My husband published his thesis online through Amazon. We haven't even bought it. Theoretically we could make a passive income from his book, but a lot of people are gonna have to care a lot more about mosquito reproduction than they currently do.
If I didn’t think it would get me arrested and my child taken away I would make an “I’m here within 400 feet of an elementary school to PROVE THE HATERS WRONG!” tee shirt that I would wear everyday.
"Nothing stings quite as much as spending a whole bunch of time tracking down some obscure 19th century text only to then spend several more hours reading it only to THEN come to the conclusion that it contains no insights, no new information, and is incredibly poorly written and not worth quoting." CGP Grey has entered the chat. P.S. As a writer, my heart broke when you said $0.01 a word. $250 for 25,000 words should legitimately be illegal.
That's why the gig economy doesn't pay by the hour. It's easy to set an hourly minimum wage, but _way_ harder to set minimum wages per-word or per-trip or whatever. If you can type just 50 words per minute, and a lot of people can type twice that, you can theoretically get $30/hour off of a penny per word! Never mind that most writers spend at least an order of magnitude more time figuring out _what_ to write than actually typing-we've got the math to defend ourselves right in court!
@@timothymclean I mean I support your enthusiasm to attack the Gig economy (which is just a way of circumventing formal employee-employer relationships in which employees have rights by calling de facto employees "contractors), but there's a reason that knowledge work, which is what OP describes, isn't a big hit on taskrabbit. That sort of work is totally ill-suited for even "perform X task for Y money" ("piece work") as it's entirely possible that the initial request turns out to be infeasible or impossible after sinking 10s, or even 100s of hours.
Goddamn, I know that the phrase _"It's far easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism"_ is overplayed and all, but this video proves it best. As an economic system, it makes use and creates supposed "value" out of things that are totally worthless. It monetizes things like someone's internet history and content watchtime. It generates garbage audiobooks that no one in their right mind wants to but or listen to. It prompts the continued existence (and birth of new) conmen, "personal development" coaches, self-help gurus, grifters and scammers; who come a dime a dozen. And I didn't even mention how it keeps the needy out of goods and services that could be within their reach - for no good reason, like the housing market, healthcare and so on. I hate it here. We really need to move past neo-liberal late stage capitalism as soon as possible.
Fantastic, funny work. I came across their plug and checked it out because I'm genuinely curious about publishing. However, it sounded outright scammy and borderline plagiarism of nonsense.
So they exploit someone's labor using their own capital to do so, and they own the product and profits at the end?. I feel like I've heard this story before.
I feel like this strangely inspired me as a writer. All I have to do is pretend my children will starve unless I write a thousand words every hour and surely I’ll finish my novel in no time.
We talk about the gig economy and hustle culture like they are new things, but my experience in graduate school showed me this kind of exploitation has been happening in academia for a long time. It's just now starting to seep out into what was once though of as 'actual/professional' work, and you don't even get the fancy bit of paper at the end that supposedly tells others you know what you are doing. There are a lot of parallels between what hustle culture sells and what you hear and have expected of you as a graduate student. Work absurd hours, and do an absurd amount of work, for absurdly little pay and one day you'll make it big and be able to finally rest.
I love how contrived the poster board bit was cause the charts were animated so he could've easily just used the blank wall behind him but he paid $10 for the board to do the bit
Listen if you have the chance to make a spiderweb of interconnected relationships with strings and pictures like a detective chasing down leads in a cold case you don't pass it up
Their little rant about success is surreal. They tell you “Work three jobs, get your money, then get back to work.” As if having three jobs is not working
Especially because the whole reason the scam exists is to advertise a get rich easy scheme, but then as soon as they have your money they start talking about how if you fail it's because you're not trying hard enough and the solution is to give them even more money.
its because telling people to quit their jobs and start throwing money at you isnt sustainable. So you gotta make them earn new money you can grift off of them
"Amazon's best kept secret.... Audible" He missed his true calling as an actor because being able to say that with a straight face is legitimately impressive
I kept getting those ads forever and they look so old, like they were filmed in 2015 so I had a feeling it was a scam and then they said audible is new that was like the ding, this is a lie. Other RU-vidrs also covered how this book scam has already dried up by 2019 as the policy changed.
I take it as a compliment - the people I know who are into crystal healing would rather buy a book written by someone who WANTS to write it, has an interest in the subject, and is actually getting paid for their work. It’s basically the realm of “yeah, this is objectively a waste of time and money, but it’s making someone happy to have it, and I’d rather buy this thing from someone who made it themselves and pay them fairly for it!”
I love the completely contradictory sentiments of "You don't have to do any work" and "If you fail, it's because you didn't put in the work" Also, that part on his podcast where he's telling people to get 3 jobs just to invest more in this scam actually horrified me, he's literally asking people to work themselves to death just so he can get more of their money, thank you for spotlighting these people for the manipulative sociopaths that they are.
I mean ultimately that's the real passive income trick, and in a way the putrid rotting core of capitalism, is that the only way you can live a comfortable life doing next to no work is to dump 3 times the work on a score of other people. You don't get major success by doing actual honest work. You get it by having a bunch of other poor schmucks do it for you, and run off into the night with the bag of cash.
And then has the gall to tell people to indebt themselves to pay for his shitty course. Like sure, in the world of scammers these two are small fries, but they're still completely morally bankrupt and straight up evil.
It's a classic MLM line, a lot of scammers will tell you "you can make it all back and more!" "Invest in yourself!" "You've got to spend money to make money!" And the voices of people who get ground into the pavement by their predatory schemes get drowned out, because "they just didnt hustle hard enough! It worked for all these people at the top of the pyramid therefore anyone should have been able to make it work!"
It also COMPLETELY contradicts their own pitch. The whole point of this is that you can easily make big money passively. The entire appeal is that you get to quit busting your ass at some normie minimum wage or 9-5 job you don't like. And now he's saying not only do you not get to quit that job, but you have to do it and 2 more jobs like it to keep paying into this.
