My wife likes to tell people that I had my mid-life crisis back in 2016. I was getting really sick of the job I had been working at for 15 years and I didn’t want to work there anymore. In addition, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a career either. I tried really hard to get fired, so I could hang out in eternal limbo, but the company I worked for was so bad, that they didn’t even have a talent for firing people that clearly deserved it.

Since I couldn’t figure my life out, my wife had to for me. She found this school in Utah that had a one semester certificate program that taught social media marketing. Since I like bitter blogging, I figured it could help me promote this blog better and I could be a famous blogger like the Bloggess or The Pioneer Woman. In the meantime, it could help me find a career in social media while I was waiting for fame to find me. Because good things come to those that wait, right?

So we moved back to Utah, and I become a 43-year-old student.

Since we lived in my parent’s condo while we were sorting things out, I was basically a 43-year-old, living in their parents’ basement…but with a wife…and two kids. Maybe my wife was right. I was having a mid-life crisis.

Sadly, I can’t even get my mid-life crisis right. When I imagined my perfect mid-life crisis, it involved purchasing a Lamborghini, building my underground fortress, and going on a vacation to Mikonos. Going back to school was not on my bucket list for my mid-life crisis. I only imagined moving and going back to school as my escape hatch from that awful job.

Still, I found the escape hatch and jumped out of the plane without a parachute, and somehow managed to land at the school. Imagine an awkward guy that was older than most of the teachers at the school. A guy that was learning the same stuff 20-years were learning. A guy that was huffing and puffing when he got to the 6th floor, while learning stuff like Facebook and Google Ads, making WordPress sites and content creation.

In one of my classes I learned a new term that I hadn’t heard before. My teacher mentioned Kim Kardashian as an “influencer”. I knew the Kardashians were getting paid for doing nothing, but it wasn’t until that class that I really understood how they made so much money. Basically, they leveraged social media platforms and their “followers” as their currency. If you really want to be jealous and bitter like me, here’s a little fact. Kylie Jenner gets paid $1.2 million dollars per mention of a product on an Instagram post.

Companies started seeing that when famous people mentioned products on their social media pages, people that followed them would buy those things. Then non famous people were getting pretty big followings for specific things they were doing on their social media, so they started convincing companies to pay them to mention products. All of a sudden, micro influencers started popping up and saying that companies should pay them too. Now there is this whole industry of entitled brats, err, influencers that get rich and famous for “being hot” or “acting insane” and all these companies trying to figure out how to not overpay these influencers to get minimal returns on their advertising dollars.

When I started working in social media, I considered myself a content creator. I worked at several companies creating content (pictures, videos, blog posts, etc) for social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google. You know, content creator. And on the side, I’m still the world’s #1 Bitter Blogger, according to Bitter Ben Magazine and Ben’s Bitter Blog. So I’m a content creator right?

I figured I was…until I started scrolling Instagram, Twitch and Tik Tok and I see these people dancing, doing skits, playing pranks and playing video games. In their bios it would say, “Content Creator”. Then I start seeing people on the Bachelor and Bachelorette and at the bottom of the screen, where it lists their name, I start seeing jobs as “Content Creator”. When someone would actually ask them what they did, they would say, “I put pictures on Instagram and you know, I have a following.”

So here I am thinking I’m a content creator, because I create things. Only to find out that “content creators” are just influencers and people that post stuff to their Instagram and Twitchers that play video games.

And they are making way more money being content creators by “taking selfies” than I am working hard to carefully craft strategic and creative photos, videos, and ads. How am I in the same category as these people?

Saying we are both in the same industry is like an astronaut and a guy that likes to fly drones on the weekends are both in the “flight industry”. Except for the hobby dronist gets paid $50,000 per picture/video and the astronaut gets paid $50,000 a year to, I don’t know, fly in space.

It would be like my nephew who plays with Matchbox, and the Ice Road Truckers both being in the Trucking Industry. Except the nephew gets paid $500,000 from brand deals because his mom posted the video on YouTube and the Ice Truckers get paid $80,000 to risk their lives and deliver lifesaving medicine or food to people in remote areas.

It’s like a 3rd grader that had to write the word bitter in cursive and the World’s #1 Bitter Blogger both being in the same category as writers. And the 3rd grader goes viral for his B being backwards, while the Bitter Blogger is still struggling to get 100 views on his post after 10 years of consistent, life changing posts that could change the world of bitterness.

Or some kindergartener painting their hand then putting then putting it on a piece of paper because their teacher told them it would be fun, and Davinci, who spent 4 years painting the Mona Lisa in the same category of artists. And the kid got his piece of paper passed down for generations in his family, while Davinci only got his painting stored on some museum wall in some dinky town in Europe called the Lovera?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bitter about people who do all the hard work getting stomped on, while accidental idiots or people that take pictures and play video games get rich and famous.

Don’t worry, I WILL NOT accidentally place a hex on them, or curse them with my particular form of Bittercraft, or sabotage them by spreading rumors about them on the #1 Bitter Blog in the Universe to my dozens of followers.

Because I don’t hold a grudge or have a nickname of Revengerman for a reason.

And I’m not going to create a whole new industry called Content Destroyer.

ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Content Creator Ben