What is this for?

If it’s your first time here, you might be wondering what this is all for. Is this just an exclusive party for creators? Is this just a lonely group of chronically-online-dopamine-wired-brain-nerds? Is it all the above?

It’s a question that sounds more dramatic than it should be. However, it’s also been the hardest thing to pin down. Why are we here? What purpose do we serve? What direction are we going?

Sometimes it’s easy to spiral in your own mind, thoughts bouncing off walls at light-speed creating a layer of static between you and clarity. One solution for this issue of overthinking that one might recommend is writing: journaling. Therefore, this document was created, in spirit of showing ourselves and the world how this all began and what carries us into the next era of creative culture.

Naturally, it all begins with a mission.

The Mission:

• Shaping a better internet by promoting the creation of meaningful stories, authentic connections, and creative collaboration.

Creator Camp was born out of a frustration with the current, algorithmic-driven, state of the platforms we’ve grown to love. By pigeonholing ourselves into these algorithms, all creative spirit was lost in exchange for optimization and treating content as a business. We first met because of a shared drive to create stories that pushed the narrative of what was possible. We were tired. Tired of the endless-scrolling-sludge of content that was forced on us, tired of the big dollar signs and idolization of treating an art form like a business.

Our generation is the first to have grown up fully online and while disconnecting is great, we also acknowledge that this is only a temporary solution. You pay with Apple Pay at the cashier, you communicate with your closest friends over text, and you get your dopamine from Instagram reels, it’s not realistic to fully disconnect.

Yes, you may find a small cult of people who gravitate towards a dumb phone or using only their apple watch. However, you might begin to miss Google Maps when you end up lost on a highway you don’t recognize. This is the reality we exist in today.

While we hope to have some influence on the algorithms that judge our existence, we know that’s going to be a long, uphill battle. However, what we can do is change the narrative of the content that exists on said platforms. To express ourselves and create pieces of art that reflect something that means something to us. Whether it’s a song, a painting, a startup, or a YouTube video, by creating something that makes someone feel something, makes them learn something, makes them think a bit harder about their own lives, we can start to introduce vegetables to the fast food of content that is served up with every swipe.

Creator Camp was formed to discover a permanent solution. We envision an internet filled with meaningful stories, creative experimentation, and educational art - a better internet that leaves you inspired, motivated, and better, rather than a void you endlessly lose yourself in.

Our first steps to embarking on this journey began in the form of our physical events - a way to connect and bring meaningful connections to those artists and creatives who were brave enough to push the status quo. To educate and inform this group of creatives on their impact and how they can use their platforms to create fearlessly.

While no single creator is going to have influence over internet culture, 100 might. Imagine the long lasting implications of shifting what those 100 creatives create and the stories they tell.

These events would serve three purposes: connecting artists, educating them, and promoting collaboration in the field. Over time this ideology spread. Initially beginning with the YouTube New Wave movement and then taking internet culture by storm - storytelling was finally regarded as highly as retention-hacking methods of the past.

We still have a long way to go. It’s been an absolute uphill battle - from pushing back on sponsors who had yet to see the value in what we were creating to barely scraping by the event after event, we’re still very much in our infancy.

However, one thing is for certain - when you set out to change an industry, a lot of people will approach the idea with skepticism, concern, and doubt. I’ll be honest, we’ve all had our doubts throughout the past two years. We’ve burned out, hit walls, and had moments where we had no clue how we were going to pull it off - but every single time something fell our way.

We KNOW for certain that this mission is worth all of the effort we’ve put into this. It’s the same ideology that brought you here today - whether you found Creator Camp on its own or through the YouTube New Wave, we have a shot at rewriting history and finally taking control of the internet and what’s been thrown in our laps ever since we were young. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey and mission, now let’s go make the internet a better place.