The analysis where Dan acknoledges how, in essence, he was playing "easy mode" with what was already an incredibly stressful and soul destroying task is amazingly awful. Just thinking about how much worse the situation would be if he actually had to deal with an editor, and having to buy groceries and truly needing the money.. This is truly horrific
That's what really caught me by surprise. It would have been so easy to look at all this, the work he had done, and assumed that was the average experience, to even assume that he had it tougher because people at the Urban Writers are professionals with more experience than him, and leave it at the fact that they are paid far too little. Instead, he went the extra distance, to emphasize that HE was the one with the advantage here, having the easier time. That's why I love this channel.
Literally the only way it could be viable is simply to have some delivered products on your resume and then checking the fuck out. There's some merit in being able to actually say, "I've written a book and had it published" once you're trying to actually pitch your own work to somebody. It's still not worth a lot, and probably not worth going through the misery here of working for literal useless grifters and wannabe grifters, but showing you're dedicated enough to actually finish something is still....something. It's farther than many get.
After seeing what just a month of this stuff does to a person _who selected_ their own nonfiction writing prompt and _doesn't need to ghostwrite_ for a living, yeah, we like Scott. Scott has it hard.
@@Siriathion I have an internet friend residing in India who does freelance work as a writer. I will ask him if he's ever seen or done these kind of jobs where he has to write an absurd amount of nothing in a razor thin timeline
Dan coming for the online hustle productivity passive income culture was something I desperately hoped for after the crypto grifto video, and it’s glorious to behold
This video came out right before the advent of chat gpt. I can’t help but think that the Mikkilesens have pretty much cut real people out of the writing process.
@@zawrator4457 I highly doubt legitimate publishers are that important given how much the grift relies on Amazon self-publishing. Sure, these platforms might have some safeguards, but can they really tell the difference between an AI-written book and the derivative, low-thought work produced by poorly-paid ghostwriters? You might have to check the book for obvious logical errors produced by the AI's inability to fact-check, but you only have to do that if Amazon is having real people check your submission and I don't think that's plausible given the nature of their platform.
@@drpibisback7680 Depends really on how they'll use it: if they just use it to cut existing corners and tell their ghost writers to just make deadlines earlier with AI, then you will likely not see much change. If they however overplay their hand (which I assume as the concept of "sustainability" doesn't exist for these people), and flood the marketplace with almost completely unedited garbage, then you'll absolutely see a crackdown.
I interpreted it as something akin to, "that report about the restraining order was greatly exaggerated. I'm only prohibited from being closer than 200 feet to an elementary school."
Me: "I wonder what Dan Olson's been up to since that big NFT video?" Dan: *furiously writing a terrible nonsense book on purpose and driving himself insane in the process*
after an insane algorithm success like Line Goes Up, he knew damn well that he needed to follow through with another banger and secure those subs, and by god he did it. That is what you're supposed to do btw, so people don't think the blow-up video was a fluke or something
Gotta say, this video saved me from falling into the work Scott and Dan were roped into. After five months of being unemployed I considered joining a freelance writing company and found the Urban Writers. I thought the name sounded familiar and remembered this video, where Dan outlines how they pay basically nothing for all of your work. It helped me avoid a lot of stress and I've now found something more sustainable
I can almost guarantee that no one who's a long-time ghostwriter for the urban writers lives in the USA. The pay is so bad that you need to live somewhere else where the US dollar is very strong in comparison, so either it's a lot of writers in poor countries for whom english is a second language (which is why the editing process is important), or it's a lot of native english-speakers who are essentially digital nomads (and, again, "living" mostly in poor countries).
"I'm here within 400 feet of an elementary school to prove the haters wrong" is such a rollercoaster of a sentence that i've literally been laughing at it on and off for the past three weeks
I'd like to note a few things about Dan's degree as a Worth Decider: 1. It's from "University IN Delaware" 2. It was awarded in "Newark, Vanuatu" (i.e. see the That Time Geocentrist Tricked a Bunch of Physicists Video; it's a country popular with degree mills) 3. It's dated the 32nd day of October 4. (My favourite) It's signed by Nelson Mandela and Ted Kaczynski God I love this man.
@@tiredprincess451 thank you so much. I read OPs comment before I got to that part in the video and so I think I was trying too hard to see the joke because I couldn't get it. Then I came back and read your comment and now it's so obvious.
As someone concerned with ethics, I am sickened by their efforts to rob people of their money. As an engineer, I am truly even more sickened by how just... fucking inefficient they are at robbing people.
Ugh, the “training to be terrible clients” section gave me flashbacks to my first venture into graphic design in college. I had a friend of a friend who was trying to start a local clothing brand and wanted me to design multiple stylized versions of the logo he thought of and wanted exactly like it was in his head. He kept sending them back with notes resulting in me doing about 3 versions of each individual version and then said he didn’t like any of them and wouldn’t pay but might give me a free t-shirt. Later I found out he used all of them and sold them to my friend for what was my hourly rate per-hat/shirt. Making money by ripping people who did the actual work for you off is the ultimate form of douchebag business.
no, that's just the foundation of capitalism. I honestly admire these people a bit for how they looked at capitalism and said "hang on, why don't we just take this to its obvious logical conclusion and openly screw people out of fair compensation for their labor while contributing nothing?"
Protip: I always send an unusable preview until a client pays. For an illustration this might mean a tiny version at screen size (72DPI), for pixel art this means a JPEG (high quality but still) at non-integer size, and for vector work this simply means a bitmap version. So if someone doesn't pay, they're never getting a fully useful version.
That's the best strat, just do light jobs until you stumble on winning combination of scaming the system until your clownery is exiled, after which you become an MLM and talk bullshit for a living. Only thing missing is benefit to anyone,
"The difference between you and me is that I had enough money that I didn't _need_ three jobs. Which is definitely because of my hard work and talent, not because of family wealth or anything!"
