YouSaid · the spoken record

Karen X Cheng

lines on the record: 95
first: 2022-11-09
most recent: 2022-11-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, it's almost like the mass hierarchy of needs, and it's like, oh, I'm actually just focused on doing the ideas that I want to do. Whereas in the past, I know 10 years ago I would have been like, I want to dance in a Coca-Cola commercial. Like, I'm good. I don't need to do that now. And then even two years ago, I was like, I really, really, really, really want to make a commercial for the Apple iPhone. And now I'm like, I'm good. Like, I don't actually need to do that anymore. So yeah, I don't have one because it's actually about the idea and it actually is so cheesy. It sounds so cheesy, but it actually is about enjoying making the idea.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love that, at least for me. When I was younger, it used to be like, I want to work with these people, or I want these companies to hire me. And I think you're right. There is like an evolution like we talked about before, where you're almost transcending attention and you've gotten to a place where actually your focus is how do I make something really?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's interesting because in the past, I would have had a dream client or a dream something, but I've actually learned over time that it's not about which celebrity you can get or which brand you can get, but it's for me, I've learned it's actually about doing my best ideas, my best work. And so the way I do things is I try to matchmake my ideas to a client who will accept them unaltered, essentially, or with the least alteration possible. So I actually won't answer that question or nothing actually comes to mind because it's mostly about like making the ideas that I want to make.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think culture can change a lot faster than regulation, much, much, much faster. And I'll give you an example, the fastest I've ever seen culture change was the handshake during COVID. How many thousands of years or hundreds of years has the handshake been the golden standard? And then all of a sudden, like socially unacceptable. So many things became socially unacceptable almost overnight because of COVID. And I was like, wow, human culture can change like that. And then now that the pandemic is better, then like we're back to doing it again. So I do think that we're going to need a lot of cultural forces to kind of sprint ahead of regulation because regulation will take time.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love going down these rabbit holes because it does just get the wheel spinning. I'm like, man, there's so much to figure out. And when you're dealing with an exponential technology, policy regulation, IP, a lot of the stuff takes time, right? And so I also wonder whether we create regulation or policy, let's say in 2023, and then by 2025 it's already completely different.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why I say that somehow I want my wish list is for the culture to change because humans are a self-enforcing society. You know, we are very naturally tribal and we behave well largely because that's what's expected of us from other humans. It's not like someone's watching us at every single moment, but we still in general want to behave well. And a lot of that is the cues that you're getting from culture. And so I would love to see a culture developed where, hey, as humans, as part of being a good human, we use technology responsibly and ethically. I don't know how that's going to happen. That's why it's my wish list.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Regulation will catch up, but I actually think it will be somewhat self regulated in the sense that some people will have the need to show that what they do is true and not altered. And then there will be companies that pop up that say, okay, this is the technology that does that. And then there will be people who then buy that technology and use it of their own free will and accord, not because of regulatory requirements, because it'll take a while for the regulation to catch up.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to be the hardware level, and I think it will be first adapted in really high stakes scenarios where the veracity of something is extremely important. So for example, in like political messaging, maybe they'll have a very specific kind of camera or hardware where it cannot be altered. So for certain types of like really important messaging where it's really important that it not be faked. Whereas someone's social media influencer video, it doesn't matter if something was adjusted or tweaked, you know”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've heard people talk about this, and I might be wrong because I've just listened to another podcast, but it likely would have to be at the hardware level, as in run by Apple or Google, et cetera, because if it's not at the device level, that's like really easy. Has that information.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Already there on edge cases and will pretty soon be there Mass cases. I think that will be developed. I think it will be necessary and it will happen. And I think it will be very similar to like nutrition facts. Like it's a universal standard that we have nutrition facts. And so there will need to be some sort of system that shows, you know, this is a video, this was produced in this way.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, have you seen the Tom Cruise ones? They are actually fully the Tom Cruise deepfakes. I can't tell. I think most people can't tell.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you think that we will need to somehow label things as AI generated or human generated? Because, you know, a simple example, you brought up Deception, but people do these deepfakes, right, of people without their consent. They're not quite there yet, but they're very close to being”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I mean, it's very hard to be the arbiter of that. But for example, like deception is bad, right? So when you're altering things, you need to disclose what you altered and how.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are their prompts? And so that's an interesting. I have an answer for your question. Here's my wish list for AI. My wish list is actually for all humans to take the ethics of it very seriously. And what I mean by that is like My wish list is that everyone working on AI be held to a standard to be using it for positive forces rather than negative. And that we somehow develop an insane amount of cultural pressure that anyone who's not using for positive sources is like not ostracized from society, but penalized in a way that it is severely disincentivized”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up I like that. Startup idea. I mean, people are already playing around with audio AI. And so, obviously, I haven't seen the ASMR stuff, but I feel like that's coming soon. And I've heard other people talk about this in the realm of video as an example where you're, let's say, in a movie, and this is a little further away, but based on your prompts, it goes another direction, right? And so it's almost like personalized content to the consumer based on their needs or their prompts. And so that's an interesting.