Every few weeks, someone asks us to build a leaderboard. Top 100 fitness creators. Top 50 beauty TikTokers. The argument is that it would drive traffic. It would. We’re still not going to do it.
The CreatorBenchmarks score is calibrated to be useful as a personal verdict. It tells a creator where they sit relative to their cohort and where the gaps are. The moment we rank creators against each other publicly, the same number becomes a status object — and the people who can game it most aggressively rise to the top.
“A leaderboard turns a measurement instrument into a status game.”
We have nothing against rankings. We just don’t want our score to be one. Glassdoor doesn’t rank workers. FICO doesn’t rank borrowers. The most useful verdict surfaces aren’t adversarial — they’re calibrated.
What we’ll ship instead: niche cohort distributions, so a creator can see exactly where in their cohort they sit, with no named neighbors above or below.