Issue 8: You matter. There's room for you.  September 26th 2022

TikTok & YouTube say Canadian creators will be the ‘collateral damage’ of Bill C-11

Online streaming giants like YouTube and TikTok are asking Canadian senators to take a close second look at Canada's new Broadcasting Act, Bill C-11, which is about to make its way through the legislative process. Spinning Forward covered Bill C-11 in June 2022 here.

Steve de Eyre, director of public policy and government affairs at TikTok Canada told a Senate committee the federal Liberals' Bill C-11 would create "collateral damage" for Canadian content creators and subject them to "burdensome regulation".

According to Jeanette Patell, YouTube Canada’s head of government relations, the current wording of the legislation gives the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission):

“authority over what content is prioritized and how and where content is presented to Canadians.”

Patell says the current wording of the legislation gives the CRTC authority to regulate anyone who directly or indirectly has earned revenue from their posts, which is “effectively everything on YouTube.”

Some groups that support the current legislation include Canadian Association of Broadcasters, The Professional Music Publishers' Association in Quebec, The Indigenous Screen Office, the Black Screen Office and Community Radio Fund of Canada.

Kids prefer creator to astronaut and the rise of the career-adjacent creator

More than half of GenZ and Millennials want to become known content creators today. A 2019 Morning Consult poll found that 54 percent of Americans aged 13 to 38, would become an influencer if given that chance. According to a 2019 Harris Poll/LEGO of 3,000 kids, children aged 8 to 12, in the US and UK are 3 times more likely to want to be YouTubers than astronauts. Increasingly, content creators and other creative professionals who create content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube are getting recognized and known faster.

The biggest challenge in becoming known or famous is to balance setting aside time for your day job and your aspirations to be a successful content creator or actor.

In 2018, Geffrey Owens, who played Elvin Tibideaux on “The Cosby Show, was infamously job shamed for working at Trader Joe’s. Owens said the grocery store job allowed him the flexibility to book auditions while also paying his expenses. In an ironic twist, the media attention he received from Trader Joe’s photo helped him quit his job a year later because he got big and small acting roles. He also created an IGTV show called “Shift Happens”, where he interviews various people about their jobs and the dignity of working in such professions.

The fact is that starting a side hustle passion job while commuting to your day job is mentally exhausting because you struggle to find enough hours in the day. In the Creator Economy, there is a growing trend for creators to try to mitigate these factors and avoid burnout. Simon Owens wrote about the rise of career-adjacent creators. He notes the shift in leveraging time and expertise from your day job where:

“successful creators who built their careers not as a side hustle, but instead as a natural outgrowth of their already-existing jobs.”

Example 1: Hedge fund manager and TikToker Alpesh Patel

Alpesh Patel educates retail investors with high-energy 60 second-clips on topics ranging from company valuation metrics to simple career advice. In just over a year, his TikTok @greatinvestments handle (75.2 k followers). About his TikTok success, Patel said:

"The funny thing is that I've been on social media forever, but I've not had that level of engagement. So I love it — I'm addicted.”

Example 2: Milo Sterlini, DoorDash delivery driver and YouTuber

Milo Sterlini is a 28-year-old DoorDash delivery driver in London and also has a full-time maintenance job at a university.

In 2019, he started a YouTube channel, London Eats (54.6k subscribers), where documented his food deliveries in the city on his electric scooter. His most popular video where he recounts the theft and recovery of his e-bike got 700,00 views. Sterlini is one of many drivers whose videos are popular. The #deliverydriver hashtag has almost 745 million views on TikTok.

Owens correctly points out that being a career-adjacent creator eases the transition to becoming a successful full-time creator if you can leverage your time or expertise from a job. The ability to find ways create content throughout the day rather than do it all after your day job reduces burnout, extends your content creation runway, and speeds up monetization. It also reduces decision fatigue, which is a condition where your motivation and decision-making worsen throughout the day. I covered decision fatigue in Issue 7.