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know what would be interesting with ASMR is like if they could connect to your senses and measure your response to it. And then in real time, adjust update it to your sensory response.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, totally. Something we talked about before we jumped on, which is like a neat little idea just to get the wheels spinning for any listeners, is we were talking about audio AI. Have you actually seen any AI ASMR? I wonder”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. It's for sure coming. It's hard for me to say a wish list. Guess because I'm just trying to keep up with what's already coming out.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I have wanted for AI is video tools for creators that are AI powered. That's why I've been doing so much hacking trying to get like these image tools to work for video because it's not quite there yet, but I keep on trying to make it work. Once it does, though, I don't even know what's going to happen. So I'm almost like, be careful what you wish for, you know?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Podcast recordings with video. And every so often I would just love to resay something, right? And things like descript allow you to resay something with audio very easily. But I want that with video because if we're airing the video versions of these, I want to just be able to be like, remove my filler words and, you know, fix up my performance. But obviously it'll look ridiculous if the video portion isn't equivalent. So that's my little wish list for anyone at OpenAI or otherwise to do. I know they're probably coming out with video at some point, but to sync the two.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But taking a little bit more of an optimistic lens, I've seen AI used in a ton of different ways. Like I saw something recently, which was like an AI that helped write Excel formulas, which I thought was quirky and neat. I also saw one that takes legal jargon and simplifies it for the end user. Curious to know from you, do you have a wish list? Are there things that AI has not touched yet where you're like, man, I would really love this? And while you think about it, I'll just quickly share one. Super simple, but we're doing these.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think technology is neither good nor bad. I think I like to view it as neutral. It's like the neutral canvas. And so I find that to be the most empowering because if it's neutral, then we have the ability to influence it.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is such a sea change, and to your point, like even as two people who believe fundamentally that technology is good, or at least I don't want to put words in your mouth, that's something I believe. It is sometimes hard to just like fathom what the hell we do and who's going to be disrupted and it's impossible to say that there aren't negative externalities.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think humans are remarkably adaptable. And so we will adapt. I do think that already the world is moving much faster than human evolution can keep up with. So, for example, we weren't really evolved to sit in office chairs all day. We weren't evolved to hear the comments of thousands of people on social media. We were evolved for like 30% tribes, right? And so you see all of these mental health and physical health problems that we have. A lot of those are because human evolution hasn't caught up to how much culture has changed. And so I say two things. One, humans are remarkably adaptable. But two, there is a limit to how much humans can actually evolve from like, you know, a Charles Darwinian evolutionary perspective to keep up with some of this stuff. We are entering a completely unknown time. I'm just, I'm trying to stay positive.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if we've lived in a time that's been so exponential where these technologies are changing, but humans have adapted. So we'll see how we adapt. I mean, some interesting examples you pointed me towards an article from Nathan Bashes where he talked about even simple things like the introduction of unsplash. There's some version of that, right? Where, like, we have access to unlimited 2D art, so maybe 3D art is important just as an example, but then of course AI will eat that. So I don't know. I think it's interesting to kind of think through how humans might evolve, or do you think that this stuff is just moving so quickly?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the sooner you can accept and embrace the mindset that the world is always changing, the skills you have to learn always need to change, the better off you'll be.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think the answer is focus on prompt engineering because I wouldn't be surprised if in a very short amount of time AI gets extremely good at prompt engineering and so those people are less relevant. In fact, I was actually just talking to someone who was using GPT-3 to write prompts to run through stable diffusion. So I would say that the best thing to do Not to learn specific skill because that's going to change probably by the time this podcast comes out, you know. I think the best thing is to adopt a mindset that you have to always be learning and to accept that the model that humans had for much of humanity, which is that you could. Choose a career and then have that career for life. That's gone. We are at the last dying, grasping breaths of those days.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you think about what creators should be focused on? Should they be focused on learning prompt engineering? Should they be focused on a field that they think won't be touched by AI if that exists? What are you doing as a creator to say, you know what, I don't want to be left behind? So I'm going to be learning X, Y, and Z.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Giving any numbers either. No, no, no. But we were just having fun. But I think his framing was really interesting, which is that he believes that, again, it's like the game-changing innovation. And if you look at humans and the spectrum of time that we've been on this earth, if we're talking five years or we're talking 50 years, that is still just like a drop in the hat, right? such a short period of time where it's almost inevitable. I think many people in this space will say that AI within 50 years is just like going to really, really fundamentally shape or change our world. And so again, like coming back to his point, it was like, if it's in five months, five years, 50 years in the spectrum or the span of human civilization, it's nothing, right? And it doesn't seem like nothing within our lifetimes. But yeah, I mean, coming back to the idea of it helping people, it hurting other people.