Megha’s daughter spent hours watching creators on YouTube. The trips. The gadgets. The follower counts going up in satisfying little jumps. When she announced college was unnecessary because she was going to be an influencer, Megha asked her one question. “How many videos have you made?” The answer was zero.
“She loved the idea of being a creator,” Megha says. “The actual creating part had not yet begun.” So she told her to begin. She uploaded videos for three months. She learned editing. She encountered criticism. She got very few views. She discovered that content creation is not just fame. It is work, and then more work, with fame being an optional outcome that arrives, if at all, much later.
Today she makes videos and attends college. Both, it turns out, can coexist peacefully. “Children sometimes need to bump into reality before they can make real decisions,” Megha says. “I just helped her find the bump.”
