Caption:
Hopeful parents
Alt text:
HELP WANTED SEPT. 2, 2005 / NINTENDO EXPERT NEEDED $50, 000 salary + bonus Equal opportunity employer 555-[scribble] / IF YOU HAVE 50,000 HOURS OR MORE OF VIDEO GAME EXPERIENCE, WE NEED YOU. / VIDEO PLAYER dragon slayer $150,000 / LOOKING FOR GOOD MARIO BROTHERS PLAYER $100,000 plus your own car. 555-[scribble] / DO YOU LAUGH IN THE FACE OF KILLER GOOMBAS? CALL US. $50,000 yr. plus a free house [scribble] / CAN YOU SAVE THE PRINCESS? We need skilled men and women $75,000 + Retirement. [scribble] / SUPER MARIO BROS. Expert. $95,000 yr. Four-day work week + Ferrari / Expanding company needs skilled computer games expert. Call / DO YOU KNOW A NINTENDO EXPERT? Please read him or her this ad.
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It’s not exactly the same but plenty of people make a living playing video games on twitch
“Plenty of people” is how many people? I mean, how many millions gamers are there out there and how many of them are making a living out of it? A million? A few thousands? Less?
If my question is half trolling it is half trolling only: as an old and non-gamer dude myself, I often see that kind of ideas floating around with younger people, that they could ‘just stream’ or become an influencer and stuff like that to earn a living because Such and Such are doing it already. So, my question is serious if its tone was not: what proportion of the population does indeed manage to become, let’s not even consider becoming rich and famous (which a lot of people seem to be willing to become) but manage to earn the equivalent of the minimum wage by doing that?
Ok but in fairness the ads in the comic imply they want the best of the best, and in modern times those players do actually make a decent living and even get cars etc.
How many millions/billions cook food vs how many are professional chefs? How many draw but are famous artists? How many play football but become a professional well paid athlete?
Technically your example applies to basically anything any human does.
Did I say otherwise? I made a comment regarding this specific remark:
Insisting that ‘plenty’ was certainly not that highway to success I think too many people believe it is, based on watching a few successful streamers or influencers… Or, at least that it is not what those two parents in the comics are imagining it is and what quite a few of those youngsters I can hear talk around me about their own future imagine. Which is something that should be a lot more worrying to us, the adults (kids are more than welcome to entertain dreams).
Once again, I don’t say otherwise. But now tell me this: how many of those amateur cooks (or whatever) do you think imagine they will become chefs (or whatever) just because they like to cook (or whatever)? Not many… which is about right: not many will become pro.
BTW, as an amateur painter and artist I never imagined becoming a pro. I could not care less about making a business out of something I simply enjoy doing ;)
Also, of those who do make a living, the tiny .1%, how many of THOSE are women, basically selling cleavage and “just chatting”.
Not knocking, but Farside kid has an uphill climb unless he wants to do a Fin5ter or something.
For many Twitch streamers it isn’t a full time job, but supplementary income.
There was no Twitch back then. There was no internet, in fact.
Comic is from 1990. The Internet was very much a thing.
There was no widely available internet, which is what would matter in this context.
I mean it depends on what you mean by internet. There were BBSes but the world wide web didn’t really start taking traffic from the general public until 93. HTML hadn’t even been invented in 90.
The world wide web runs on top of the internet, but its not the same thing as the internet.
In the 1980s the internet existed, with forum-like things running on top it, but access to it wasn’t widely distributed.
BBSes just used the preexisting telephone network. (Which, yes, dial up internet access later did too, but in the case of dial up you’d be calling the number of an ISP, and afterward your connection would run over net infrastructure. In the case of a BBS you’d be dialing the person running the server directly.)
EDIT: you probably already know this, but just clarifying for others.
Instead of image macros and youtube videos, we traded monty python transcripts and buxom line printer art.