It’s wild rewatching iCarly and kind of seeing how they were basically Twitch, Kick and YouTube streamers and content creators before streaming and content creation were even really a thing. The show premiered in 2007; YouTube was around, but it wasn’t really considered a career at the time. Live streaming was basically nonexistent at the time, and even though the show iCarly got millions of views, they didn’t make much. a lot of money on it and occasionally had to get jobs. They were still in a time when the Internet and social media weren’t as big as they are today. And making money off the Internet wasn’t as common as it is today. And even if the iCarly gang were making some money from their show, we don’t know how they would have gotten it since sites like Patreon, Cash App, or Venmo didn’t exist yet. It was the mid-2010s, and the word ‘influencer’ didn’t even exist yet.
iCarly aged pretty well, and it was ahead of its time.
Streamers were definitely a thing back then. The name iCarly is almost certainly a deliberate riff on iJustine who at the time of the show’s premiere was broadcasting her life 24/7 on what was then Justin.tv and who was easily its biggest star.