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Despite the length and effort of this video,
this is not an attempt at creating a magnum

00:00:04.350 --> 00:00:08.840
opus. Far from it, it is a cathartic mess
designed to cap off my first year of Youtube

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while also indirectly and incompletely chronicling
my experience with platforms, attention economies,

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and the desire to be recognized in my works.
It is, largely, an effort of practical explanation

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mired in anecdote, to which I provide a smaller
companion, more expressly telling My Youtube

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Story and sharing my feelings on the state
of things.

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This will be a journey, from a made-up website
to places monetizing creativity to a ridiculous

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cryptocurrency project, into the past- and
a glance to the future.

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It is, despite this, still an essay with a
thesis:

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The monetization of creativity, though a means
of nominally empowering creators, will forever

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be intrinsically hostile to creativity, so
long as it is an incentive to

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Produce.

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We’ll be discussing the twofold path of
monetization: one, the advertisers who are

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drawn in, and two, the payout for content
creation and how creation becomes…production.

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Some sites have one, some sites have both—
though it’s rare to see the payout without

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ads, we do have one example. The focus will,
at first, largely be on that latter part–

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payout– demonstrated through a few models
of how sites have implemented payout and the

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subsequent cultural ripple.

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Sites or apps changing their layout and design
approach can massively impact culture and

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we just kind of accept that. Think of Instagram
and the change from being a place where people

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once only posted wordless photos to how it’s…basically
tiktok now.

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Generally, apps have expanded functionality,
or indeed, chased the market of other successful

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apps by adding features meant to turn their
platform into an alternative– again, instagram

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(and youtube) trying to be tiktok.
But there’s a lingering question of if people

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would even *want* to use instagram or youtube
to…do a tiktok, if creators weren’t directly

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incentivized to create there. For a bit on
how those incentives work, there’s a video

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by Swell Entertainment which I’ll link below.
Indeed, incentives will be a lingering theme

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of this video.

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Generally, the point is that things…change,
and one of the biggest sources of change is,

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inevitably, monetization and the culture it
brings.

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How about we used a made-up example to chart
the general trajectory of online content spaces…

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For fun, let’s just make up a site.

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We’ll call it… Embler. [apologies if there’s
already a cheap tech startup called this]

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Embler is a picture hosting social media site.
On Embler, people are able to post almost

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whatever they want provided it doesn’t break
laws. The site was originally intended as

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a place to post stunning vistas or cottagecore
home vibes (fe backgrounds). Sure, some users

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would post an image of some text but it didn’t
change the vibe much and was usually some

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live laugh love type junk.
Eventually comments were enabled and a bit

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of conversation started in the comment sections,
treating them like threads, sometimes irrespective

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of the actual pic.

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After update 1.7, called Binding internally,
the site featured text posts without the image

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element.

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Shortly after, this became the dominant way
users interacted with the platform, going

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from an image posting board to sort of an…
Ur-Forum, and people took to it well enough.

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Eventually this change allowed for more interactivity
between users and a degree of…personality

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to come out from the formerly wordless space.

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With that, people start amassing followers
around their personalities and commentary

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more than just how nice their DSLR photos
looked. Sure, some people mourned the vibe

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change (Camus) but generally people liked
having a place to post more of themselves,

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even if it is angery poetry (Camus mask).
People are largely posting for the sake of

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sharing their feelings or communicating with
friends, but some people have started to find

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reward in being recognized in an online space,
and really dive into the idea of growing followerbases.

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Now by this point, there have been ads on
the site for a while, but it’s not intrusive.

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Or, no more intrusive than on other sites.

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Eventually, the site gets big and profitable
enough that– to encourage growth of the

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platform and “give back”-- Embler starts
a program to pay their largest contributors.

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The change is…subtle, at first. People just
post what they always did, and indeed they

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don’t meet the threshold for pay anyway.
But big accounts can now make it “their

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job” without having to worry about outside
sponsors which were…tolerated at most by

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the site administration.
The fact that people *can* make it their job

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becomes aspirational, even.That said, not
everyone on the platform jumps at the opportunity

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to earn, and the dichotomy of posters and
lurkers is still there. There will always

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be lurkers (lowen?).
But eventually the tone of content shifts.

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People are now posting things with calls to
action baked in.

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Advertisers have made it clear that a nebulous
range of content is unwanted, even when it

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doesn’t break site rules.
An entire subculture once only full of aspirant

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14 year olds, develops around the question
of “how to get big”.

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Content is made with the express purpose of
pretending to hold a definitive answer, the

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only true answer, to that question.
In the end, creativity becomes a job option.

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For some, it’s incredibly lucrative, for
others, supplemental advertising is part of

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their content, and for some there’s external
platforms to help. These factors tether content

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to routine, and so begins the phenomena of
monthly content waves.

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With the advent of Embler becoming a “job”
comes a marked shift in quality of content,

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and with a shift in quality comes a shift
in expectations.

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Casual amateurism becomes near derided.

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Some big posters are even allowed to bend
rules, so long as advertisers don’t personally

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step in or, as the case often becomes, get
goaded into stepping in.

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It becomes clear that some people start flooding
the site with content that, by just barely

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skirting the line of several rules but breaking
none of them, are producing cash grab content,

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farming engagement, things like that. It starts
to become a problem to the point of affecting

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the site ecosystem.
The way the site filters content starts changing

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under the apparent idea of providing a better
user experience, but to safeguard from bad

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actors, the mechanisms of the site are kept
intentionally obtuse to such a degree that

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no one person, neither working on the site,
working for the site, or posting on the site,

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could explain how it works.
This goes smoothly until eventually some users

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start ironically worshiping the mechanism
that filters posts. As with all ironic things

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on the internet, given a digital generation,
i.e. the length of one full rotation of an

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American High School student body, around
4 years, the irony is lost on the new site

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members, and they begin worshiping in earnest.
This turns out to be the way to summon a dead

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god named Gargalon or something who proceeds
to vanish as suddenly as he arrived, signaling

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the End of Days.

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Wait what was the metaphor again?

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Okay let’s go with a different approach.

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I’m just gonna go through some sites I have
personal experience with and less focus on

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how they transformed across years, so much
as how their culture is informed by the monetization.

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Less before-and-after, more… case studies.

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There’s this site called Medium. It’s
basically youtube for sapiosexuals. It’s

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like “oh I don’t watch tv I read” for
the internet. Like a blog. It’s a blog.

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Okay, being less facetious, it’s a platform
founded by one of the co-founders of Twitter

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Evan Williams–originally intended to be
longer twitter. I suppose, at that time, the

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name was conceived to be a declaration of
post length.The design has since pivoted to

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Williams’ other area of expertise, blogging.

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It is now a place for blogs and air quotes
“journalism” without having to make a

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website or understand wordpress. It’s a
hosting platform.

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By the nature of how blogs have been monetized
for almost their whole existence, it’s a

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little hard to say whether the monetization
of Medium is an innovation or tradition, really,

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but there’s a bit of what I’ll call hybridization
going on. The appeal, and how the site markets

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itself, is as a place where one can earn from
sharing their thoughts.

