The Rise of Meta Creators
Meta creators use native creator tools and platforms to develop and distribute content about creators. Get it? That’s why they’re meta.
These are the people you see publishing tweet threads with data about the creator economy, writing long Substack newsletters about the downstream impacts of Beast Burger, and making videos about what cameras to buy.
They take on different personas, and cover various topics, but the goal of every meta creator is the exact same: grow the “creator economy” by connecting creators and builders with the knowledge, resources, and tools they need to be successful.
Meta creators include everyone from Peter McKinnon to Li Jin. From Colin and Samir and Reed and Blake. The Sway Boys have even introduced a meta creator arm to the operations through shows like Capital University.
Meta creators see the future we’re all headed towards, and are actively analyzing, theorizing, and teaching about it. They are like the academics, critics, and analysts of the creator economy. But instead of writing dry white papers or publishing columns in newspapers, meta creators employ the tools that creators use — YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram — to cover trends and events in the creator economy.
This is the true brilliance of this entire wave. Meta creators are inside of the world, creating for the world. They are using the very same storytelling techniques, marketing strategies, and distribution vehicles that creators use to tell the story behind them. And as a result, the separation between artists and analysts is becoming less pronounced than in generations passed. It’s all part of the same conversation, and there’s room for all of it.
Naturally, as we’ve already seen, the first wave of meta creators are the existing investors, managers, and builders in the space. The people who are spending their entire days thinking about this stuff. But as the entire space continues to grow, this will evolve. Some meta creators will do it part-time, while building companies in the creator space. Others will carve out entire careers teaching thumbnail design or covering “creator news.”
Regardless, you can underestimate the meta creator rise to power. Because meta creators will — over the long-term — realize the benefits of being creators themselves. They’ll roll up their meta creation into partnerships, investments, paid content, and separate businesses. They will create a stake in this world, by being in it but not of it, by creating for it, not around it.
