on the stage they’re given, one established by another creator, whose views and prejudices shape how a user can present—and profit from—themselves on a given platform. Creators of color, for instance, have spoken up about how their channels are deprioritized in social media algorithms, another creative force that makes their work less discoverable than that of their white counterparts. “I’m not the default on social media. And if you’re watching my channel you probably aren’t either,” beauty YouTuber Jackie Aina stated in a video discussing how she has had to actively curate her discovery feed to display content from Black creators like herself. Period educators have complained that their content is unfairly blocked by Instagram and TikTok’s content moderation systems, forcing them to create a unique language and visual workarounds to discuss menstrual health.

And the more successful a creator becomes, the more beholden they are to an array of other stakeholders. When Addison Rae, one of TikTok’s top personalities, posted an image of herself in a white bikini emblazoned with the words “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” as part of a collaboration with Adidas and Praying, she encountered such heated criticism from commenters that she was eventually forced to delete the photo altogether. Rae has made a small fortune thanks largely to TikTok, but the platform has benefitted from her fame, too. Her explosive popularity is useful not just for keeping millions of eyes glued to the app but also for tempting other users into believing that the only thing between them and overnight fame and fortune is their own imagination.

Tellingly, TikTok’s global head of solutions Adrienne Lahens said earlier this year that one of the company’s goals for 2023 is to “allow the creators to have more control over their own destiny.” The “destiny” Lahens refers to is one of monetary gain, which frequently comes about through branded content deals. Those deals are crucial for creators to carve out a sustainable career on social media. But once creators open themselves up to monetization, they dilute their own autonomy. Their content is now subject to the needs and views of their brand partners, which might in turn hamper their relationship with their audience—the very thing that made them attractive to brand partners to begin with.

In perhaps the most extreme example of this vicious cycle, content creators who recently paid a promotional visit to fast fashion retailer Shein’s Guangzhou manufacturing facilities were pilloried on social media, their posts from the trip likened to promoting the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Dani Carbonari, a fashion influencer whose platform largely revolves around inclusivity and self-confidence, severed her ties with Shein following the backlash to her participation in the trip. But some felt her credibility had been irrevocably tarnished: “Sorry, but I cringe at influencers that are thriving and leaning on unethical business practices, and trying to convince us differently for a check,” wrote a commenter on an Instagram reel announcing the end of her Shein partnership.

Intentionally or not, followers have a direct hand in the creation of online personalities every time they comment, like, or share. On apps like TikTok, which requires constant interplay between stitches and comments and replies, creators alone can’t generate the amount of content needed to keep their platforms running. The rest of the work falls to their followers, who as a collective body have equal power to shape what kind of trends and memes drive the social media conversation.

Last year, marketing content specialist Jason Konopinski told Fast Company that the ability of any regular user to drive engagement around a particular product or trend—in other words, to do the work that was once reserved for full-time influencers—”democratizes content.” “If you’re on a platform and you’re posting,” he added, “you are now a creator.”

Not everyone is enthused about this democratization of the “creator” title. As part of its new interface, Max, the streaming platform formerly known as HBO Max, lumped screenwriters, directors, producers, and more under the title of “creators” on its movie credits. The categorization was not well-received. As some have pointed out on—where else?—social media, it can be downright unsettling to see the likes of Martin Scorcese styled as “creator.” This isn’t just because the word is a vague replacement for roles that are already well-defined. Nor is it simply because this move is a blatant attempt on the part of Max’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery to blur the boundaries of labor protected by unions. It’s also because we understand creators to be, in the words of Saffo, ordinary people.

Creators’ ordinariness is a necessary part of their makeup. They are not traditional celebrities, whose otherworldly beauty or talent can make them seem like divine beings. A creator, unlike an A-list celebrity, often actually manages their own social accounts. To be a creator is to remain within reach of your earthly viewers, who can directly interact with you through comments and DMs. A creator can be anyone with a phone. They are not just director of a single movie, but writer, editor, director, producer, distributor, and star of their entire life.

But there is still one key role that creators can never fill on their own: that of the audience. They haven’t earned the title of “creator” just because they made a video or took a photo. They become creators when the content they’ve created is seen by others, thereby bringing their desired image of themselves to life. And the audience’s act of watching isn’t passive. It, in turn, shapes how creators build their identity in the quest to be seen and validated by as many eyes as possible.

Creators may not understand how reliant they are on other people until they’re already scrambling to shapeshift to meet the needs of a hungry audience. But so long as there exists the allure that we too can become our own makers, there will be more and more aspiring titans of social media joining the fray.