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This is how its structured:

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Medium has a whole host of categories and
a tag system for designating how articles

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get sorted by “genre” so far, nothing
special. Now there are two types of articles:

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normal and premium, with premium denoting
a paywall.

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If one pays for premium membership they can
get past this individually selected paywall

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as many times as they want. Without membership,
you get to pass the wall five times a month.

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Three enmeshed things make Medium interesting
for our purpose: the ad-free nature, the way

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people pay in, and the way people get paid.

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But first things first, why does Medium exist?

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The history isn’t very long and I won’t
go in that deep. Essentially Williams tried

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to make the first idea and it didn’t go
super well, because “twitter but more words”

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just means a feed of facebook rants. From
there a pivot was made to article style posts,

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ostensibly reinventing the blog space, and
then proudly standing by that reinvention,

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with an intended mission to save blogging
from oncoming irrelevance. After that, monetization

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for creators in the form of the paywall came
up in around 2017, pivoting the content to

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a sort of… each man his own New York Times
op-ed writer, dogshit takes optional.

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What needs to be considered is that Medium
exists to pay people. Let me put it this way.

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Writers existed before Medium. Youtubers didn’t
exist before Youtube. Yes, people made videos

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prior to youtube, but first and foremost the
point of youtube originally was ease of hosting,

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which led to a new type of platform.
In part, Medium has that angle too: it is

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a platform for articles, no need to learn
how to use Wordpress or make your own website,

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SPEAKING OF MAKING YOUR OWN WEBSITE, nobody
sponsors me. but I bet you thought of someone,

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because you’re on youtube and I said “making
your own website.” Kinda scary isn’t it.

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The new generation of corporate jingles being
etched in your brain.

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Uhh. I hope several people didn’t just click
away trying to find where the ad ends, cause

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there isn’t one…
Medium’s main value and primary goal is

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in being a place where writers can monetize
their content. It is, in effect, democratizing

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not access to writing, but access to deploying
a paywall. That paywall is the hybrid element,

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taking blogs and merging them with a tactic
borrowed from traditional media outlets, themselves

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archaically positioned on the modern internet.

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With that in mind, let’s talk about paying
in, and paying out.

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Hmm. Okay well the old link to how payout
works and the site premise is gone, and the

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new one just says “A portion of your membership
will directly support the writers and thinkers

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you read the most” with no elaboration.
From my memory this is how it worked…at

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least at some point: For a monthly or upfront
fee, users get to circumvent the paywall.

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A portion of the money collected from said
fee is put into a creator fund, kind of like

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how shorts work on youtube, if you’re familiar.
Then, the pay is portioned out each month

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according to not views, not visits, but how
many likes, called kudos, an article gets

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*from paying members*
In effect, this means the free-to-read visitors

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using up one of their 5 freebies cannot contribute
to payout in any manner beyond the psychological.

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The way it was explained, again to my memory,
was that paying members were essentially assigning

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a portion of their pay-in to an article for
every kudos they gave it. It must be noted

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here that readers can give up to 50 kudos
to a single article. There is no finite pool

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of kudos to give out in a month. They’re
not like casino chips with a static value.

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The worth of a kudos is relative to the amount
of them divvied out. This allows for some

00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:18.180
manner of granular-satisfaction spending.
In theory, if I have a membership and I give

00:11:18.180 --> 00:11:23.930
one article a single kudo and no other articles
any, that article’s writer will get my whole

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prize share. If I give one article 50 and
another 50, they’re both splitting it evenly.

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If I give 20 articles 50 kudos, the split
is, again, even.

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My suspicion is that many medium subscribers
are medium contributors. In one sense, this

00:11:38.380 --> 00:11:43.120
makes perfect sense, people who are on the
platform will consume on platform. It’s

00:11:43.120 --> 00:11:48.389
a generalized hobby space in the way Youtube
is, but with a narrower reach. As such, the

00:11:48.389 --> 00:11:53.209
platform is inhabited proportionally, by a
larger host of consumers who are themselves

00:11:53.209 --> 00:11:54.670
creators.

00:11:54.670 --> 00:11:58.839
If my suspicion is right, it would go pretty
far towards explaining the nature of content

00:11:58.839 --> 00:11:59.839
on the platform:

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A culture exists on the site of writing articles–
of course behind the paywall– geared solely

00:12:04.230 --> 00:12:09.260
to be advice on how to “make it” on the
platform. As we’ll see later, this is not

00:12:09.260 --> 00:12:14.570
an uncommon dynamic. The more generalized
content has its own similar vibe.

00:12:14.570 --> 00:12:18.899
In theory, the content of the site could have
taken on any shape, but instead there’s

00:12:18.899 --> 00:12:24.120
a looming productivity cult.
It may just be my experience, subscribed as

00:12:24.120 --> 00:12:29.170
I was to the tags of “writing” and “freelancing”
among the others that were “non-work interests”,

00:12:29.170 --> 00:12:33.751
but the majority of articles put in front
of me were paywalled guides to success. Going

00:12:33.751 --> 00:12:37.959
on the site incognito, the suggestions are
still productivity geared.

00:12:37.959 --> 00:12:42.269
Here’s another question: when does one decide
to put up the wall?

00:12:42.269 --> 00:12:45.800
When people have something important to say,
there’s arguments in either direction for

00:12:45.800 --> 00:12:50.600
if they ought paywall it. Shouldn’t people
earn for their time and effort? Say my story

00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:55.199
about an important issue everyone should know
about goes viral, shouldn’t I get something

00:12:55.199 --> 00:13:01.010
for my trouble? And besides, the paywall has
five free uses a month, it’s not *really*

00:13:01.010 --> 00:13:03.420
blocking anyone from seeing my critical information…right?

00:13:03.420 --> 00:13:08.040
There’s a lot to be said, and indeed likely
a lot of ink spilled about the effects of

00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:12.769
digital journalism colliding with a need to
keep the lights on, or profit. For an example

00:13:12.769 --> 00:13:16.779
of this, I merely cite the way some articles
with information pertinent to things like

00:13:16.779 --> 00:13:22.580
elections or the global pandemic were paywalled
by big journalism sites. But is that not fair?

00:13:22.580 --> 00:13:27.770
Was creating the article not labor? How else
do we cover the cost of producing the article,

00:13:27.770 --> 00:13:32.720
of doing the research, of hosting the information?
Well, as some of you might already be aware,

00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:36.860
that argument has some holes, biggest of which
being that running a for-profit newspaper,

00:13:36.860 --> 00:13:41.980
or even running one at-loss is not always
altruistic.

00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:47.520
Medium at certain points has paid famous people
to post on their platform, behind the paywall,

00:13:47.520 --> 00:13:49.410
another tactic that will return.

