Isabella Ciriaco – Conversation 3

Summary
In the article “Snapchat Wants You to Post. It’s Willing to Pay Millions” published in January 2021, the author Taylor Lorenz talks about how a new feature in Snapchat was paying millions of dollars for users who had their videos viral. According to the article, Snapchat (a social media designed for sharing pictures among friends) released a new feature in November 2020 called “Spotlight” where users could share short videos. Even though the platform wasn’t originally designed to be a place for viral videos, they realized the necessity to update, find ways to attract new users and somehow compete with other big platforms, especially TikTok, the biggest app of the moment. To accomplish this goal, the company was “’distributing over a $1 million dollars every day to Snapchatters’” and as expected, word traveled fast, and famous influencers started to shift their efforts towards Snapchat seeking the big prize. Smaller creators and even anonymous people were being rewarded too, since the company said the payments were being determined “based on unique video views and proprietary internal metrics”. Basically, any viral video from any user had the chance to monetize. For some, that money was unexpected and completely life changing: the article mentioned the 18 years old, high school senior, Katie Feeney, who had earned over a $1 million dollars “by posting unboxing videos and funny content”. For her, it was an opportunity that allowed her to choose colleges that were previously off the table, and she added: “I think making money is definitely a reason why a lot of high schoolers want to become social media influencers”. A few months after the Spotlight release, as the payments were getting smaller due to the high number of people posting and getting paid, some of the new millionaires started discussing strategies to boost their views. Cam Casey, 19, who by the time of the article publication had earned more than $3 million dollars, mentioned how he planned to use some of this money to improve his video creation and “become one of the biggest influencers on the internet.”. The end of the article highlights how posting and creating content for the internet became a true and very lucrative business, especially among the young generation.

Response
Playing Fakey and reading the article about Snapchat reminded me what a crazy world internet can be, because it is something so intrinsic in our lives that sometimes we don’t take the time to question it. For the past months I’ve been trying to reduce and reshape the way I use social media, by limiting my time on each app and blocking accountings that are either source of fake information or simply don’t add anything relevant to my life. I do not plan to get rid of my accounts any time soon because, even though we need to be careful about what we read, I still like most of the contents I consume, especially cartoonists, artists and profiles that share historic facts. One thing that really bothers me is the disproportional monetization on contents that are not relevant at all and how the internet became a business where people can earn so much while making so little, like mentioned in the article about Snapchat. While I do believe some contents require further research and knowledge to be produced, and consequently should receive monetization like any other job, there are thousands of people creating “empty” content just for the views and money.