The fact that Dan didn't title this video "I Forced Myself to Write a Book About a Topic I Knew Nothing About- in Less Than a Month" shows a level of journalistic integrity I don't think this platform deserves. Stellar video as always
There'd probably be more journalistic integrity if journalism wasn't an elaborate capitalist grift. Hey write articles of a certain length within this time period to get paid. The ones who pay the journalists don't contribute either.
that and the amazingly anti-clickbait thumbnail. i'd seen it a couple times but ignored it because i thought the algorythm was showing me...some dude in a field. probably wants to sell me something. no thanks
It's easy in these short steps: 1) Drive up to pump 2) Drive INTO pump 3) Threaten to sue if they don't give you free gas 4) Flee and repeat at other gas station if they call the cops
the amount of effort that went into making this video is probably greater than all the effort these grifters have ever put into anything in their entire lives
"I'm here within 400 feet of an elementary school to prove the haters wrong!" is such an excellent joke but I feel like we're not giving enough credit to the follow-up of a shirtless Dan staring intensely into the camera and promising to use his magic powers to give us 500% APY.
The thing is… I saw the real RU-vid ad that joke was based off… it looked exactly like that, he nailed everything (the delivery, the appearance, setting, etc). I’m surprised more people don’t seem to know these were all based on REAL ads RU-vid had during quarantine. He didn’t hyperbolize at all (which, in my opinion, makes it funnier).
@@biguattipoptropica TBH I mostly watch RU-vid with adblockers on so I haven't seen most of the original ads. I have no trouble believing a bunch of the others are almost verbatim (the "just bought this new Porsche" one and even the "I'm within 400 feet of an elementary school one"), but the Shirtless Dan one is just so... *weird* I can't wrap my head around the existence of an unironic version of it.
The introduction was all based on REAL ads that were super prevalent during covid, when RU-vid was desperate for advertisers. The audio was unmistakably and uniquely horrible in each, and he absolutely nailed mocking everyone’s pitch. There really was a shirtless guy in front of a bad greenscreen promising ridiculous returns (I think he was high). Strange times.
@@nob2243 ah yes, I too enjoy partaking of RU-vidrs' hard work while ensuring they aren't allowed to make any financial recompense from my having done so. I want all the channels i enjoy to collapse, because I'm a fucking clown.
They're still around! I still see them to this day, just not in English and very much still just scrapping off every trend and problem old or new, I fear for the people who fall into these
The world needs more people like Dan. It feels that for every person dedicated to publicly exposing scams, there’s like 100x more scammers out there. Scammers are mostly winning and it boils my blood.
@@atomicshroom You seem to be correct. The biggest problem with any kind of debunking is that someone can make 1000 false claims in the time it takes for the first claim to be fact-checked and responded to. Furthermore, the proper response (such as this video) isn't going to put an immediate end to the making of false claims even about a single topic.
@@atomicshroom because it's much easier to pull a claim out of your ass than for someone to find which ass that initial claim came from. Fact checking is an art that takes a lot of expertise and (more importantly) time, while even a 3rd grader can easily come up with a scam believable enough.
Reminds me of all the old real estate 'become a millionaire' hour long inofmericals of the 90s from overly tan men from Florida. They are selling you ideas in the housing market that hasn't worked since the early 90s or late 80s lol.
I remember watching a RU-vid video about get rich quick/become a millionaire/passive income courses and the person making the video said something along the lines of "if somebody says they're going to teach you how they got rich, it's because their method doesn't work anymore" and that is something that I don't think I'll ever forget. I think it was a video about Andrew Tate's Hustle University or whatever.
I am never unimpressed by your eloquence and insight and I cannot believe you wrote an entire book for this video. You're undeniably one of the best youtubers to ever do it- thank you Dan.
Or that model only exists in theory and they pretend to hold secret knowledge that lets you use it. I saw this a lot with stock market and crypto scams.
I’m a professional medical writer. I was laughing through your description of research. I completely lost it when you said research murders budgets. It’s 100% true.
When I worked with The Urban Writers as a ghostwriter, the Mikkelsen Twins featured our company as one of the ones they liked to use for their grift to get books written quickly and cheaply like you mentioned in the book. For whatever reason, the higher-ups apparently saw this as a compliment and proudly let us all know, which I guess then later turned into "friends of the CEO". That was about when I realized I needed to quit and find a job that paid better/valued my time and energy more lmao Also, you're right: we used to have no contact with the person who placed the book order, and could just write the book and pass it along. Then 2 years into my stint there they shoved the burden of interfacing with the customers on us, PLUS constant revisions through the platform's chat and edit features. As one of their higher tier writers, I was repeatedly pressured to take on multiple 30k+ word books at a time, sometimes meaning I was writing for 10 or more hours straight every day with no days off. In short, it was a terrible place to work that gave me burnout I am still recovering from to this day Sidenote, the advice the Mikkelsen Twins give people for how to write outlines to pass along to the ghostwriters is horrible and made these clients a hundred times more annoying to deal with than if they had just given us nothing but a title
Also yeah, TUW does not care at all about factual inaccuracies. I was paid to write a cookbook for the Carnivore Diet (I am not proud of this, but I had rent to pay). Finding citations for that book sure was fun
Holy shit a real Urban Writer, I was wondering if someone with personal experience in this scam would see this video. What about their outlines made the Mikkelsen twin’s students so bad?
Whoever Scott is, wherever he may be, I deeply hope that he ends up in a better situation eventually. Hell, I hope that all of these poor ghostwriters get to be in a better situation.
This exploitative ghost writing company seems like a unique case but in reality this is just the way capitalism is structured. This is the system working as intended. It's actually a pretty good scenario for where worker-ownership would be quite easy to envision. The ghostwriters collectively owning the (or a) company for all of their benefit.
Often these are people who are limited in employment options due to illness, disability or family situations. It’s taking advantage of desperate people.
Every time I watch this the line "And that's how you're able to live in Bali?" hits me like a ton of bricks. I know they're trying to say that they can afford to live in a fancy tropical location, but the cost of living in Bali is literally half of what it is in the US. It's not the flex they want it to be.
Because they're dumb simpletons they probably see it in the same light and energy as when they proclaim how exciting it is to have a real "Radio broadcaster" narrating their garbage books like it's a badge of honor.
Their core audience are the fundamentally incurious and uncritical, so they're relying on them hearing "Bali" and just painting a picture of some tropical paradise full of rich people because they don't know anything about countries outside the US.