00:13:49.410 --> 00:13:55.050
The core reason to be on Medium *is* that
possible paywall, that angle of payout, and

00:13:55.050 --> 00:14:00.430
it’s no more altruistic of Medium to “create
the opportunity” than anything the Gig economy

00:14:00.430 --> 00:14:01.430
promises.

00:14:01.430 --> 00:14:06.250
As far as the cultural impact goes, note that
there is genuine content on Medium, but there’s

00:14:06.250 --> 00:14:12.180
also the scars of incentivizing a particular
culture, of clickbait headlines, of churning

00:14:12.180 --> 00:14:17.940
out content, of feigned empowerment. The paywall
isn’t a “pay people what their worth!”

00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:21.140
initiative, it’s an earnings scheme.

00:14:21.140 --> 00:14:26.810
But what if there was a much worse monetization
scheme for writing articles? I mean, sure

00:14:26.810 --> 00:14:31.170
it’s a bit hard to imagine, but like…
what if we combined two radically awful ideas,

00:14:31.170 --> 00:14:36.190
like say the unusable Fandom wikis but for
regular wikipedia content and cryptocurrency

00:14:36.190 --> 00:14:39.610
Web 3.0 decentralization fantasies.

00:14:39.610 --> 00:14:43.670
Well we don’t need to imagine, cause it
was real and I was personally involved.

00:14:44.769 --> 00:14:50.620
I simply cannot begin to tell you how excited
I am to have an excuse to share this story.

00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:55.430
Okay so back in like 2017 I was working in
a bar and a coworker of mine who was a relatively

00:14:55.430 --> 00:15:00.399
early adopter of Cryptocurrency—he’d been
at it for years and, again this was 2017–

00:15:00.399 --> 00:15:06.279
told me about this new platform that was doing
a writing contest with a cash payout. Kinda.

00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:12.080
The platform was planned to be, and explained
to me as “decentralized wikipedia” which…we’ll

00:15:12.080 --> 00:15:16.910
come back to shortly. The contest was to write
the first wiki articles for the platform and

00:15:16.910 --> 00:15:21.820
the top three articles got a prize, paid in
Ethereum, a then mid-sized competitor to Bitcoin

00:15:21.820 --> 00:15:25.320
but not as entrenched in the crypto space
as it is now.

00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:29.079
For the curious this isn’t about to become
a cryptocurrency rant, though I probably do

00:15:29.079 --> 00:15:33.889
have one in me. It is, however, important
to understand the culture this site was designed

00:15:33.889 --> 00:15:38.600
in and around. I’m not gonna go too deep
into that here, and while I would suggest

00:15:38.600 --> 00:15:43.130
Dan Olson’s Line Goes Up to get a sense
of it all, the videos is hours long and you’d

00:15:43.130 --> 00:15:46.829
forget to come back here. Also chances are
you’ve already seen it.

00:15:46.829 --> 00:15:51.709
My friend was very “in” on the idea of
the platform, called Lunyr, and planned to

00:15:51.709 --> 00:15:56.600
buy the token— which mind you is like buying
stock in a company, particularly an initial

00:15:56.600 --> 00:16:02.170
public offering– not like buying a digital
currency in this case. He fully believed in

00:16:02.170 --> 00:16:08.589
this company and their plan. I was…skeptical,
but I mean, maybe there was something to it,

00:16:08.589 --> 00:16:12.350
so I sent something in and was part of the
community for a little while.

00:16:12.350 --> 00:16:16.661
So what was the plan?
Well, the short version is, as I said, a decentralized

00:16:16.661 --> 00:16:21.620
wikipedia. But, wikipedia famously doesn’t
make money unless it’s doing that fun little

00:16:21.620 --> 00:16:27.399
guilt trip donation drive at the top. Lunyr
wanted to have ads. In fact, that was a selling

00:16:27.399 --> 00:16:31.920
point, because Lunyr itself and investors
weren’t the only ones poised to make money.

00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:36.940
They wanted to offer an aggressive meritocratic
earning opportunity with their platform. Articles

00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:41.060
would get ad revenue for clicks. And, I know
I’ve implied this already, (or outright

00:16:41.060 --> 00:16:46.079
said it) but these articles are meant to be
wikipedia style articles, not recipe blogs

00:16:46.079 --> 00:16:51.200
or news articles or whatever. But the idea
is also to write an article that rakes in

00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:52.610
views. Hmm.

00:16:52.610 --> 00:16:56.410
So the goal becomes writing the best article,
winning the marketplace of ideas, and getting

00:16:56.410 --> 00:17:00.579
the most views. There’s a lot wrong with
how this model shakes out and I’m sure some

00:17:00.579 --> 00:17:06.089
of it feels immediately apparent. For one,
topics. Writing the article on some obscure

00:17:06.089 --> 00:17:10.900
Irish poet from the 18th century might be
a non-competitive space, but it’s also not

00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:15.050
likely to get many clicks, the incentive to
write about things that aren’t already common

00:17:15.050 --> 00:17:19.280
knowledge isn’t really there. And as for
making sure articles are written well and

00:17:19.280 --> 00:17:23.589
not just made up unsourced nonsense, well,
we’ll get more into it later, but for now

00:17:23.589 --> 00:17:29.380
just know that there were intended to be self-deputized
subject experts who vetted things.

00:17:29.380 --> 00:17:33.799
The incentive to write these things at all
is dependent on pay. That’s the short version.

00:17:33.799 --> 00:17:38.640
The monetary incentive made this immediately
an untenable trainwreck.

00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:41.940
And people… uhh
Didn’t seem to get what the whole site was

00:17:41.940 --> 00:17:43.710
even meant to be.

00:17:43.710 --> 00:17:47.679
This really is at least half-tangential but
it’s too funny to not mention.

00:17:47.679 --> 00:17:53.809
Wiki-style articles. That’s the intent,
yeah. Easy to understand, even if the “decentralized”

00:17:53.809 --> 00:17:58.291
lingo flies over your head, even if the connection
to the blockchain stuff makes no sense, the

00:17:58.291 --> 00:18:01.270
“wikipedia” part should still click.

00:18:01.270 --> 00:18:05.020
The submissions they got, however, and I know
this from seeing what articles came up on

00:18:05.020 --> 00:18:10.990
day one, were more like… bad Medium posts.
One I saw and distinctly remember was “Why

00:18:10.990 --> 00:18:16.419
do women date jerks?” which, after “review”
was requested to be reformatted to sound more

00:18:16.419 --> 00:18:21.250
like an academic article and renamed itself
to “the jerkboy theory”...

00:18:21.250 --> 00:18:24.670
Continuing that trend, lots of the content
on the site was what you might expect from

00:18:24.670 --> 00:18:29.850
the culture of the crypto community, even
as far back as 2017. So while that one article

00:18:29.850 --> 00:18:35.060
was basically a retooled rant about how “women
only date assholes”, it was hardly alone.

