Watching the emergence of the "creator economy" has had many deja vu moments for me.

It is a truism of economics that every time a market constraint is removed, consumption increases. Digital markets are no different.

When WYSIWYG web publishing tools emerged, website numbers soared. When point-n-click blogging/vlogging tools emerged, blogs/vlog numbers exploded.

Modern social media platforms have simplified content capture, distribution, and monetisation, and creator numbers have scaled accordingly.

History tells us that after this 'Cambrian' explosion of content, something odd happens: the middle of the market drops away. This was interpreted as a 'long tail' effect: a minority of content publishers captured most of the market, with the balance securing only small audiences.

In real terms, what this means is that (matured) content platforms tend to be populated by two very different types of content creators: those who manage to 'professionalise' the content creation process (and, in doing so, capture outsized rewards) and those polemicists who will publish content irrespective of the audience they manage to attract.

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