Well the flex is that they have enough money to go somewhere nice and not work. Bali's cost of living is lower, but most people still need to work to live there, and pay there is appropriately lower as well. It's not a billionaire flex, but it's still a flex by even a relatively comfortable person's standards.
That "how to stay broke" segment really pissed me off. Specifically how they said that "staying around broke people" will keep you poor. Like, what? They're just saying that because those 'broke people' are probably their friends and family that have a non-economic stake in your well being. These scammers specifically benefit from people breaking away from loved ones since their marks then lose the ability to check with other people to see if a scheme looks sus or not.
They pretty much took a page out of a cult's playbook. They disconnect you from your pre-indoctrination support structures (friends, family etc.) so that you'll have no one else to turn to but the cult. It's quite telling of the sociopathy of groups like the Mikkelsens and Urban Writers that they employ tactics akin to those of cults and human traffickers. No one will know you exists outside the cult, no one will know you exist outside the sweatshop.
As with grifts, so with cults. And so with abusive partners too. When you're distanced from the people who could care about you, you have nowhere to turn except for your predators. It's horrific.
The argument, if I’m guessing correctly, is that poor people usually have poor friends. Inversely, people who don’t have poor friends are less likely to be poor. Thus, ditch the poor friends and you’ll stop being poor. This argument obviously completely sidesteps the fact that people tend to find friends in similar life situations as themselves. Which would mean that friends don’t keep you poor, it just happens that poor people have more in common with other poor people, just like rich people have more in common with other rich people
@@fredrikpedersen2254 But this isnt about rich people making friends with fellow rich, its rich con artists telling the poor to abandon their poor friends and maybe one day they will have rich friends...but until then, THEY are their rich "friend"
As a voice actor, my interest was piqued when I realized that the Contrepreneurs' grift ran through Audible and ACX, two services I am well acquainted with. After watching your video... Oh boy. I'm glad you went through the issues from the writer's perspective, but I think I can provide some insight into what the narration end involves. So, in the email to "Don" (57:24), the Mikkelsen twins are offering $30 PFH (Per Finished Hour) for their audiobook, based on the idea that "most narrators are trying to build their portfolio", and there's a lot of narrators, and not that many books to narrate. The ACX union minimum is 250$ PFH (last time I checked anyway, inflation's been wild lately, eh?), so the Twins are asking someone to work for 12% Union Minimum. Tempting! The real question is: what goes into one "Finished Hour" of narration? The answer is: Depends how good you are, but long-form narration is just about the most grueling work a voice actor can do. It is an absolute Marathon! Sort of like what you went through "ghost writing", actually! I personally try to avoid that whole mess as a general principle because of the amount of work involved (and the tendency of authors and "authors" to try to underpay and overdemand, thanks Royalty Share), but I know enough of what would be involved to make some good guesses as to what the numbers would look like if I did try it today. Let's start with the base expectation of a perfect read: you sit your butt in the chair, talk into the mic for an hour, and get paid for one Finished Hour. $30/hr is... Well, it's nothing to dance at, especially for a trained professional who has to buy their expensive gear themselves, but it's alright! But that's assuming you're perfect, spot-on, got it all on the first take. Chances are, you'll mess up a few times (or a truck will drive by, or the goddamn neighbor will start mowing the lawn), and then you have to start your passage over. Let's be optimistic about our skills and luck and turn that one hour into a mere 2h00 of *just* narration. Our pay's now $15/hr. We're down to CA minimum wage. Ugh. Fine. It's a living, right? BUT WAIT, when you narrate for ACX, you have to be the narrator, the editor AND the audio engineer, including QA! And ACX is NOT like Urban Writers: if you put in shoddy work, if your noise floor is half a decibel too high, or you have too many mouth clicks, they WILL bin your entire narration and tell you to start over and do it properly this time. So you had BETTER do it right on the first goddamn try! This will take time. You might have your mastering entirely automated away, but at minimum you need to delete all your bad takes. Voice actors use plenty of tricks to speed up the process, so let's call it half an hour (probably a bit shorter but half an hour keeps our numbers nice and round and it's close enough) to trim your two hours to the actual final one hour. Two and a half hours of work so far. NOW you have to do the subtler edits, things like making sure there are no mouth clicks or egregious breathing sounds. These WILL get ACX mad at you. Here's where skill and habit can really cut into your work time: if you've got your processing chain set up just right, you might legitimately not have anything else left to do, and your DAW will automatically cut between sentences and de-click and all the rest of it. HOWEVER, remember! ACX do not fuck around with quality, so you want to *at the very least* listen through the whole thing once to make perfectly sure you magically got it all right on the first try. Now you ship it in and get paid your Mikkelsen-approved 30 dollars. Three and a half hours of work for $8.57/hr. You may notice we've been assuming nigh supernatural luck and skill the whole way. But remember, the Twins are telling their pupils to exploit narrators who need to build up their portfolio. You're not getting an über-skilled hardened veteran of the biz. You're getting, at best, a modest professional, at worst, an amateur. That hour that took three and a half hours to complete? For a less experienced narrator, that could easily go up to 8 hours of work, or even more. Does that sound ridiculous? Consider that this may be someone who needs a lot of retakes to get a passage right (especially if the passage is poorly written slop some other underpaid pawn vomited out for a pittance). If there are mouth clicks or shuffling noises between sentences, they might need to be edited out manually. All pitfalls a less experienced narrator might (and will) fall into. Eight hours of real, actual work Per Finished Hour. A full workday for $3.75/hr! And suddenly we're looking at numbers reminiscent of the Urban Writers equation. And as you pointed out, this is all assuming the client likes the first take and doesn't want any changes. If they want to change anything at all, you have to go through the whole rigmarole of setting up your recording space (you do have a dedicated space, right?), narrating, doing retakes as necessary, editing, mastering, QA, send again and see if this one works. I don't need to expand on the Mikkelsen twins being scumbags, you've done that excellently yourself, but I hope this can provide a small insight into the lives of the people reading the audiobooks you listen to.
And not to even mention that the "build up their portfolio thing" is a scam on the VA. As if any company looking for VAs is going to be impressed that they did the narration for some shitty book about philosophy for pussies or wild sex fantasies. It's just using people desperate for money by other people desperate for money.