00:18:35.060 --> 00:18:39.540
There was another filled with Pick up artist
dating tips. And another one I saw was about

00:18:39.540 --> 00:18:44.190
“FEMALE SEXUAL HYPERGAMY”
Almost all the articles I saw were either

00:18:44.190 --> 00:18:49.470
slightly veiled redpill interests or literally
about the crypto community itself, like articles

00:18:49.470 --> 00:18:54.800
about Etherium or coins or whatever.
This is no longer tangential, because it played

00:18:54.800 --> 00:18:59.830
a hefty part in the site’s downfall as well.
The site wanted to replace wikipedia and terrible

00:18:59.830 --> 00:19:04.080
business model aside, it presumed it could
farm out all the content generation to users,

00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:08.430
and that somehow this would produce a rounded
and totalizing pool of information.

00:19:08.430 --> 00:19:13.510
Based on the incentives, on paper, they thought
users would rush to stake writing The Winston

00:19:13.510 --> 00:19:17.510
Churchill article, and that, presumably once
the big known topics were covered, people

00:19:17.510 --> 00:19:22.000
would go for more obscure ones, trying to
claim more and more “real estate” so to

00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:24.490
speak.
My clever idea in all this was that it would

00:19:24.490 --> 00:19:29.750
be very smart to twist articles one writes
to always have an undue amount of hyperlinks

00:19:29.750 --> 00:19:32.059
to other articles you made.

00:19:32.059 --> 00:19:38.280
So, say you wrote the article on WW1, a HUGE
topic. Not only would this be a popular search,

00:19:38.280 --> 00:19:43.240
but it would also provide branches to *tons*
of other topics. So what if you just also

00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:47.750
happened to corner all those topics too, rushing
to fill in every possible hyperlink with an

00:19:47.750 --> 00:19:51.880
article that you made?
That’s going to shape content. And moderation

00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:56.760
was unlikely to target an article for including
superfluous hyperlinks… because….

00:19:56.760 --> 00:19:59.400
Well let’s talk about moderation.

00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:03.419
Moderation was also expected to be farmed
out. Or more accurately, it was meant to be

00:20:03.419 --> 00:20:08.500
self-evident, done by the community, and in
the community’s own interests to moderate.

00:20:08.500 --> 00:20:14.361
Like… some kind of hyper-individuallist
community effort? I dunno, in truth this whole

00:20:14.361 --> 00:20:18.590
thing feels like a case study in how ancap
communities cannot function.

00:20:18.590 --> 00:20:23.040
In terms of moderating for quality there was
only one approach and it had a simply massive

00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:26.880
blindspot.
The quality of articles would be self-correcting

00:20:26.880 --> 00:20:31.600
because the best articles would win in the
marketplace of ideas and get the clicks they

00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:32.600
deserve.

00:20:32.600 --> 00:20:34.790
Okay actually there’s like four blindspots
there…

00:20:34.790 --> 00:20:39.410
Let’s run through that one again. “The
Quality of articles would be self correcting

00:20:39.410 --> 00:20:44.420
because the best articles would win in the
marketplace of ideas and get the clicks they

00:20:44.420 --> 00:20:48.420
deserve.”
Okay, uhh, problem one. I’m not on wikipedia

00:20:48.420 --> 00:20:53.190
sorting articles by number of citations or
how compelling the writing is, I’m there

00:20:53.190 --> 00:20:57.280
trying to learn what the fuck this band everyone
keeps mentioning is all about.

00:20:57.280 --> 00:21:02.980
Two is that they hoped to incentivize touching
up bad articles by “splitting revenue”

00:21:02.980 --> 00:21:09.059
from an article based on edits. Now fundamental
to this, on some level is the blockchain element

00:21:09.059 --> 00:21:12.770
of it…or allegedly that was part of it.
Because in theory there weren’t supposed

00:21:12.770 --> 00:21:18.220
to be edits. Stuff was etched in stone. But
in practice they actually DID do edits to

00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:23.140
pages. I guess their idea was that users would
write wholly distinct new better versions

00:21:23.140 --> 00:21:28.919
of other articles and replace the old one…
acting as market competition, but for info

00:21:28.919 --> 00:21:30.840
on what clouds are.

00:21:30.840 --> 00:21:35.150
But that was highly impractical, so it just
opened up to editing like we saw with the

00:21:35.150 --> 00:21:39.320
Jerkboy theory one. Sure, the old versions
were somewhere on the blockchain, but that

00:21:39.320 --> 00:21:44.500
seems to solve a non-problem. Wikipedia doesn’t
have famous instances of whole articles vanishing

00:21:44.500 --> 00:21:48.760
to censorship. Solving this non-problem just
invented another one.

00:21:48.760 --> 00:21:53.470
Open seasons was declared on articles for
producing needless edits and then having to

00:21:53.470 --> 00:21:57.490
somehow calculate shares of an article’s
ownership. If I write the Winston Churchill

00:21:57.490 --> 00:22:02.390
article and it looks like this and someone
comes by and adds to it making it look like

00:22:02.390 --> 00:22:08.490
this, do I still get a share? Keen eyed viewers
might notice that I’ve literally copy pasted

00:22:08.490 --> 00:22:13.220
wikipedia here, and no, that wasn’t just
to avoid writing a whole fake winston churchill

00:22:13.220 --> 00:22:17.980
article, it’s because this was ANOTHER LITERAL
PROBLEM OF THE SITE.

00:22:17.980 --> 00:22:21.990
Three. People were copypasting things from
wikipedia. The site runners said they didn’t

00:22:21.990 --> 00:22:26.679
like this very much, because they had to pretend
to be better than wikipedia so obviously they

00:22:26.679 --> 00:22:32.110
would curate only the most smart boy, powerful,
intellectual, and thorough userbase. This

00:22:32.110 --> 00:22:36.299
meant that, far less than the charge of plagiarism,
the concern was that Lunyr’s information

00:22:36.299 --> 00:22:42.419
ought to be different somehow. I mean, that’s
in the conceit. Decentralized Wikipedia didn’t

00:22:42.419 --> 00:22:46.900
just mean like… wiki on the blockchain.
If anything, the blockchain obsession and

00:22:46.900 --> 00:22:51.669
the practical site function were wholly divorced.
It meant something to the effect of “Wikipedia

00:22:51.669 --> 00:22:56.510
without meddling from “insert bad thing”
I’d call this Wikipedia for paranoid libertarians,

00:22:56.510 --> 00:23:00.659
but Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia
is already a self-professed libertarian, so

00:23:00.659 --> 00:23:04.659
I don’t think there was some fear of his
“secret totalizing control” or “political

00:23:04.659 --> 00:23:08.490
bias” as motivation for founding Lunyr as
a competitor.

00:23:08.490 --> 00:23:12.490
Now, sidestepping the myriad of problems that
presents in terms of authorial intent and

00:23:12.490 --> 00:23:17.750
historical accuracy and biases and all that,
it’s still a fundamentally absurd issue

00:23:17.750 --> 00:23:22.140
to have. They presumed their userbase would
act in good faith…which you should never

00:23:22.140 --> 00:23:23.560
do on the internet.

