Why? It seems no different than actors or musicians. Maybe they didn't make a living and 'just got by'.
While we're on HN I ask the same question about software engineers. How did (do) so many people make a living producing Twitter or Facebook? If that isn't luxury I don't know what is.
If I had to choose, I think I'd rather live in a world full of poets than software engineers.
Because they deliver a product for advertisers to use, and those pay top dollar.
Poets as a social gain I can see, but in terms of the financial gain? Not so clear.
One could make the claim that they create artistic spaces that turn crime-ridden areas into havens of expression, which bankers then seem to value and then buy houses in (whereby the cycle begins anew until the city is fully gentrified)
The simplest summary I can pull out of my head is... big companies pay them big money to put big ads between the content, at so great a margin that all the excess profit goes towards searching for the next means of striking it rich. Now you
While we're on HN I ask the same question about software engineers. How did (do) so many people make a living producing Twitter or Facebook? If that isn't luxury I don't know what is.
If I had to choose, I think I'd rather live in a world full of poets than software engineers.