Underappreciated comment. As someone who works as an editor on audiobooks from time to time (although not these types, thankfully!), thank you for taking the time to write this out. When I work on these projects, even just the editing usually takes several days.
As a Canadian making a little over minimum wage, yeah, it's a living but I have to choose between driving and savings. As skilled work, y'all deserve more. Given what you have to deal with, y'all deserve a lot more.
Thank you for taking the time to give insight into your profession and your experiences. it's a super interesting addition to the video and I hope my comment pushes it up a bit more so more people will read it
Okay, listen. I know these are bad people and we shouldn't support them in any way. But, "Stocisim for Pussies" is the greatest book title of all time.
It's so upsetting knowing that that book is almost certainly filled with nothing remotely resembling genuine stoic philosophy, because I would do so much better with that title.......
@@JohannesWiberg I mean, I hope you don't think I'm here under my real name either, so it's possible the ghostwriter made a YT account under the pen name to avoid violating their work agreements around maintaining a pseudonym.
So not only did you research, script, record, and edit this video, but you wrote a whole book just as research? Damn, that is some level of dedication to your craft.
This is a form of torture similar to solitary confinement. Like, it's singularly destructive to the ego. And even then Dan had it easier: The whole time he was writing the bad book, he was doing it in service of a good video. And he didn't need to meet the deadline to pay his bills.
I bet it's not even *that* bad of a book (appears to be unavailable on Amazon as of this writing, I suspect a large number of searches have tripped a sensor), rather just a slightly lazy one that regurgitates easily obtained information. Honestly, I'd read it if it was available. 25k words of Dan sounds like a nice afternoon, and I can enjoy finding the little moments where he's clearly just filling word count. Edit: And without irony, I am interested in Dan's conclusions on hypnosis. It probably won't change my opinion, as I suspect we have similar opinions, but I'm sure I'd learn something.
I am embarrassed to admit i got roped into working for the Urban Writers as an editor. I was very new to the industry and while i felt like i was being absolutely robbed for my time and skill (0.03 cents/word or about 3.75/hour on a good day), i also felt like i had no right to complain because "at least i have a job, right?" It absolutely sickens me that companies like TUW prey not only on young, inexperienced people, but that they also prey on scarcity mindset and the "grind mentality" that is part and parcel with all capitalist spaces.
Never feel embarrassed, you were taken advantage of. You should feel proud that you lived despite that, they did the bad thing they should be embarrassed
If anyone ever doubts that Dan Olson is one of the RU-vid GOATs, just remember that he wrote an entire book on a subject outside of his field just for a video essay. What a king.
I like how he took his video essay writing skills into consideration but basically had to approach the concept sideways as to not let his writing style get in the way of his ghostwriting style.
Not a phD student, but sometimes when I’m working on certain written assignments every second I’m actively writing or looking over my writing feels actually painful. Like every negative feeling and emotion possible without being physically harmed💀
I once bought an audiobook on audible using a credit from the monthly subscription. It was called "Unfuck your life". I've had so much fun with it, not because it taught me anything or even because it made me think but rather because it was so void of any measurable value that I just kept listening in awe to see how far the "author" was willing to go into the abyss of banality. I simply could not believe someone spent that much energy on not spending energy. Should've broke a rule of thermodynamics.
I realize it's been 6 months, but I have to commiserate with you. That is one of my mother's favorite books, and I swear to God it is one of the most intellectually vapid things I have ever encountered. All those "self help" books are pretty much a dime a dozen when it comes to stuff like that.
Maybe there are people out there who genuinely benefit from these things. I think most people have some knowledge that many other people don't have, whether it's how to cook certain meals, how not to procrastinate etc. I think even seemingly vapid books probably help someone. That said, there are probably much better books out there they could be reading!
This reminds me of a side quest in Yakuza Kiwami 2, where the main character saves a politician who wrote a bestselling self-help book and gives it to the MC for saving him. He reads it and concludes it is vapid garbage. Later, he comes across a guy whose life has turned to crap. He gives him the book, and he ALSO thinks it's vapid garbage and gains a confidence boost because of how shit this best seller.
I feel like an important thing to note is that terrible internet-only jobs like being a ghostwriter for a scammy gig economy company are heavily pushed on people who can't work traditional jobs for some reason. I had them recommended to me again and again when I became disabled, but I bet they also prey on people with criminal records, parents who can't afford childcare, etc.
I don't know how they can sleep at night. It's nauseating to think about these people who take advantage of the people who are the most vulnerable, and downtrodden. I think that most people are generally good, and try to do the right thing MOST of the time, but there is always that one in one thousand that has no heart or soul and spread corruption around and steal from others like they are doing the dishes. No remorse, no scruples, no thought of anything other than themselves. Even if you could become wealthy that way, why would you? What right do you have to do such a thing?
I'm not "the" Scott but I'm "a" Scott - and having watched you since I first worked in this field, seeing you defend our kind and our experience is nothing short of cathartic. (But don't worry, I got out.)
I've considered getting into this business so many times and this video will be my new most useful tool to go back to and convince myself to do almost anything else. Not to mention it would slaughter my motivation to do the writing I actually WANT to do...
The problem with these grifters is that they fail to answer how you actually build the audience to make the product successful. Like, how do you one-by-one, manually organize random people to follow their cause and buy the product?
That is fascinating! My partner was once commissioned to ghost write a book for a Friend but I imagine the process as a professional ghostwriter is much different. What is it like? How many hours A-day did you have to work? How many books did you write, how long were they? What kind of topics? What were you paid? Did you ever do biographies? I'm really curious about the process!!! Do you still like writing or do you literally hate the written word now? Please tell me more!
What I'm badly wondering is, why in the hell would you do this to yourself. I come from a third world country and that sort of money would be pretty okay but, and that's a big but, something like this would require you to know how to write, and writing in english, which gives you so many more options even in a developing country. I genuinely don't understand.