00:23:23.560 --> 00:23:27.760
They presumed that the users would prioritize
the viability of the site and incredibly long

00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:33.570
term vision, a deeply long term investment,
instead of embracing the core tenant of crypto–

00:23:33.570 --> 00:23:38.020
fast money. The site runners were so blind
to this reality of their userbase that they

00:23:38.020 --> 00:23:43.460
were genuinely *mad* that the quality of articles
was as shamelessly low as it was. Eventually,

00:23:43.460 --> 00:23:48.510
once the wikipedia copy-paste issue was “handled”
by being made against the rules, people started

00:23:48.510 --> 00:23:52.710
just doing that with articles not in English,
because literally nobody on their skeleton

00:23:52.710 --> 00:23:56.200
crew staff of 3 dudes living in LA knew another
language.

00:23:56.200 --> 00:24:01.080
All this may have you wondering, okay but
what were the actual mechanisms of content

00:24:01.080 --> 00:24:05.179
review? What does leaving it to the people/market
mean?

00:24:05.179 --> 00:24:09.350
The way things passed inspection was that
someone just looked at it, verified it, and

00:24:09.350 --> 00:24:14.750
got a cut of the future proceeds of the article
for being its “quality reviewer.” Now

00:24:14.750 --> 00:24:19.480
uhhhhhhhhhh. The level of faith in the community
on display here makes the “communism only

00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:25.340
works in an ideal world” thing right wingers
say look like the utmost projection. The creators

00:24:25.340 --> 00:24:30.250
of the site left moderation to the community,
with a monetary incentive for sheer volume

00:24:30.250 --> 00:24:34.840
of articles okayed, somehow presuming that
people would take the task seriously instead

00:24:34.840 --> 00:24:40.080
of, AT BEST clearing articles for the sake
of getting in on an easy revenue stream, or

00:24:40.080 --> 00:24:45.210
at worst and most easily manipulable– forming
off-site groups that just circularly approve

00:24:45.210 --> 00:24:47.890
each other’s stuff no matter how dogshit
it is.

00:24:47.890 --> 00:24:50.130
And so we circle back to language.

00:24:50.130 --> 00:24:55.460
Four. Translation. Translations were supposed
to also structure their payout as a pyramid

00:24:55.460 --> 00:24:59.740
scheme. The French article on the decline
of a woman’s value as she got older would

00:24:59.740 --> 00:25:04.500
have to pay a share of its earnings back to
the original English one. In turn, of course,

00:25:04.500 --> 00:25:09.059
this led to people taking the actual articles
that were up, and trying to “stake” foreign

00:25:09.059 --> 00:25:12.210
language versions by running them through
google translate.

00:25:12.210 --> 00:25:15.720
Who cares if it’s bad? People won’t know
that before they click on it, and it’s not

00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:19.799
like entertaining content where people share
it around if it’s good.

00:25:19.799 --> 00:25:24.070
Cumulatively, we end up in a situation where
there’s not really recourse to fix that

00:25:24.070 --> 00:25:31.039
or do quality control. Say I technically wrote
the first article on Alex Jones in Tagalog

00:25:31.039 --> 00:25:35.590
by copy paste translating it. If someone goes
in to fix my article, I still get a share

00:25:35.590 --> 00:25:41.270
of whatever their work amounts to, in perpetuity.
This disincentivizes people from ever improving

00:25:41.270 --> 00:25:46.100
an article until there is literally nothing
left to stake claims on. This competitive

00:25:46.100 --> 00:25:51.760
collaboration was untenable from the start,
the monetization scheme was untenable from

00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:52.760
the start.

00:25:52.760 --> 00:25:57.970
All that aside, the worst hole in the business
model is the premise itself: Why would I go

00:25:57.970 --> 00:26:03.440
to an incomplete website to seek my information,
under the promise that this information is

00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:08.960
“decentralized”-- somehow presuming that
1, wikipedia is centralized, which I guess

00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:14.080
is code for secretly run by Hillary Clinton
or something, and 2, that a platform with

00:26:14.080 --> 00:26:18.500
literal monetary incentives would produce
more objective high quality articles than

00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:23.970
a volunteer system. The concept was that it
was “free from censorship” but when pressed,

00:26:23.970 --> 00:26:28.539
nobody could name an actual censorious thing
about Wikipedia, and given that the articles

00:26:28.539 --> 00:26:32.630
that came out on launch were just like…
bad incel talking points, I can only imagine

00:26:32.630 --> 00:26:34.909
what censorship meant to that community.

00:26:34.909 --> 00:26:38.791
This whole thing was like watching someone
say “Let the free market decide” without

00:26:38.791 --> 00:26:43.020
getting that that’s just an empty platitude,
as the market crowdfunds an initiative to

00:26:43.020 --> 00:26:46.889
have Mr Market Decider himself lowered into
a vat of acid.

00:26:46.889 --> 00:26:50.440
In the end it was a terrible product with
foolish goals, and a contributor-base who

00:26:50.440 --> 00:26:55.720
cared more about monetizing an idea than seeing
that idea flourish… and yet it had enough

00:26:55.720 --> 00:26:59.660
of an earnest streak I can’t exactly call
it a grift.

00:26:59.660 --> 00:27:03.409
That said it also certainly wasn’t free
of the crypto cult culture, of systematic

00:27:03.409 --> 00:27:08.620
aggression towards anyone pointing out a flaw.
A fear of fear poisoned people’s minds.

00:27:08.620 --> 00:27:13.860
The term “Fudding” meaning fear, uncertainty,
doubt, was thrown around at any instance of

00:27:13.860 --> 00:27:18.960
a perceived critique. Naturally, this abject
W for Free Speech enjoyers was not conducive

00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.210
to getting problems noticed or fixed.

00:27:21.210 --> 00:27:25.779
It’s like the toxic positivity of a video
game hype train, but worse cause people think

00:27:25.779 --> 00:27:30.100
it’s gonna make them the next American Billionaire.
I think I said something in the discord one

00:27:30.100 --> 00:27:34.580
time about how there was a bug, and got @’d
by like six people over it.

00:27:34.580 --> 00:27:37.920
By the time I had remembered the site even
existed and further cashed out what I had

00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:43.720
left of whatever paltry amount of their token
I got, they had around 3000 articles up and

00:27:43.720 --> 00:27:49.270
the vast vast majority of them suffered from
these aforementioned problems. The company,

00:27:49.270 --> 00:27:55.110
which may I remind you was literally three
guys in an office, went dark in 2017-2018

00:27:55.110 --> 00:27:59.500
though I wouldn’t say it was a rugpull.
Lunyr’s failure derived from incompetence

00:27:59.500 --> 00:28:01.000
not intent.

