This ______ can be any job/career unrelated to flipping burgers or working in a cubicle. More often anything related to the arts, such as acting, photography, dancing or whatever. But it can be something like modeling or playing poker or playing in a band.
I lurk on many message boards, catered to some of the above communities (i.e. Flickr for photographers), and nearly all the threads about people talking about doing “X” for a living gets locked. Sometimes the OP is even accused of being a troll, and if OP fights back they might even get banned.
I have been told by random people when I was interested in doing freelance graphic design that I was full of myself. I thought they were just being assholes, but it seems like this isn’t an uncommon response any more.
Because usually they’re stupid suggestions. They’re usually hobbies that people think someone will actually pay them to do. It’s like improv comedy. Or gardening. Or baking. Or acting. If people had a habit of saying “I want to build jet engines for a living” or “I want to manage a home care nursing company”, they wouldn’t get attacked so much.
If you want a real job, it has to be either something no one else wants to do or no one else can do, preferably the latter. But saying “I want to do ___ for a living” when it’s not burger flipping or cubicle work often fails to meet either criteria.
Basic supply and demand. There’s an oversupply of people who want to do things related to the arts. That means it’s hard to make a living doing those things.
As for why the threads get locked, I’d look at the rules of the forums in question. Maybe they are intended to be for amateur artists, not professionals. Or maybe the professionals are spamming, using the forum to promote their products or services.
My only guess, and I also need a cite to be sure, is that sometimes a person saying this denigrates the hard work and talent of people who actually do it for a living. It is the “I can write a bestseller if I ever got around to it” mentality. Doing something for a hobby and doing something well enough to get paid for it are two different things. I’ve seen this attitude for acting also, and all those fake modeling agencies thrive on it.
I’d say it was more about talent. Agents will never have too many talented people, and those who do not get signed don’t get rejected because the agent is full up but because they don’t have that certain spark. The difference, in kids at least, was something I never understood or even conceived of until I was around a bunch of professional kids.
Well, what do the people you are talking to do for a living? Are they poor, working class, upper middle class, affluent? Are they particularly well educated? Do they live in a major metropolitan area or a rural community in a flyover state?
Most people are stupid, talentless, barely educated interchangable carbon blobs. They find validation in the fact that they are interchangable with the other carbon blobs and thus will often lash out at individuals who display interests or talents or hard work that might allow them to elevate their station in life.
There is actually an expression for this. It’s called “crab mentality”. The metaphor refers to the inability of individual crabs to escape from the pot because the other crabs will grab at them and pull them back in.
Now the only time I can think of pursuing some artistic endeavor actually causing legitimate controversy is if the aspiring artist only seem to dabble in it as a hobby because their lifestyle is being funded by affluent parents or spouse.
Most of the things that go in the blank are perceived to be career fields that 95% of people cannot succeed in.
Many people who express a desire for a career in the arts can’t answer any of the basic questions about the types of jobs in that field, or demonstrate any evidence that they have done any research on that career field whatsoever.
Now, in fairness, many people who say “I want to be a lawyer” or “I want to be an accountant” actually haven’t done much research either. However, those are mainstream career fields in which no one doubts an intelligent, hard working person can at least achieve middle class employment with.
The reason jobs in the arts and entertainment industry get the scrutiny that others don’t is because of the first point, the perception that it’s really not realistic to work in those fields.
Like anything, the truth is more nuanced. If you’re not dead set on being a leading man, being a headlining vocalist, or et cetera, there are actually lots of jobs in arts and entertainment. There are lots of creative people who work in theater, movies, and the recording industry who are never seen or heard by the audience.
There’s also quite a concern when someone just wants to eschew any form of formal training and run off to New York or some place to make it big. While everyone knows the story of the famous actors who were “discovered” totally inadvertently and became successful with no prior training, they are the exception. If you check the bios of most famous actors, you’ll see formal training in there somewhere (not saying you’ll find a high graduation rate, but at least some participation in formal training.)
The freelance graphic designer thing sort of reminds me of a scene from The Office (U.S.), Pam talks to a guy who is recruiting for graphic design (something she’s always wanted to do.) The guy immediately asks her what her experience is with various popular graphic design software packages and she just sort of looks at him like she’s lost. It isn’t so much that she isn’t a pro with Dreamweaver, but the fact that she’d never heard of it before. That really revealed that Pam had never done any serious research into how one actually becomes a graphic designer. She was just enamored with the “concept” of it.
The thing is, I know people personally who are graphic artists, Broadway performers, professional musicians, actors, architects, writers and other creative types. These people didn’t just “fall into” their fields. They worked extremely hard at them their entire lives.
I also know people who up and quit their jobs to go become professional poker players, writers and whatnot. Within 6-12 months or whenever they run out of money, they are back at their corporate job. The reason for this is that even if they have the drive and discipline, you can’t just up and learn these jobs in a few months. It takes years of preparation, honing your craft and paying your dues. If you haven’t been doing it all along, it’s a little tough to just pick it up at 30 years old.
You, sir, have a particular way with words today that is rivaled only by P. G. Wodehouse or Thomas Pynchon. You should quit your job today and become a professional curmudgeon.
I want to design videogames for a living … and what do you know … I do!