It's kinda scary how similar the experience of writing that book seemed to be to struggling through several university essays at once under extreme time pressure; the suffering. the sighing, the sitting around in a robe, the close watch of the agonisingly immoveable word count, the pain of research eating up so much time while said word count remains stagnant, the motivation death and 'I'd rather die than look at the document', the fact that even when you aren't actively working on it it eats up your soul with stress and kinda consumes the rest of your life, the extreme difficulty of having to jump between topics (between different yet similar essays) and reframe your focus every time, even the incredibly specific 'heyyyy, I haven't written the introduction or conclusion yet! Free words!'. Makes me extremely sympathetic for Scott and these kinds of writers - getting anything done under these kinda conditions is hell, and I only had to deal with it for a week and with about 5,500 words overall. It may have been for my degree, and that may have been stressful, but I wasn't worried about whether or not I could EAT this month, and once it was done, it was done, I could stop. They have to keep going, and going, and going. I couldn't imagine that being my life.
For my degree, I had to over 2 years write 3 short researched articles about a given topic. They were all like 20'000-30'000 words (we usually worked in pairs). The 2 weeks before it was due were always hell
At the end of my 7th semester (Engineering), I had *three* 60-page reports due in the same week, each on a different topic. Even as a hobbyist writer, that was the hardest I've ever felt writing could be. It burned me out halfway through the papers, and I remained burned out for most of the entire break between semesters. How to write without burning yourself out is a big research topic for me, and I've found some things that work best; - Find intrinsic motivation, such as the joy of expressing yourself. Do not trust extrinsic motivation, such as money, grades, or recognition, which are like setting your house on fire to stay warm. - Do not hold yourself to a productivity goal. Shun "productivity", and let yourself write as much or as little as you have in you. This will likely make you afraid; afraid that without fear and pushing yourself hard, you won't accomplish anything. But you have to, because if you keep pushing yourself with harsh feelings and fear, burnout is the only possible outcome. - After every hour of writing, and after everything you complete, look back and find at least 3 things you're proud of or happy you wrote. This is actually an exercise to build self-esteem recommended by my therapist, and it works wonders.
My wife got pretty far into the sign up process on urban writers. They had an orientation with lots of new prospects where the first red flag was that every other person on the call was from Bangladesh or India and they were shocked an American was on the call. She realized it was a total scam when they told her that the hiring process requires every new writer to write a whole book for them, unpaid. Thankfully she dropped out right then. They were asking for PayPal information because they didn't use regular banks, and overall we got a terrible vibe. This bullshit is not at all surprising.
That would unfortunately explain the name anonymity thing--if I remember right, call centers do the same thing when they set up shop in India (ie--give them "White" names to be more palatable to people using call centers)
It makes sense most ghostwriters are from poor countries. $250 is pretty much a twice the minimum wage over here where I live, and if you're very frugal (and somehow don't have to pay rent) you can get almost 4 months of groceries with that (if you're a single person, ofc).
That's interesting and suggestive - I wonder if the young white man, the pseudonymous Scott with whom Dan was commiserating (and who could not be contacted outside the 'platform') was himself only a fictional creation. He could actually have been a female immigrant from South Asia.
As a freelance writer, I can tell you that workload and pay rate is disgusting but also completely normal. There are so many freelance writing sites that have these exploitative rates. I started at 2cents per word until I built up more experience and became more selective with my clientele. Thank you for making this video. I hope it shows how little creatives are valued in service of making others "millionaires".
We are truly in the era of the grifter. At this point it is easier to assume everything is a grift and be pleasantly surprised when it isn't than to believe anyone online.
I think the best piece of advice I was given about anything online from those on go-fund-me people trying to raise money for medical bills to people pitching a business idea that seems too good to be true is never to not trust but ALWAYS verify. Be skeptical until the proof is staring at you in the face beyond just a few internet clicks because even that is being manipulated. I do agree that at this point any person or people advertising any business model to make money online through RU-vid ads or whatever is automatically a scam or a well disguised one.
If a "business opportunity" requires a large upfront payment to get in on it, it's a scam. If it wasn't a scam, they wouldn't be talking to you (as in the collective you, us), they'd be talking to a bank or finance group for actual capital.
My daddy told me when I was a boy, "Boy, you know how to make a dollar easy?" Me as a boy, "I don't know Daddy, tell me how." Daddy said, "Give me a dollar and I'll tell you."
the fact that what-his-face Mikkelsen has the tremulous diction of a child making up a lie about how a burglar broke into the house then ate all the cookies despite being a grown man, is not helping how aggravating this all is.
I mean, I hate to go to bat for the Fraudulence Twins here, but I think that's just their Danish accents. I know a lot of Scandinavian people who sound like that when they speak English.
Oh my god. I think I saw "Treating Epilepsy with Self Hypnosis" on ACX and I didn't audition because I thought it was far to dubious and I thought it might be harmful lol.
I loved writing growing up, lots of short stories, screenplays even. So I naturally gravitated towards a job as a ghostwriter. Your segment on that, and the mental math about "if I finish this in two weeks maybe I'll make 500 this month" gave me painful flashbacks. Ghostwriting for a few years put me in such a deep burnout that I haven't written since I was 24. I'll be 29 on May 20 and I still recoil when I see a word processing program. It has made my passion into one of my biggest triggers. That segment hit real hard.
Fwiw- you described it very well, in your word choices and sentence structure (silly, I know - but requires real skill) so I hope you still know that you do at least have some talent, and I hope you can rediscover your love for it. Maybe, writing by hand for just a few days, and reading things that make you happy. I’m always sad when someone feels hurt by something that used to bring them joy.
I hope one day you can find your passion for writing again, or barring that a new passion to express your creativity. It's tragic to have it mined into a traumatic experience. I understand too well how easily that can happen.
What’s funny is I’ve seen the original ads all the jokes were based on. There really was a guy doing that exact thing except I think he said 200% returns in 90 days
He didn't even advertise or provide any links for us to buy it. I had to google it and still finding it is a struggle. I've been thinking about that for a week. The ethics on this guy lol
In desperation I was looking at The Urban Writers as a way to get paid to write. Just graduated from a private writing program, into a pandemic, and not landing the jobs I wanted. I got lucky. Not smart, lucky. Thank you for making this and hopefully helping others avoid this scam!