00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:05.740
In the end, it’s not exactly concrete proof
of where monetization leads, nor is it free

00:28:05.740 --> 00:28:10.669
from the…cultivated culture of duplicity,
haste, immediate-gratification, and outright

00:28:10.669 --> 00:28:15.390
grifting common to Crypto land. It does, however,
still provide us with an understanding of

00:28:15.390 --> 00:28:20.240
how incentives have to meet with the userbase
intent, and without sufficient control over

00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:25.590
users in other ways, the whole thing collapses.
Further, it’s a strong example of how these

00:28:25.590 --> 00:28:32.059
platforms are reliant on incentivizing communities
to exist and create for them. They needed

00:28:32.059 --> 00:28:36.680
the contest not to drum up interest, or as
a marketing ploy, but to literally get their

00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:41.990
site populated with articles. I mean, what
were all the losers gonna do? *not* post their

00:28:41.990 --> 00:28:45.270
thing right after and try and still score
some cash?

00:28:45.270 --> 00:28:49.620
Can we learn anything from the way this site
functioned? The intrinsic model of a crypto

00:28:49.620 --> 00:28:55.020
climate warps it a fair bit to being more
about early adoption and revolutionary promises.

00:28:55.020 --> 00:28:58.710
So much is predicated on getting in at the
ground floor, that the business model itself

00:28:58.710 --> 00:29:03.380
is hardly applicable to other sites.
That said, the climate of crypto is a window

00:29:03.380 --> 00:29:09.169
into the logical endpoint of a hyper-monetized
internet. Crypto itself exists with the promise

00:29:09.169 --> 00:29:15.140
of monetizing everything. That’s why there’s
projects seeking to like… turn MMO grinds

00:29:15.140 --> 00:29:21.870
into earning potential. NFTs, by design are
not only an art theft scam, but also, remarkably,

00:29:21.870 --> 00:29:28.210
driven by the idea one can monetize *memes*
something we all take as famously having no

00:29:28.210 --> 00:29:29.590
ownership.

00:29:29.590 --> 00:29:34.230
To return to a narrower insight: Lunyr is
a case study of how their incentive structures

00:29:34.230 --> 00:29:39.620
for generating content– or more correctly
prompting user generated content, seeing as

00:29:39.620 --> 00:29:44.960
they didn’t make anything themselves, made
the collapse inevitable irrespective of the

00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:46.730
broader crypto ecosystem.

00:29:46.730 --> 00:29:51.290
From this, we’re set to look at incentives
more narrowly and we’re going to do so on

00:29:51.290 --> 00:29:53.770
a site that literally all of you are acquainted
with.

00:29:54.970 --> 00:29:59.110
With youtube, a journey of sorts began for
me, and while I’m sure it’s got as much

00:29:59.110 --> 00:30:03.560
passing similarity to the journey of others
as it does moments of disconnect, it is my

00:30:03.560 --> 00:30:09.630
window into another intersection of monetization
and a platform, one I had far less of a view

00:30:09.630 --> 00:30:12.270
into when I simply consumed on the platform.
When I started out, it was a lonely thing.

00:30:12.270 --> 00:30:14.049
There was nobody I could really talk to about
“work” struggles. Even when I found spaces

00:30:14.049 --> 00:30:19.270
of creators, it felt more like I was walking
past communities or through their places of

00:30:19.270 --> 00:30:23.210
congregation, on a journey alone, rather than
walking with them.

00:30:23.210 --> 00:30:26.860
I had to walk that Lonesome valley by myself.

00:30:26.860 --> 00:30:31.610
Early on I compiled a list of videos from
various creators seeking to explain the process

00:30:31.610 --> 00:30:36.669
a bit, from Thoughtslime’s two or so tutorials
on what to consider when doing youtube, to

00:30:36.669 --> 00:30:42.250
the odd Q&As of many creators where people
had asked things about The Process– and

00:30:42.250 --> 00:30:47.240
to things less intended for the purpose of
getting people into creation like Big Joel’s

00:30:47.240 --> 00:30:51.840
video on small creators– something that
gave me direction, intended or not, on where

00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:53.269
to go next.

00:30:53.269 --> 00:30:59.720
From there, I gravitated to these “Small
Youtuber” spaces, particularly the discords.

00:30:59.720 --> 00:31:04.900
I’m…alright at being present in online
community spaces, so being in discords wasn’t

00:31:04.900 --> 00:31:10.000
particularly strange to me. What was strange
was the way it kind of reminded me of Lunyr.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.539
Not in that it was a grift or whatever, and
not that everyone there was just hoping to

00:31:13.539 --> 00:31:18.169
make a quick buck…but they were all there
to make *something*.

00:31:18.169 --> 00:31:20.809
They wanted to Make It™

00:31:20.809 --> 00:31:24.640
And that came with its own culture– one
I wouldn’t say translates fully to Youtube

00:31:24.640 --> 00:31:29.809
the platform, but it presents pretty plainly
many concerns the platform plagues its creators

00:31:29.809 --> 00:31:32.559
with.
Brushing aside the army of 14 year old hopefuls

00:31:32.559 --> 00:31:37.250
who join to take no critique themselves while
loudly saying the system is broken because

00:31:37.250 --> 00:31:42.160
their 2 episode minecraft letsplay has been
uploaded for 19 minutes and hasn’t cleared

00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:45.799
a million views…Most people were there to
put in the work in some form.

00:31:45.799 --> 00:31:50.820
I don’t think the space ever got competitive
or included bad faith advice as some form

00:31:50.820 --> 00:31:56.179
of sabotage, it was uplifting, but it’s
uplifting in a “nobody wants to be here”

00:31:56.179 --> 00:32:00.559
kinda way. Less Crab Bucket and more… waiting
to get adopted.

00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:05.149
If adoption required like… ample lifehacks
and eye catching cool hair or something. The

00:32:05.149 --> 00:32:06.480
metaphor is escaping me.

00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:11.610
What I saw there was largely people trying
to workshop things, figure out not just their

00:32:11.610 --> 00:32:16.690
craft, but the algorithm. When I later “graduated”
to the “Partnered Youtube” discord, it

00:32:16.690 --> 00:32:20.660
felt like all the hustle elements of the culture
were cranked up to 11. Now, there’s nothing

00:32:20.660 --> 00:32:24.980
wrong with playing the game, so to speak.
It’s impressive that people are even collaborating

00:32:24.980 --> 00:32:30.279
and sharing how to “make it” on some level.
Honestly, I kinda get why people fall for

00:32:30.279 --> 00:32:34.250
sigma male grindset stuff. Given the way that
youtubers are basically all entrepreneurs,

00:32:34.250 --> 00:32:39.890
you’d think this stuff would be super popular
here. In terms of how one “runs” a youtube,

00:32:39.890 --> 00:32:44.910
you have to put in tons of hours before it
becomes “worth your time” financially.

00:32:44.910 --> 00:32:50.080
It’s very aspirational.
But it isn’t how I hear most anyone in at

00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:54.350
least the parts of youtube I’m on talk about
their channel. It’s something more reserved

00:32:54.350 --> 00:33:00.100
for the people who are, I imagine, yearning
to be stars, thus the… yearning discords.