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a game changing technology. I've heard some people say that it is like the technology of our generation in terms of how it shapes things. I also heard Sam Altman say, which I thought was like an interesting frame. A lot of people will talk about, and we even did this at the beginning of our call. They'll be like, when is this going to change things fundamentally? He didn't give, at least in the interview I saw a definitive timeline because I think no one can predict.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be bad for a lot of people. And I personally do try to stay optimistic and try to see the optimistic side, but there's no denying that it is going to be bad for a lot of people and it is going to be good for a lot of people.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That the department he was in, the image that he would have used instead would have been like a Getty images or like some stock photo. It wouldn't have been like an official commission, right? So that was what he was replacing. But he still got attacked for it So, I think, you know, the first few, the arrows attack the leaders, right? So I think the first few people who are going to start using AI are going to get backlash, but it's going to get less and less and less and less until it's accepted. I honestly discussing some of these downsides is very uncomfortable for me because I don't know what's going to happen. And I do think that”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 2022, it is most certainly a gimmick and a headline grabber. It is like let's be innovative. Let's be first. Let's be on top of this. I would imagine in 2023 the answer to that will probably be different. People will actually start using it as their workflow because it makes sense and not as a headline grabber. Really interesting. I saw that there was someone, a reporter who used a mid-journey art for his article, I think about Alex Jones, and then he went viral in a bad way in that he got majorly attacked on Twitter for using mid-journey art for a magazine article. He was attacked because he didn't hire human artist instead, you know, it was, I think, the Atlantic, correct me if I'm wrong. But I think what people didn't have context was.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really hard to predict. But yeah, I wonder how some of these fields change. I mean, I want to hear from you because you've started to work with some of these companies. At this point in 2022, Is AI, or at least the tools that people are using? Are they seen as more gimmicks, or do you see companies really investing in this and saying, oh, actually, we are going to replace our photographer with AI? Or, you know, to use Cosmo as an example was working with you, just something where they could put their flag in the ground and say, hey, we're innovative, we're working with AI. Or do you see them actually going and like doing every fifth cover with AI? How are companies thinking about this?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a really good point. I think there is incredible downward pressure. And so what's probably going to end up happening, unfortunately, is that there will be the more well-known people who can still charge higher rates. But then for the vast majority of people, like there's such insane downwards pressure on it. And I do worry about that for creators. And I don't really know how that is all going to play out.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you think that holds up though? And I ask that because I think like many industries, the very best of the best, if there really is like a 1% or like a 10x prompt engineer, they will get paid very well. We've seen that happen in many fields. But then you also see when things get democratized, like it's very hard for those price economics to not change, right? Because you imagine, for example, that at the beginning, maybe, yeah, maybe certain creators are holding their ground. They're saying, we must be paid to X. But then you're going to have insert creator here that is like, actually, I'll take half of that. Or maybe I'll take a hundredth of that price.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when I work with clients, I'll literally say them like, hey, even if you don't hire me, and sometimes it doesn't work out. And so I'm like, hey, you know, my schedule doesn't work out for this project. But whoever you hire, please pay them. Please allocate this budget because we're at like a moment in history that's very vulnerable where certain standards can be established. And I would like to see the standard established that if you hire a human to use an AI as a tool, then you pay the human.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me rephrase the question to something that I think you can comment on, which is how creators get paid, how creators charge. So something that we talked about before was that for your projects, whether it was with Cosmo or we were actually talking about a project, you said that you felt like it was really important that those projects were paid for. That might sound obvious, but as we talked about before, AI in certain cases might not cost that much. It might cost like $2 to run the prompts you're looking for. But some of those projects historically, like, I don't know how much Cosmo would typically pay for a magazine cover, but it's not $2. So how do you think about the way that you charge as a creator in this new ecosystem?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't know. I actually thought about this, but I don't have the answers. I'm not a lawyer. I know that also like lawyers don't even have the answers. Congress doesn't have an answer to this yet. It's also new. And I think it does, yeah, I don't know.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There you go. So there's probably going to be a whole economy around this. So, I want to hear from you. Obviously, there's maybe no right or wrong answer, but how do you think about that? Like where Is the IP, and how on earth will we think about that as creators moving forward?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Filter on this. Honestly, I don't know who, if anyone has the answers, but what I want to walk through is where is the value along the AI creation process? So there's the information that the AI is trained on, which you could argue the output wouldn't exist without that. So maybe that's where the IP is. There's also the argument that the creators of the AI tools, right, open AI, mid-journey, et cetera. While the outputs also wouldn't exist if the AI tool didn't exist. And then, of course, there's the prompt, which you could also argue if someone doesn't enter a very, very specific prompt, the output also does not exist. And I've even seen a company yesterday that was selling prompts because it is valuable. To have the right prompts.