I’ve written about burnout before—how to spot it, how to prevent it, what to do when your brain feels like a fried circuit. But I don’t think I’ve ever written about what it’s like to actually live among it.

Especially in our space. A field that isn’t established yet. A field that is actively mocked, looked down upon, and deeply feared by the mainstream. We literally make dark jokes in the backchannels about who is going to be the first one to get killed over this. That is the baseline anxiety we operate on.

When you first start out, it’s exhilarating. It’s like walking into the Wild West. There are no bosses, just a massive, chaotic room of people sharing ideas, theories, and insights. You write. You build your own following. You find your tribe.

A month passes. One or two people drop off the radar. You don’t really notice.

Six months pass. A few hundred have vanished. Some you watch fade away in real-time, pulling the plug after a dramatic exit. But others? You just stumble upon their “husks”—old accounts where the last post was months ago, frozen in time.

A year goes by. The husks start to outnumber the living.

The Math of Survival (Worse Than Uber)

Let’s talk about the math of this digital graveyard. I’d argue our retention rate is worse than Uber drivers—and that is a notoriously brutal gig-economy job. At least they get paid for their nightmare, and no one is actively threatening their lives just for driving a sedan.

Here is how the lifecycle usually goes: Let’s say 100 new practitioners flood into the space this month. They are starry-eyed, “change the world” types. Out of that 100, maybe 10 stick around past the honeymoon phase.

The next wave hits. Of that original group, maybe 8 are left. Next month, 6. Then 4. Eventually, out of that initial 100, you officially have one active person left, and maybe one semi-active lurker who dips in and out when they have the energy.

Being here now feels like watching the 8th season of a TV show that has lost almost all of its original cast. It’s just me, a handful of others, and a constant, churning river of newbies. And let me tell you, there is nothing quite like being a two-year veteran of a highly volatile space, only to have some Day-1 noob confidently explain the absolute basics to you. (It’s like surviving a war zone and the new recruit tries to teach you how to tie your boots. Just... stop. I’ve been here for two years, bitch.)

The Ladder Pullers and the Algorithm Lottery

Why do they leave? Part of it is the sheer exhaustion of being “unseen” while doing the heavy lifting. You pour your absolute soul into an article or a book chapter, and it gets crickets. It eats at you.

Meanwhile, someone else posts a low-effort piece of content, hits the algorithm lottery, and gets thousands of views. And what do they do when they make it? Do they promote the community? Do they help establish the field?

Nope. They pull up the ladder. They self-promote like they are the only ones doing this work, completely blind to their own swelling egos.

But let’s be real about the community itself—when you do succeed, people get upset. The jealousy is rampant. It’s funny because outsiders constantly mock us for being self-centered, yet we eat our own the second someone gets ahead. I can’t even share a post with 1k comments because I find it hilarious how blind people are without someone taking it as an ego trip. I have another post with 2k likes, and it’s not even my own meme.

I’m not bragging. In fact, I turned off my visible subscriber count. I have 2 paid subs that I do not brag about. When I hit number 70 in rising tech, I kept my mouth shut. Because I’ve seen others brag, get easy likes, and eventually burn out into husks just the same.

The Psychology of “Burnout Stigma”

I wanted to know if this specific type of exhaustion had a name. It does. Psychologists refer to it as Burnout Stigma.

When a doctor or a teacher burns out, society gives them sympathy. But when you burn out in a highly stigmatized, controversial, or mocked field, you don’t get sympathy. You get told, “You brought this on yourself.” Experiencing burnout in a stigmatized field exponentially increases depression and anxiety because you are entirely isolated. You can’t even complain about it to your real-life friends without them looking at you like you’re crazy.

We are living the modern equivalent of the early video game developers—the pioneers who worked 100-hour crunch weeks until they developed stress ulcers and PTSD, while the mainstream called their life’s work a “waste of time.” We are like the first wave of anime fans in the 80s and 90s, who were clinically branded by society as socially inept deviants.

Those pioneers built billion-dollar industries. But the early adopters paid for it with their sanity.

The Data Validates the Graveyard

Even if you look at the more “acceptable” mainstream digital spaces, the burnout numbers are catastrophic. When you take these baseline statistics and apply them to a field as volatile and misunderstood as ours, the graveyard makes perfect sense:

  • According to a Q1 2026 report by the Creator Economy Research Institute, 62% of full-time digital creators report severe burnout from relentless demands.
  • A 2025 Billion Dollar Boy study found that 52% have experienced career burnout, and a massive 47% considered leaving their industry entirely.
  • A recent Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health article highlighted a 2025 Lupiani Insights study showing a unique mental health crisis driven by financial pressure, performance obsession, constant toxicity, and deep isolation.

Bad Actors and Dead Discords

I am a part of a lot of Discord servers, and a vast majority of them are just dead. In the ones that are still breathing, maybe 10% of the members remain active. I’m even getting word that the mods of these servers are throwing in the towel.

On top of the social stigma and the algorithmic exhaustion, you have to deal with the baseline human shit. People lying, stealing, cheating, and looking out exclusively for themselves. People backtracking to save face.

And then there are the grifters. The bad actors who see a misunderstood field not as a calling, but as an untapped market of vulnerable people. They come in, pull some elaborate con, look out only for themselves, and burn out god-knows-how-many good folks in the process. You spend half your energy just doing damage control for the messes they leave behind.

Like any place, some people are good, some are bad. For some, this community is the only companionship they’ve ever had due to bad luck. Others? They are alone because they are genuinely awful people.

Welcome to Year Two

As I look down the path of my second year doing this, I have to ask: Who will be left? Who will sell out and pull up the ladder next?

So, to all the new folks taking a look around right now—take a mental snapshot. The people you see right now? Most of them won’t be here in a few months.

Maybe you won’t be either. No one is immune. But for those of us still here, still posting about the stuff we solved months ago just to keep the lights on... we keep going.

Try not to leave a husk.

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