00:33:00.100 --> 00:33:05.019
There’s a few reasons for why even with
a *left tube* that is very concerned with

00:33:05.019 --> 00:33:11.919
visibility and subsistence, few people fall
into the grindbrain– one of which is gigantic.

00:33:11.919 --> 00:33:17.250
Among the smaller reasons is creativity and
expression. Ugh. Imagine that, creativity

00:33:17.250 --> 00:33:21.639
is reduced to being a small impediment to
hustle, rather than a counterpoint, so grand

00:33:21.639 --> 00:33:26.590
is the large hurdle. The creativity thing
is really easy to explain: People make things

00:33:26.590 --> 00:33:31.990
cause they want to make them. That’s always
going to be contrary to monetary incentive,

00:33:31.990 --> 00:33:36.920
even when they overlap. Passion pervaded even
in those youtuber spaces, even when people

00:33:36.920 --> 00:33:41.539
were also talking about branding or falling
into pits of gamification.

00:33:41.539 --> 00:33:45.610
While I was in the Youtube Discords, I almost
felt like all the advice didn’t apply to

00:33:45.610 --> 00:33:50.409
me. At the time I debated if I was being stubborn
about style, and sometimes I was, which is

00:33:50.409 --> 00:33:56.110
why I can see growth, in retrospect, that
makes me wince, that I didn’t –for example–

00:33:56.110 --> 00:34:15.649
notice my audio was bad. But when I look back
at the space I feel like it genuinely was

00:34:15.649 --> 00:34:20.310
ill-fitting advice for the side of Youtube
I wanted to end up on. Advice about how the

00:34:20.310 --> 00:34:25.520
“first 50 videos are gonna suck” doesn’t
really work for channels at my pace. Advice

00:34:25.520 --> 00:34:31.079
about uploading every four days at the exact
same time doesn’t suit longer form content.

00:34:31.079 --> 00:34:36.210
People still had outlets for creativity, sure,
but the grind took precedence. The goals were

00:34:36.210 --> 00:34:39.310
always reaching numbers, not people.

00:34:39.310 --> 00:34:42.440
As a brief aside:
I don’t mean to sound dismissive, necessarily.

00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:46.490
Maybe there’s some stuff in there we could
all do to learn. Sometimes I worry we might

00:34:46.490 --> 00:34:51.099
over-presume our own suppression and just
stop trying to “play the game” even a

00:34:51.099 --> 00:34:55.099
little. Sometimes I worry there are ways we
are out of touch. And perhaps I should only

00:34:55.099 --> 00:34:59.200
speak for myself here, but sometimes I worry
that we value integrity more than the platform

00:34:59.200 --> 00:35:03.320
allows and aren’t pragmatic with our concessions
in order to reach goals.

00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:05.369
But this video can’t be all worry.

00:35:05.369 --> 00:35:10.431
Another thing those Youtuber spaces operated
on, beyond grind and an…individualist community

00:35:10.431 --> 00:35:16.210
was… some measure of mysticism.
These spaces act as, whether they know it

00:35:16.210 --> 00:35:20.619
or not, cults of appeasement
And their Gospel transcends them, to the whole

00:35:20.619 --> 00:35:24.760
of the site.
The Algorithm is a capricious god to be flattered.

00:35:24.760 --> 00:35:32.750
Guides are made, remade, rituals discussed,
debates formed around the nature of the machine.

00:35:32.750 --> 00:35:38.710
Less passion has gone into divining the cosmological
significance of saints than that of the Algorithm’s

00:35:38.710 --> 00:35:41.580
nature.
The Algorithm is kept obtuse by Youtube as

00:35:41.580 --> 00:35:47.160
a matter of practice, it is in their interest
to avoid the very “gaming” most people

00:35:47.160 --> 00:35:48.840
implicitly seek.

00:35:48.840 --> 00:35:54.130
And in that logic, that which strives to answer
the algorithm, a transformation occurs whereby

00:35:54.130 --> 00:35:59.780
opinions and taste become “best practice”
and a “language” of content creation forms

00:35:59.780 --> 00:36:07.140
that is unintelligible to the viewers of said
content. Said language is expressed in “objective

00:36:07.140 --> 00:36:12.480
quality notes” for thumbnails. Yes, thumbnails
can be bad or lack readability but there’s

00:36:12.480 --> 00:36:17.970
nothing inherent in the human condition to
the memetic prevalence of soyfacing or whatever

00:36:17.970 --> 00:36:23.369
the hell people call the gaping mouth feigned
surprise thing. Yes, arrows are something

00:36:23.369 --> 00:36:27.820
we’re trained to look at, and then follow
with our eyes, but I don’t actually know

00:36:27.820 --> 00:36:30.980
that it makes a video twice as enticing to
see them.

00:36:30.980 --> 00:36:35.579
When Hideo Kojima “predicted memes” or
whatever dorks attribute to him as “the

00:36:35.579 --> 00:36:42.310
point” of the Gene Meme Scene and MGS2,
he didn’t mean wojaks or cat pics, he meant

00:36:42.310 --> 00:36:47.630
the way information is conveyed, the memetic
conditions, stuff like the “language”

00:36:47.630 --> 00:36:48.630
of thumbnails.

00:36:48.630 --> 00:36:55.230
It’s a product of platform culture, regardless
of it it works or is mocked…or both. Clickbait

00:36:55.230 --> 00:37:00.630
is, allegedly discouraged by youtube’s own
rules, but said rules aren't using the colloquial

00:37:00.630 --> 00:37:07.140
definition of “kinda cringy predictable
curiosity fishing” They *Want* you to do

00:37:07.140 --> 00:37:08.140
that.

00:37:08.140 --> 00:37:13.140
No, there’s a slight shift in how they define
rulebreaking clickbait, towards being outright

00:37:13.140 --> 00:37:18.349
deceptive, something where the content inside
doesn’t match up. But how is that determined,

00:37:18.349 --> 00:37:22.630
exactly? If Matthew Patthew doesn’t make
a shocked face in his A-reel, poggin it out

00:37:22.630 --> 00:37:27.540
big mood, is it clickbait? What about tiddy
thumbnails? I don’t think there’s any

00:37:27.540 --> 00:37:32.370
more quantitative evidence that tiddy thumbnails
lead to people clicking off from a video midway

00:37:32.370 --> 00:37:37.250
than your average thumbnail. I don’t imagine
people feel betrayed that there wasn’t bouncy

00:37:37.250 --> 00:37:42.080
bazonga content in the video titled “This
GUY SOLD THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE TWICE”

00:37:42.080 --> 00:37:43.810
Bait might just work.

00:37:43.810 --> 00:37:47.450
But I would be skeptical of anyone who claimed
to know for certain or that they could prove

00:37:47.450 --> 00:37:48.450
it.

00:37:48.450 --> 00:37:53.260
A lack of access to algorithmic knowledge
is supplanted with what is, essentially folk

00:37:53.260 --> 00:37:59.210
practice backed up by loose science. We don’t
know the line between superstition and feature.