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I want to talk about another topic which I've seen. Everywhere. It's coming up in basically every conversation I have around creators, around AI. And it's the idea of IP, right? So we talked about being hired for things, but also owning your creations is something that mattered a lot for not just independent creators, but if you think about all the way up films, entertainment, like what matters is who owns the IP. And AI introduces a very, very interesting”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, I know, but it's hard sometimes as we talked about, it's hard to check out of that ecosystem to be like, oh, I'm actually going to focus on the things that I want to put out there, the things that I'm proud of, instead of feeding into, as you said, what some people might argue is an objective metric of like, this is what people want. So you also have to accept that.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People put so much value on the number of likes and the number of views because it is the only number we can really see and judge ourselves by. And so it's like we've been trained since kindergarten to put value in the number judgment. You know, when you get like a 97 on a test, wow, that's so good. You get like a 60. That's a D. That's bad. And so we are so trained to take that feedback of numbers as the truth. And then social media comes along and you get lots of views versus a little. It's so easy to say, well, a video was great because it got tons of views and it's not because it got very little views. And it took me years to learn that that is, it is such a bad metric, but it's the only objective one we have.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I just have to say I resonate with what you said so much there as a creator myself. Again, I operate more with Twitter, but same thing. I'll see these threads and I'm like, oh my God, like what is going on? Why are people liking and retweeting this? And why is this one account blown up? It's really low quality compared to some other accounts that I follow where I'm like, this is gold. This is gold. Why is no one paying attention? But yes, I think it's not productive to focus on that because ultimately the people who are putting the best stuff out there are the ones who if we take the whole value chain, right, like the whole process and consider that it's a business, those are the successful quote unquote businesses.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To make something look really beautiful, and then it completely flops and doesn't get very many views on social media. And I used to be so bitter about that. And then someone told me, and then I learned over time that this was actually very much true, is that the people who are putting out low effort content all the time, getting millions of views, they're not the ones getting hired by major respected brands, they're not actually getting great opportunities off of their follower account. Whereas I know people who make incredible content, they only have like 20,000 followers. They're making bank. You know?”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am so glad you said that because I feel the same way and ultimately this is my job. The millions of followers are useless to me if I can't make a penny off of it. Like, I'm not going to put in all this effort. It's my job, right? I need to make money out of it. And I remember that I used to feel really bitter when I would see these TikTok videos blow up and get millions and millions of views. And they would be the most inane things like, for example, I'll give you an example of a TikTok video that can go really viral. It's a video where someone's like, try to get the number of hearts and the number of comments to be the same. It gets like tens of millions of views because it's a very smart engagement bait, right? It's a very clever engagement bait. And I would be mad at that. And you know what? There's other examples that are less clever. There's just straight up garbage on TikTok that is getting millions and millions of views. And that is so demotivating for creators, VFX creators, artists who are putting like hundreds of hours into their craft.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try converting those followers into something that generates you money or that is long lasting and it's very hard, right? Because those followers don't actually love your content. They don't buy into you. They just happen to be like, oh, okay, another thread. It's almost like a habit for them to engage with that kind of work.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that point, if we even remove the feel good, I feel respected, et cetera, part of it, it's also good business. And what I mean by that is. A lot of people view attention as the end goal. Like, I want a million followers, I want this number of people to pay attention to me, but ultimately you need to convert that attention if you want this to be a long-term game, whether it's to find clients or to sell a course or to start a rolling fund, right? There's many versions of turning attention into business or commerce. But that second part of conversion does not work if you're just doing these viral things. And I operate more on Twitter, but as an example of this, something I've been pretty outspoken about is these tweet threads, which are just so overdone and so templated, they work, but they're just really, really surface level. And ultimately, what I find is I see a lot of creators feed into that and they're like, okay, I'm going to go all in on this thing that I don't believe in. I don't feel good about, et cetera, but it's going to bring me hundreds of thousands of followers. But then again, coming back to the point, it's like, well.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I was on this hamster wheel of chasing likes and views, and as anyone who has made a viral video knows, it's over so quick. You can have a million views one day and then it completely dies down by the next. And so people get on this hamster wheel of addiction, of continuing to churn out content to try to get viral videos. And I was on that hamster wheel for years and just being like, when does this end? Like, why am I doing this? Why am I continuing? It doesn't feel good. It's addicting. And then I saw that quote and I was like, oh. I actually just put more effort into making more memorable good content, I don't have to put out content as often. And yeah, I would much rather have the respect of a few people who I respect rather than the shallow attention of millions who forget about it by the next day.”
2022-11-09 · a16z Podcast · AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source