Anticipated Future Changes Coming to Social-Media-Celebrities

As more people begin to turn away from traditional media, I predict that the dominant society will begin courting social-media-celebrities to market their messages. 61% of young adults reported using online streaming in place of television. This was back in 2017. The numbers have only increased. Traditional celebrities are becoming antiquated. Some companies are already realizing the sway that social-media-celebrities carry. However, I find myself thinking about the music scene of the 1990s.

You can check all of King Vader's videos here.

During the 1990s, up to the early 2000s, famous Black musicians were earning lucrative incomes. This led major music labels to create the 360 Deal; this entitled companies to a percentage of all record sales.

Moreover, these companies would receive the lion's share of the revenue for record sales; this is why artists in the late 2000s began touring frequently. At the time, money made from shows fell outside of the 360 Deal. Anything outside of the label fell outside of the 360 Deal. However, after Kim Zolciak's stint from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the 360 Deal was changed to entail receiving earnings from every endeavor the artists engaged in. This change was made due to Kim Zolciak creating a brand for herself that she profited from outside of Bravo.

Now, I gave this backstory because of the independence that this video entails.

 

You can check out all of RDC World 1's videos here.

That video was only able to be created because these social-media-celebrities are independent content-creators. If they were tied to a major company, that company wouldn't have allowed RDC World 1 to make that video. To add to the video's significance, it was published around the time of the George Floyd lynching.

These social-media-celebrities are becoming influential. Thus, their posting content that goes against the messages that the dominant society is pushing is counter-productive to the dominant society. However, these social-media-celebrities often come from an impoverished background. Thus, a company paying them $1M to sign them to a 360 Deal would be an easy acquisition. Once the deal is signed, the aforementioned would no longer be allowed to be published. For $1M, these social-media-celebrities would lose control over their content. This is why social-media-celebrities must understand the value of retaining control over their content.

Furthermore, this goes deeper than that video. As automation continues to take hold of the workforce, it will continually become more difficult for people to find jobs. This goes doubly so for melanated people. However, owning their content is equivalent to owning a business. I mention this because as time passes, these content-creators may want to start families.

Moreover, it doesn't matter how great one's job is, one can't pass down a job. Furthermore, often, these Black people in positions of "power" aren't as powerful as they think they are. They easily get overruled. Thus, they aren't very reliable to get one's offspring a job. However, owning a business means that one's offspring always has one company willing to hire him/her. Furthermore, even if one's offspring does get a job at some company, we can't forget the micro-aggressions that Foundational Black Americans (FBA) often endure at companies. Thus, once again, retaining one's business alleviates having one's child/children endure micro-aggressions while working for someone else.

Next, let's delve deeper into controlling one's image. In traditional media, Black people are commonly left out. Furthermore, when we're included, we're relegated to stereotypical roles. Thus, we are never allowed to explore and broaden our horizons. However, thanks to the emergence of social media streaming sites, melanated people are no longer relegated to stereotypical roles. RDC World 1's most famous video, "When People Take Anime Too Far," branches away from our typical preconceived hobbies. Before this video, the pervasive belief was that our hobbies were sports, hip hop and R&B music, sex, weaves, and weed.

Furthermore, even if a Black person fell outside of these stereotypes, then people would expect the person to look like Steve Urkel—if he is a geek. Thus, the members of RDC World 1 broke that mold. They all look like normal guys. I point this out because the dominant society likes to stereotype us. Before RDC World 1 published that video, there were already Black geeks that look like normal people. However, they weren't being promoted. If the dominant society buys out these independent content-creators, expect new stereotypes to be created.

Next, let's talk about the message. There are various creators. Currently, I'm focusing on the ones that work in comedy. There's an emergence of these young content-creators with 1-million+ subscribers. During the last election, the dominant society promoted various videos to convince FBA people to support Biden—to no avail. Put simply, the dominant society didn't know how to reach xennials, millennials, and digital natives.

Moreover, often their attempts were insulting to our intelligence. Also, it didn't help that we don't watch television much. So, it won't be surprising if the dominant society taps these independent content-creators to push their messages. Furthermore, it's easier to coerce content-creators to promote their messages when the content-creators are in the dominant society's back pockets. Also, this goes beyond just pushing for people to vote a certain way. This also extends to promoting the Alphabet Agenda.

