5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Choosing an Ethical Creator to Imitate
Discover more from Cyborgs Writing
5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Choosing an Ethical Creator to Imitate
Being a good creator means being a good person
Smart Note 27
Being a good creator means being a good person
If imitation of the good is a way of becoming good (and imitating bad makes you more of a bad person), then discernment of what is good and band becomes a key skill for developing ethos.
Being in the creator economy isn’t just about making stuff… it’s about being a good person. One of the best ways to become a good person is to imitate those who are good. But how do we know whether a creator is a good person? Not by looking at their content. That’s like judging a painting by the artist’s signature.
The creator economy is a way of life, not just a way of making stuff. To be a good person, we must take care of the environment, the surrounding people, and our communities. Here are four questions every creator can ask about their own behavior and the behavior of those they follow.
Ask these questions when deciding what creators you want to imitate.
Do they have an opinion on everything?
A creator who thinks they know everything is usually not interested in building a community where content is shared and developed together. They might be great at getting attention, but are they interested in what other people think? If you think you know everything, you will often feel threatened by other people who may have something to say that you don’t know.
The most important part of being a good person isn’t the idea that you should have a brand, but the way you build that brand. For the creator, it’s a lot more about attitude. It’s the idea that there is no single right answer to every question. Instead, it’s about having enough confidence and self-awareness to recognize when you don’t know everything.
How do they react to criticism?
Creators with a strong ethos use criticism to drive interaction and innovation. This requires a strong sense of identity and self-awareness. Those are the people to imitate. If a creator gets defensive, territorial, or even angry, think twice about imitating their work. Becoming arrogant and self-satisfied when praised doesn’t build community or allow your content to truly help people.
This is the biggest mistake I see new creators make. If you don’t learn how to respond to criticism, you’re just going to end up in a fight with people who are smarter than you, better than you, and, most times, much more well-intentioned than you. Criticism is a part of the process. It’s inevitable. Learn how to deal with it and use it as an opportunity to improve yourself, your work, and your product.
Is most of their content accessible?
If all their content is behind a paywall, or even most of it, then you might think twice. Creators should get paid, but if their content is truly useful, it should also be accessible to those who cannot afford premium prices.
Though this might be a grand strategy for a company whose sole purpose is to make money off its users, it can actually drive traffic away from your site. That’s because once a site has a paywall, the number of people willing to pay for content dwindles. If you have a community that wants to support your work financially but can’t do so easily because of a very tall paywall, they might just decide to go somewhere else. It’s much better to make sure you have plenty of ways to provide content to your audience.
Do they respect their audience?
If a creator talks down to their audience, they probably are more interested in making waves or money than being a good person. You want to imitate a creator that has their audience’s best interest at heart, regardless of profit or likes.
One of the hardest things about creating content online is figuring out how to speak to your audience. You don’t want to speak to them randomly. When you create content, learn what works and what doesn’t work. You must understand how the audience feels about a particular topic before speaking to them. Once you have the right understanding of who your audience is, it will become easy to talk to them the way they want to be talked to.
Do they provide credit where credit is due?
Much of what we do as creators builds off or remixes other people’s content. Ethical creators attribute that work. Not only will this support other creators, but our own original take will stand out even more.
Creators should be helpful. That means talking about other creators, not just about themselves. They should help other creators, too. If you see a creator with a lot of followers, but no real following, it’s probably because they don’t help others.
We should all find creators we can look up to and imitate. Creators are some of the most important people in our world. Whether they’re musicians, artists, actors, writers, designers, photographers, or even marketers, they create things that change the way we think about and feel about life. If you can find someone you admire, note how they got to where they are now. What were their experiences that led to the creation of their work? What made them want to do what they do? What are their habits and routines? You can learn from every “good” creator out there and make your own path to success.
You can learn a lot from studying other people. So much so, that some of the greatest minds in history were inspired by studying others. However, you need to be careful to study the right people. There are many factors that go into choosing the right person to study. These four behaviors should get you started when examining the work of other creators:
1. Reaction to criticism
2. Accessibility of content
3. Respect for audience
4. Attribution to other creators
Related Notes
Two Kinds of Creators in the World
What you seek is what you get 🧵medium.com
How Real Is Your Creator Ethos
… and what the Ancient Greeks have to say about.medium.com