I worked on a book for NaNoWriMo for several years (back when I had some semblance of free time and energy to do anything), and there are some parts of it that I'm extremely proud of... and more parts of it that I want to bury in a box in a desert and then shoot that box with a cannon.
Please accept this openly - I don’t write, though I can somewhat - but I sing and create, and put up prose on the platform I sing on. For the first year and a half I was doing this, listening to myself do either of these things, more or less made my ears bleed and gave me the urge to jump off the highest bridge I could get to. To make a life long story much much shorter lol, the life I have lived had me as an adult more or less hating everything about myself, a common problem in modern society. Over a short period of time I dealt with those very problems, and then lo and behold, I was able to view my works with a critical eye still, but WITHOUT the unnecessary harsh judgements. “i’ve only been singing for a couple of years, and under this context, this shit is pretty good, and getting better as I continue to put more time and energy into this”. And “ I am a high school dropout and completely self-taught in 95% of the stuff that I know - under that context, my prose is pretty impressive!” You get the idea. It’s always advisable to be self-critical - but there’s a destructive way to do that, and a much more constructive way - and the beauty of being human, is that we have complete and total control over how we perceive the world around us. Exercise that control and it becomes transformative. And on a personal level, I would like to add that (specifically to those of you that have commented already), if you put tons of effort and a piece of yourself into your writing even back in college, and when you turned it in there was an honest concern about the quality and an almost obsessive worrying, i’m fairly confident in asserting that the quality of YOUR work, FAR outpaced that of the people who turned in their stuff without such reservations. Your behaviors are indicative of introspection and critically thinking minds, and I urge you not to wait until you are 43 years old before you realize how unbelievably rare that is.
This was the crossover I wasn't expecting but am super happy for! I was there when Savy was under 10k subs and she's just been killing it and I'm glad more people will know of Savy's channel
At the very least you'll probably get a placebo benefit from a faith healer. You'd get more mileage from sending $2,000 down a memory hole than wiring these confidence fucks that money.
I actually got caught up in one of these schemes during quarentine. It was this thing called sync academy, basically this guy makes money selling music to commercials and tv shows and promises you that he can make you as successful as he is. I worked at it every day for 2 years. paid this guy an amount of money a month that I dont feel comfortable stating here, and got bunk. well I didnt get bunk, I nearly got robbed 3 times by labels that wanted my catalog for pennies. since cutting ties with what was basically a musical MLM, I have made a lot more money just selling my stuff via spotify etc. knowing I got scammed makes it way harder for me to judge people who get caught in MLMs, like this wasnt exactly a tupperware or green thing scam, but it def was a scam by a conman
I’m a voice actor working mostly in audiobooks. I got PTSD flashbacks at seeing those $30 PFH offers. For context btw it takes most new narrators at least 5 hours per finished hour (and new narrators are the ones who get roped into this-I definitely did). You’re not just accounting for recording time, but editing and mastering. For a 3-hour audiobook (and they’re always ADAMANT that it be exactly around 3 hours so they get a particular price point on Audible without having to pay you as the actor more), you’re looking at 15 hours of work for a newbie, and a final payout around $90. It’s exploitative as hell.
I write non-fiction and non-fiction-adjecent things for an NGO, and work with freelance voice actors. Our budgets are tight as hell, but I would never even dream to pay so little to people. 30$ is a rate for a few sentences at best...
@@scottwatrousIt varies depending on the gig, but SAG-AFTRA starting rate for audiobooks is $250 PFH. That's for full production--where the actor does all the mastering/editing or outsources that part of the production. For just the raw recording it's a little less. The audition calls I tend to get are around $185 PFH for just the audio, which they mix in house.
It's part of how these kinds of grifts and scams continue to work -- because people are desperate, and they WANT to believe that it could work FOR THEM, because that fantasy can just get you right when you're at your lowest. Source: I fell for one of these, too.
Seems like a natural feeling to have pass over you when exposed to these messages, but it's one of those feelings you wave bye to as it passes. Label it an "intrusive thought".
@@phastinemoon You’re not alone. Got me too years ago. Sometimes still seems tempting even though I know better. People just want to at least have hope for better and it’s an awful thing to prey upon.
I think it depends on what you want to "work for you" If you're thinking "but what if I *was* able to get a bunch of people to do things for me at the thinnest possible margins and then turn around and reap the sole benefits" then no you probably can't, even if you set aside your morals. If you're thinking "hey I actually like the idea of hiring a ghost writer to turn my idea into an actual book cause I suck at writing" or "woah it would actually be cool to have an audio book on audible earning royalties" then you definitely can do it - it just won't be a route to getting rich quick
"Styling themselves as burnouts turned publishing gurus, these dollar general Winkelvi are the villain of today's video, but they're not the end boss by any metric..." Not sure who helps with writing scripts, but dam that was good.
My jaw hit the floor when he told us how little those ghost writers are getting paid. I'm trying to break into the writing industry, and the thought of poor Scott, likely an individual very similar to myself, struggling and stressing over this book that is ultimately little more than nonsense just for that $250 from a company that treats them like a replaceable cog... My heart breaks for those people.
At some point you have to wonder how many of them are using modern tools to fluff up their work. I remember some 25 years ago having a CD-ROM with a bit of software on it that replaced words with long, complicated sounding phrases. That's all it was; a simple 1:1 replacement algorithm. But you can take your results and feed it back into the algorithm, and repeat ad nauseum. I can only assume the past 25 years has brought significant updates to that sort of software, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence. Add to that the time savings that comes with experience. Would 12,500 words suffice, if you can programmatically apply a mere 2:1 fluff ratio? Could you cut down on research time by selecting topics you are already familiar with? Is it legally plagiarism if you're copying from yourself? Is it easier to write it yourself, or merely make a few edits to what an AI has written to make it passably readable? The grift is already 3 levels deep; why stop there?
Just got to that part too. $2/hr is like the bullshit wages given to people with disabilities who are devalued because employers can count on them being trapped with not earning too much so as not to lose their benefits.