Now, let's talk about imagery. Most of these content-creators working in the comedy realm do not put themselves in women's attire; some do if they want to play feminine roles. However, regardless of whether or not they do, it's the content-creator's choice to do so. I mention this because, in Hollywood, most Black male actors have been placed in dresses. Those that have refused to play along have largely been blacklisted in Hollywood. Thus, we don't see them in major motion pictures anymore. This showcases a clear agenda to effeminize Black men.

Furthermore, colorism exists in traditional media. This is a topic that floats around Black circles as a topic of discussion amongst Black women. However, colorism amongst each other only exists amongst Black women. Black men treat each other the same—regardless of the hue of our skins. However, dark-skinned Black women elevate light-skinned Black women as being higher in Black society because they equate these women's skin tone as being closer to Whiteness. Thus, they set the gold-standard of beauty as White. This is why these women will make assumptive statements about certain Black men dating White women—without having any proof of this. It also bears to mention that there are light-skinned organizations for Black women like Jack and Jill that elevates light-skinned Black women above dark-skinned Black women. However, there aren't enough of these organizations to constitute these discussions about colorism.

Now, although colorism discussions are merely a waste of time amongst each other, colorism does exist in traditional media--and corporate workplaces. I don't watch any current music videos. However, just going back 5 years ago, most video models were light-skinned. Moreover, it's not because the artists preferred light-skinned models; it's because videographers--and such--provided by record labels preferred for the models to be light-skinned. It worked to set up an inferiority complex in dark-skinned Black women. This further worked to induce dark-skinned Black women to work harder for White approval.

Furthermore, this colorism ploy was used against Black men as well. Darker-skinned Black men would only be type-casted as villains. The subliminal programming at play was to send a message that dark-skinned Black men are evil. The one that broke the mold on this was Wesley Snipes. He did so by being uber-talented and doing a lot of independent work. Therefore, he left the confines of stereotypical roles for Black people. Due to him bucking the system like so, he got brought up on tax-evasion—despite doing the same things as everyone else. He simply didn't have a good enough accountant to properly itemized his deductions.

Now, Mark of RDC World 1, Lenarr Young, and King Vader—to name a few—are dark-skinned Black men with 1-million+ subscribers on YouTube. I mention this because I just named more than 1 person. This breaks the "1 Negro at a time" rule in place in Hollywood. Furthermore, they're all dark-skinned. The fact that millions of people are viewing creates an image for non-Black people of masculine Black men. Also, due to their fame, many non-Black women view them as sexy. Black men being viewed as sex-symbols—not fetishes—is taboo. The last Black man to earn that honor was Idris Elba. However, he's been blocked from becoming a prominent actor. The last Black male sex-symbol to achieve prominent stardom is Denzel Washington. He's also the last Negro that Hollywood has let in. Moreover, he got the label of sex-symbol thanks to Spike Lee casting him as such when Denzel was early in his career. His success from Spike Lee's films allowed him to be let in the dominant society's door because he was already in.

 

Solutions.

 

Since this emergence of independent content-creators is a very viable pawn for the dominant society, they must understand their value. If a studio head from a major firm contacts you and offers to pay you $1M to put you under a 360 contract, you can expect that you're worth about $3M and are being lowballed because you don't know your worth. Thus, use this as motivation to grow your influence and increase your revenue to the point of exceeding the offer made to you. Ideally, these content-creators with 1-million+ subscribers should come together and form a corporation. YouTube calls people that are paying subscribers to channels "members." So, members can be minority stakeholders within the corporation.

Furthermore, the first thing that corporation will need to do is hire an editing team to edit their videos. Editing their videos takes up the lion's share of their time. Next, invest in hiring a market research firm to identify your niche market. Learn about them and tailor your skits to their tastes. Have an open invitation for fellow content-creators with 1-million+ subscribers. Use the free-time gained from not having to edit videos to seek partnerships with other creators and mediums to diversify your income streams. The reason for making these varied movements is to insulate oneself behind a wall of wealth and influence. The insulation's purpose is that practically all of your expenses will be business expenses, and you'll become an employee of the enterprise.

