absolutely wild that so many TV animation productions force hopeful hired to basically become internet celebrities on their own time and dime in order to be hired

Remember, expecting a sizeable internet presence, social notoriety, and popular connections from your prospective hires is basically expecting free labor before even hiring them

i guess this would be less of an issue if you were trying to hire a social media consultant or something but uh. You're trying to hire an artist. What does their skill as an artist have to do with how well they can manipulate algorithms

It's important to hire people who can get along with others and take things like criticism, but you can usually tell if they'll work if you give them an interview.
Their internet fame and connections shouldn't be the thing that precipitates said interview

I am part of this system. I still have never technically gotten a job off of a test--I have gotten all of my jobs through a mix of my work and my connections, and my connections have been 75% to 99% of that.

I hope i can continue to get jobs, even entirely through connections I make, because, uh. I need to eat.
But i will not stop talking about how the whole system is fucked until we manage to somehow unfuck it