People are right though that it takes a lot more work than people think. The thing is, if it’s something you love, it doesn’t feel like work. I’ve been fascinated by game rules since I was a little kid. I coded my first game when I was fifteen. I designed board games as a hobby in my 20’s. When I go home at night from my job as a game designer I relax by writing RPG rules.
(Note that it’s not just that I’ve been *playing *games since I was a teenager. I’ve been *designing *them … for fun. Big difference.)
I hate people who piss on other people’s dreams. If your dream is to sing on Broadway, go for it! Someone has to do it, so it might as well be you. But you should ask yourself … are you doing it because you love singing so much you want to do it all the time? Or are you just in love with the idea of being a Broadway star? If you’re the latter, bear in mind that a lot of the people who you’ll be competing against are the former … .
I think you, Martin Hyde, and msmith537 have really figured out the answer. It’s because the people who really become successes in these fields know that it took them a lifetime of hard work to get to where they are, so they can’t explain it in a short post.
Not long ago I was reading someone describing the difference between a violinist in the back of an orchestra, and a star soloist such as Midori. As they were building their careers, Midori didn’t just work harder than the other violinists; she worked much much harder.
Another variation on this theme is “I want to start a business where I sell something on the internet but don’t make anything or even buy anything from a supplier, I just place an order with a supplier as soon as someone buys it from me, and I have the supplier send it to the customer, and I use a third party to provide the web page where I sell stuff and do the payment processing.” Well, unless you are Amazon.com, that’s just not going to work out.
If it were possible to essentially do nothing and print money, then everyone would do that. I think the root of this is just not understanding what money represents (i.e., the provision of real value to the provider of the money).
Yeah, it’s like the “entrepreneurs” I always meet at B-school networking events. “So and so has started 5 ventures over the past decade and…” That’s Awesome! Those dummies like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg only managed to build one!
It’s all related. It basically just comes down to an attitude of entitlement powered by bullshit that manifests itself as a “fake it till you make it” or “if you believe it you can achieve it” mentality. Whether it’s pretending you are going to be an artist, actor, writer, entrepreneur, investment banker or whatever, it all takes preparation, hard work and practice. The reason so many people inspire hate is that they are trying to bullshit their way into the rewards hoping to backfill the skills and ability before people see through their facade.
I’m 45 years old - and most of my friends are around my age.
I live a pretty ordinary middle class lifestyle in my ordinary corporate job and my spouse does his fairly ordinary corporate job.
I have friends who have wanted to do “untenable” things for a living. Thus I know musicians who live on friends couches as they travel from city to city - eating the bar food they get paid in. Writers who are lucky enough to be married to people who support them through not getting books published (and some of them - after 25 years at their craft - could almost support themselves), artists whose work pays for their supplies. Actors and musicians (particularly Festies) who live on the circuit.
There are five kinds of artists I know…
People who have been successful at their art. Its rare, but it happens.
People who have another means of support - generally they married someone with a ‘real’ job or came equipped with trust funds.
People who do their art in a commercial fashion - i.e. graphic designers, copywriters, I know a costume designer for the Guthrie. Or a related fashion, I know a woman who runs an arts organization - so her day job isn’t HER art, but its art. The school music teacher.
People who do something else for a living, and their art as a hobby. The corporate trainer who acts. The electrical engineer in a band.
People who are comfortable scratching out a living not at all like mine. I admire my friend who lives out of the back of her van, doing and selling her art and doing migrant labor to eat. But I’m not going to live out of the back of my van or pick beans.
The trick into going into an untenable field is to make sure you have a plan for if you don’t fit the first class. The second isn’t too likely either. The third isn’t a sure path to success…perhaps more practical, but there are only so many ‘related’ jobs and freelancing can throw you into at least needing a supportive spouse or a backup income. And if you get to the last two, you either decide not to do it “as a living” or have a “living” that is pretty outside the mainstream. But most people only imagine themselves being in the first group.
At the same time, while it isn’t a lifestyle I’d choose for myself, I can envy my friend in the van. She’s happy - and she knew exactly what she was doing.
Sort of off topic, but maybe some insight in this, so here goes…
I am a qualified counsellor/therapist. It has taken 3 years to get the paper qualification and I am still working on building up the experience from working with a variety of patients needed to have any kind of standing in the counselling community. It has cost me about £15,000 to pursue this dream, and I currently counsel people for free to get my experience.
When people tell me any of the following:
-Oh, I think I’d be a good counsellor. People always tell me stuff.
-It’s just listening to people, isn’t it?
-You should just tell your patients to pull themselves together
-It’s not a *real *job, is it?
And other variations of the above - it pisses all over the money and time and hard work that went into it. Every book I read, every time I struggled to understand the theory, every time I worked 12 hour days to fit everything in, so I understand how people who have poured everything they have into a passion get angry if someone passes it off as fancy.
My friend once said to me that she thought she needed a hobby, like I had my counselling course and our friend D had his music. I said these aren’t hobbies. It’s something you can’t not do. It’s everything.
Strangely, the work I get paid to do is working in mental health supported housing, and people often comment on how noble that is, how rewarding it must be. Well, yeah, but I do it because I enjoy it. And I do get paid.