Furthermore, you'll pay yourself a meager salary to lower your tax bracket several stages. Do you know what employee has the lowest salary in the United States? It's Bill Gates. You may be wondering how someone is constantly at the helm as one of the richest people in the world, the lowest-paid employee. It's because his salary is $1. I don't know the frequency of his $1 payments.

Furthermore, the internet has been scrubbed since he announced his salary of $1. However, everything for him is a business expense. Thus, by independent content-creators working according to what I stated, they could become a 21st Century Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Updated.

This is a well-researched, well thought out article on businesses based in and fed by social media.  I am not an expert on black culture, and I don’t claim to be.  You would know more on this subject than I would.  However, the things you point out in this article have their parallels in white society as well.  Owning a business, rather than being owned, is the key to wealth and independence.

You gave examples from the music and entertainment industries, so let’s start there.  In the 1980s, Mötley Crüe was one of the top bands, filling stadiums night after night 12 months out of the year, with airplay and record sales through the roof.  Yet according to NikkiSixx (2007), their bass player and songwriter, each band member was only bringing in about $400K a year after record companies, promoters, and tax people all got their cuts.  For this, they lost their families, friends, health, and sanity; Sixx died twice from overdoses and was revived.  They were underpaid mostly because Elektra, the record company, owned the rights to all their music until Elektra was forced to give them back.  More recently, Taylor Swift was locked into a ten-year, six-album contract that took away all ownership of her songs, and she was only able to get them back in November of this year once the contract finally expired (Schwartz, 2020).  Both of these artists were owned by the music industry and paid a very heavy price for it.

Now contrast this with Ryan Upchurch’s story (Biography Mask, 2020).  Upchurch is a country rapper—sounds strange, but it’s for a very specific audience.  His YouTube views are at over 1 billion, and he has released albums in rap, rock, and country music genres.  His videos range from the various types of music to comedy to diss tracks.  Record companies have tried several times to sign him to contracts; he has always refused because he didn’t want to be boxed in and owned like so many in the music industry.  All his music, merchandise, and videos belong to him.  He is a millionaire several times over, as you said, because he knows his target audience and gives them what they want, without restraints and censorship and control from a record label.

Owning a business also gives you this sense of freedom, even if you have to work a day job for a while to make ends meet until the business takes off.  I agree with the idea of keeping the business in the family rather than selling it off to get a lump sum of money.  Net worth doesn’t put a million dollars in your pocket immediately, but you don’t have to pay taxes on a million dollars either.  A lump sum of $1 million after taxes is only worth about $665K—and that’s not counting for inflation (Smith, 2020).  A business valued at $1 million pays much lower taxes at the corporate rate, and many of your expenses can be written off as business expenses and subtracted from your gross profits.  You give yourself a small salary and put the rest back into the business.  Keeping your own business, rather than selling it off for a quick buck to the highest bidder, makes good financial sense.  It builds generational wealth and keeps you from having to subsist on a universal basic income after your day job has been taken over by robots.

With the power of social media, I might consider expanding my businesses to different social media platforms.  Even these platforms have censorship and control, but there are more and more alternatives these days.  If you get kicked off YouTube or demonetized, BitChute is there to fill the gap.  Tweets keep getting deleted because you offended somebody?  Try Parler.  Again, if you can give your audiences what they want, they will follow you anywhere.  There is a market for every personality.  Build that brand, people! -Marae Bailey, Professor at ECPI University (12/22/2020)

 

References

Biography Mask.  (2020, May 22).  Ryan Upchurch.  https://biographymask.com/ryan-upchurch/

Schwartz, D.  (2020, December 7).  Why Taylor Swift's plan to re-record her old music is actually going to work.  Vice.  https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7a7ka/why-taylor-swift-re-recording-her-old-music-scooter-braun-explained

Sixx, N.  (2007).  The heroin diaries:  A year in the life of a shattered rock star.  Pocket Books.

Smith, J.  (2020, May 7).  2019/2020 federal income tax brackets and standard deduction.  Dough Roller.  https://www.doughroller.net/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets-deductions-and-exemption-limits/

 

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