@@fallingstar9643 I think this is giving them almost too much technological credit. Theoretically, yes, technology could do a certain amount of this, but it's so much cheaper and faster to just hire people in countries where the cost of living is a small fraction of what it is in the US. AI (which is mostly just machine learning) has come a long way but it isn't magic and it's very expensive.
If it makes you feel mildly better, many of these people are living in poorer, third world countries. They have a good grasp of English and are using it to make what is considered quite a good salary for where they love. Of course, it shouldn't make you feel too much better, because it's still a system exploiting human beings who need the money to live, but at least it's a relatively good living for their country. For Scott, 250 goes further in his ecosystem than in the USA.
I supremely burned out as an author from working on a commission basis, and holy crap do I understand that "I would rather die than look at the document" line. It hit a point for me where my brain actually hurt, like dragging it over gravel, to sit down and try to write anything even the slightest but creative. It's been 3 years, and finally, finally I've recovered enough to make tiny short stories again. It sucks.
that sounds absolutely terrible, im sorry 💜 burnout is so terrible, i know how much it can just absolutely wreck you. im glad youre starting to recover from it 💜
This is exactly why I've never considered a career as a professional musician even though I absolutely love making music - the thought of ruining that love by being forced to do it is far worse than the thought of being bored for a living.
I have a friend who used to ghost write black hat/white hat style novels and it really depressed and demoralized him. I have a newfound appreciation for the financial grind of his situation now that i watched this video. He quit and immediately felt better mentally.
Oh my God I can so relate to this. I was a part of Poetry Twitter a while back & anyone on that side of Twitter can tell you publication is so, so important. I burned myself out so hard trying to constantly write & edit & get published (in tiny online lit journals that didn’t even pay!) all for some eyes on my poems & the validation of others. Three years & a pandemic later, I’m finally just now getting back into writing poetry & it is still so fucking hard. Sending hugs!
I’m a writer. Every year, I participate in NaNoWriMo - a community novel writing ‘contest’ where people challenge themselves to slam out a 30,000 word rough draft in 30 days. It’s an experience I find incredibly valuable! …as a once-a-year, for-fun exercise that I’ll spend the next several months recovering from. But repeating that process again and again, month after month, scrawling out some grifter’s nonsense for next to no pay? That’s how you grind yourself to death. What an honest-to-god nightmare.
I did the 50,000 word version and even though it’s fiction it was still a grind to finish and I have still not finished editing my story many years later lol
FR ! I went to the after party in my first year (remember those? In the before times?). That was at least a great opportunity to get feedback, editing advice, that kind of stuff! It’s FUN, when it’s a once-a-year, fiction, under your control, kinda experience! When you don’t have ANY choice or control, and your budget is dependent on it, that becomes a goddamn hellscape.
(quick correction: the challenge is 50k, not 30k) this is what i was thinking this whole time, too. the methods you need to do to win nano are exactly what dan's describing here. and it's miserable. something that i don't think he mentioned really was just how much time it takes away from everything else. people meal prep for nano. people tell all their friends they can't hang out for a while because they have to spend all their time writing. people plan commitments around november all year round because they know they'll participate. so, if you're scott, not only are you forced to write that much, to churn out that much garbage for no pay, but the rest of your life is on hold. forever.
I'm writing my master's thesis right now! The sticking point for me is having to learn general relativity for it, but once that's done, it should come out fairly easily.
As a person who've worked for a bit at a ghostwriting company, I must say that the book-writing segment triggered my ptsd. You're a champ that you've endured the experience. Your reflections on the process and its implications hit close to home and are very true. I was particularly delighted (horrified) by your thoughts on how to inflate the word count (over-relying on quotations is just too true.)
Get halfway through the book, and then quote the entire first half! As Googie Gress once said, "Get halfway through ... and then quote the entire first half!"
@@googiegress Ahh yes, as the oft quoted and much renowned for their legendary partying and RU-vid commenting Google Gress once said "Get halfway through the book, and then quote the entire first half! And of course "Get halfway through ... and then quote the entire first half!", and that is the very Oxford definition of the oft quoted and much renowned for their legendary partying and RU-vid commenting, Google Gress who was known to of said "Get halfway through the book, and then quote the entire first half! But most inspiring of all "Get halfway through ... and then quote the entire first half!". And that is the very Oxford definition of grandiloquent! Which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “using long or complicated words in order to impress people”. *sorry, bit stoned.
I fell for one of these, some dropshipping class that I was getting ads for when I was 18. I realized I messed up a few days later, but was so ashamed that I didn't ask for help dealing with it. So I was out $1500, which was half of the money I had saved at the time. Felt like a fool, was a fool, but learned from my mistake. First, a greater degree of caution and knowledge of predatory tactics, second to ask for help when I'm out of my depth instead of being a prideful idiot.
@@angellight9500they're not gonna get that money back, so they might as well put the consequences in a different light and learn from it, rather than beat themselves up for it years later.
This was years ago and I've definitely taken it as a lesson. It's why I'm watching these kinds of videos instead of still watching a bunch of drivel on "making passive income" and modern get rich quick schemes.
@ashurean One of the most evil aspects of scams is how they make the victim feel ashamed and foolish, as if it’s their fault. No, the fault lies squarely with the people who cheated you. I’m sorry that happened to you.
I hope Scott sees this video and breathes a little better knowing that that Epilepsy Hypnosis book isn't actually going to trick any vulnerable people into not getting proper meds.
I got an ad right after the board fell over and then it cut back like three seconds after the ad, so I got to watch that bit twice in a row. It was funny both times.
After watching hbomberguy's latest video about plagiarism on RU-vid, I was reminded of this video. Both are about people trying to pass off other people's work as their own, and pointing out both the exploitation of labor involved and the required lying to the audience to reap their profits. I don't know if it's a helpful connection, but it's one that made me think of this video, and that's a positive in my book
It's the same method across multiple grifts, the core of the scheme is always the same: Churn out disposable slop and then spam it online so it can rack up the views and money, citing sources and honesty be damned.
I've watched Line Goes Up 20+ times in the past 8 months and was really hungering for some good Dan content since I had finally internalized all of LGU. Time for another video I can rewatch 10+ times until the next Dan video drops.
