I am not a "content creator," and I don't want to be.
I got an email a little while ago from a former friend. Not a personal one, it was from his mailing list. He used to be a game development YouTuber, but he has since fallen deep into the firey pit that is the "YouTube guru" category. In the email he promoted his new Claude scriptwriter that creates scripts for YouTube videos (he also mentioned working with such incredible people as Clavicular...). Believe it or not, writing scripts is the part of making things I struggle with the most. I am (in my opinion) pretty good at code and computer logic, I'm getting better and faster with Blender, video editing, sound design, etc. Much of the larger YouTube community focuses heavily on optimizing numbers, making every single second perfect to keep viewers watching. They would rather spend their time trying to hack YouTube's systems and mrbeastifying than making something they're truly just passionate about. I get that, I am terrified of posting anything other than game development on my channel despite the fact that I very intentionally picked a non-gamedev-specific name for that purpose. People also care a lot about being consistent, getting down and grinding out 500 new videos. Quantity over quality. I just can't imagine living like that. When you get deep into the YouTube guru section in particular a lot of morals go completely ignored. For something closer to me, that same friend ended up trying to effectively get me and a few others to work for pretty low commission making games nonstop while he paid others to write scripts and edit videos, giving the actual developers no credit (he only ever released one video doing this in the end due to backlash but it was one I MADE). If any of this is what it means to be a "content creator," I want no part in it. I take my time making things because I like them. I truly wish I was able to convince myself to not care at all about the numbers, though they do still linger. I'm bad at writing scripts, but that's also as good a reason as any to keep trying to write them. I can't offload any part of what I do to some ocean-guzzling corporation. It wouldn't be me expressing myself, it would just be more content for the bottomless slop bucket they keep trying to feed us. Let alone every other reason I wouldn't want to use generative AI in general...
The point is, I am not a content creator. I am a game developer, I am a video maker, I am an animator, etc., and I do all of these things because I genuinely enjoy them. I will take as long as I need doing these with my own skills, or lack thereof, because I'd rather be happy and mentally balanced than a fraud. If this makes me the antithesis of the efficient, optimized, perfect creator, so be it.