The Creator’s Dilemma

“We don’t want to be on TikTok. But we have to.” A prominent creator said this to me recently during one of our conversations, and it stuck with me.

Over the past few months, we’ve been talking with dozens of creators to better understand their realities: what drives them, what drains them, and what they wish existed instead.

This one quote sums it up perfectly.

They weren’t talking about personal preference. They were describing what it takes to grow an audience today.

The system rewards those who hook fast, speak louder, and keep people scrolling. If you don’t play the attention game, you can’t grow.

What struck me is how universal that tension is.

Creators, just like users, are trapped by incentives, and those incentives are rooted in the business models themselves.

When platforms make money from ads, success depends on keeping people’s eyes on screens. That means rewarding whatever grabs attention, not necessarily what delivers value.

The platforms didn’t make people shallow; they made depth expensive.

When you design a system that rewards attention over value, even good actors are forced into short-term behavior.

The irony is, the same creators who are exhausted by the system are also the ones building audiences hungry for meaning; history, science, self-development, and creativity.

The appetite for substance is there. But the business model doesn’t support it.

And none of this has to come at the expense of being fun or entertaining. In fact, the most meaningful experiences are usually both.

The next generation of platforms has to flip that equation:

reward depth, not volume.

reward learning, not looping.

reward value creation, not attention capture.

That’s what we’re building toward.

If you’re a creator and this resonates with you (or even if it doesn’t), I’d love to hear your perspective.