When I was seven years old, I was in Grade 1, was good at tying my shoes, knew 200 words and already had my first pair of ugly eyeglasses, which, as I was to sadly discover, were extremely efficient bully bait.
It was only later I found out our one-room country school had hired a designated bully and I am not sure how he was paid but he kept himself busy and if he earned a fee for every kid he left lying on the school grounds sobbing, my guess is he did okay.
But I am pretty sure Bully For Hire didn’t do as well as a kid named Ryan, and strangely, neither did I. The highest-earning YouTube star in the world, Ryan is a seven-year-old elementary-school kid in the United States who does alright reviewing toys. The host of Ryan ToysReview earned about $22 million last year. The year before that, he made $11 million.
Ryan’s channel started in 2015 when he was four years old after he asked his parents why he couldn’t review toys on YouTube. Today, Ryan ToysReview has 17 million followers and has gotten a combined 26 billion views. And recently he struck a big licensing deal with Wal-Mart.
Now, I hate to be one to make excuses, but darn it all, that could have been me when I was seven, except for a few minor things. Our home didn’t even have its first TV at that time and it would be another 47 years before YouTube started up. And even if there had been an Internet for me to review toys on, as one of a family of nine, I don’t remember having all that many toys. A plastic rifle, a truck or two, maybe some cowboy action figures, a rubber ball. Reviews of those would have gotten old pretty fast.
At seven, I didn’t have much of an income, aside from the occasional deposit money I would collect for finding pop bottles in the ditches between school and our farm. So, yeah, I’m a little jealous. It would take me many years before I was able to begin earning an annual income of $22 million as a small town journalist. Many years.
Also, Ryan didn’t go to my school. If he had, he would have been too busy hiding behind trees to stay out of the path of our school’s official bully to think up toy reviews. I am guessing that Ryan has been privileged in his life. Not having your head beat on daily by a small army tank outfitted with arms and fists leaves your mind available for many profitable thoughts, I would imagine.
As for my brain, it was sort of obsessed with the bully and not with economics. Or toys.
However, if conditions had been right, I suppose, I could have done a video series about the Hundred Best Ways to Get Away from a Bully, except that I hardly ever got away. And didn’t know any ways.
Hiding behind trees was pretty much a useless strategy.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