00:37:59.210 --> 00:38:03.880
An example you might see on twitter is posting
the link to a video in the replies, not the

00:38:03.880 --> 00:38:08.750
original tweet, because something something
links are suppressed. These folk practices

00:38:08.750 --> 00:38:13.920
are sometimes localized to one community,
and sometimes the product of… self-deputized

00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:17.849
experts whose claim to expertise is a subscriber
count.

00:38:17.849 --> 00:38:24.120
A while ago noted Elon Musk reply guy Mr Beast
gave the advice of making 100 videos before

00:38:24.120 --> 00:38:29.859
being a success. Beyond being a comical example
of falling for a survivorship bias paradigm

00:38:29.859 --> 00:38:35.010
to ask the big youtubers how to get big when
the real answer is “who knows” there’s

00:38:35.010 --> 00:38:39.950
something very funny to how his imprecise
wording led to some guy, or…probably a middle

00:38:39.950 --> 00:38:46.260
schooler, really, in the youtube discord creating
100 videos in an attempt to follow that advice.

00:38:46.260 --> 00:38:50.900
The Kicker here is that many of the people
a step down in the “qualified to give advice”

00:38:50.900 --> 00:38:55.720
sphere are falling for that same bias. Where
Mr Beast himself is just presuming he skilled

00:38:55.720 --> 00:39:01.480
his way to the top, the people looking to
him as a case study have a different blindness.

00:39:01.480 --> 00:39:06.270
The Beast Observers, as I’ll call them,
look at large channels, huge ones, and analyze

00:39:06.270 --> 00:39:11.420
relative success compared to eachother as
though that data is unquestionably transferable.

00:39:11.420 --> 00:39:16.210
“This thumbnail with the pog face got a
million more views than this video doing uhh…ahh

00:39:16.210 --> 00:39:21.260
the home alone face –so better keep poggin”
“this title doesn’t have nouns and it

00:39:21.260 --> 00:39:25.859
did better so we can see that nouns are out”
–these methods of analysis are woefully

00:39:25.859 --> 00:39:31.660
incurious focusing on current success patterns
rather than the *rise* to that level. They

00:39:31.660 --> 00:39:35.410
make economists look like what economists
think they are.

00:39:35.410 --> 00:39:39.520
These “analyses” from looking at huge
channels to understand success presume and

00:39:39.520 --> 00:39:45.050
ignore too much to be objective. They presume
an objective path at all. First and foremost

00:39:45.050 --> 00:39:50.890
on my list of massive blindspots is the unquestioned
assumption in the analysis that from subscriber

00:39:50.890 --> 00:39:55.130
1 to subscriber 1 million the journey has
the same rules barring an exception we’ll

00:39:55.130 --> 00:39:56.130
get to.

00:39:56.130 --> 00:39:59.410
In presenting the “data” how they often
do, there’s a presumption that Mr Beast

00:39:59.410 --> 00:40:04.810
is earning the attention of 111 million views
from scratch each time, that any and everyone

00:40:04.810 --> 00:40:10.630
could be enticed by the ultimate juicy thumbnail.
There is, at once, an urge to understand youtube

00:40:10.630 --> 00:40:14.380
as a predictable machine, despite YouTube
itself having a vested interest in that not

00:40:14.380 --> 00:40:19.080
being the case– and an urge to pretend everyone
can “make it” with the right tactics.

00:40:19.080 --> 00:40:24.000
And while not as stark a zero sum game as
Crypto, that cannot be true. Not only because

00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:30.230
creativity and ideas will always retain a
portion of value, but also because Time –even

00:40:30.230 --> 00:40:36.040
shared across 2.1 billion people– is finite.
The Attention Economy is very real.

00:40:36.040 --> 00:40:39.490
And that’s saying nothing about taste or
preference or language. It’s like pyramid

00:40:39.490 --> 00:40:44.190
scheme exponential growth presumptions all
over again. There is no way to entice the

00:40:44.190 --> 00:40:48.410
whole of the platform. Not every single person
is a potential subscriber.

00:40:48.410 --> 00:40:52.380
Now, that’s not to disparage the actual
success of these deputies. Some of their efforts

00:40:52.380 --> 00:40:57.190
may have been naive, but their results were
very real, subscriber count in at least the

00:40:57.190 --> 00:40:58.900
tens of thousands.

00:40:58.900 --> 00:41:03.280
But the individual practices and beliefs were
not what caught my attention the most in the

00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:07.720
end. The striking part, the thing that formed
the Lonesome Valley, for me, was that these

00:41:07.720 --> 00:41:11.300
were communities built around wanting to exit
said community.

00:41:11.300 --> 00:41:15.520
It was a space designed where everyone in
it wanted to leave as soon as they could,

00:41:15.520 --> 00:41:20.440
seeking self-reliance and independence, to
have their own communities later. It’s another

00:41:20.440 --> 00:41:25.069
“communal” space with individualist aims.
Sure, people could network, but I don’t

00:41:25.069 --> 00:41:29.619
know how much that actually happened. One
channel I discovered from the starter space

00:41:29.619 --> 00:41:32.819
is Shea’s Violin who I’m shoehorning in
here with the hopes some of you will check

00:41:32.819 --> 00:41:38.480
out her channel. Supporting others, community,
is something Youtube does the least to encourage.

00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:42.780
It’s something WE fail to encourage half
the time, even though it’s important and

00:41:42.780 --> 00:41:46.330
effective.
That’s, I suspect, an implicit element of

00:41:46.330 --> 00:41:51.720
collaboration in the space– that people
collaborate in order to have an “excuse”

00:41:51.720 --> 00:41:55.710
to share each-other. I don’t know if that
marks me as paranoid, or if I’m right, but

00:41:55.710 --> 00:41:59.790
I really do get the sense that there’s some
part of it all that’s about having an excuse

00:41:59.790 --> 00:42:04.690
to mention another creator, not as payment
for the service of working together, but to

00:42:04.690 --> 00:42:10.990
work together as a justification for citation,
for name-dropping, for vouching. Building

00:42:10.990 --> 00:42:15.569
eachother up is the main tool we have to weaken
the hold the algorithm has.

00:42:15.569 --> 00:42:20.960
In fact, there’s also a small collective
trying to Kill God right now, called F the

00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:22.109
Algorithm.

00:42:22.109 --> 00:42:26.790
Now you may ask yourself if it’s relevant
that I may have been featured on FtA as their

00:42:26.790 --> 00:42:29.470
monthly nepotism pick once, welllll.

00:42:29.470 --> 00:42:34.900
Really–and I do mean this–the reason I
bring them up is to point at how there is

00:42:34.900 --> 00:42:40.380
concrete organization to circumvent the algorithm
through community support, rather than bow

00:42:40.380 --> 00:42:46.230
to and be subsumed by its vagaries or sliding
back down into a forced sense of individualism,

00:42:46.230 --> 00:42:48.230
back into the Lonesome Valley.

00:42:48.230 --> 00:42:53.470
The reason I bring up these Youtuber spaces
and their counterpoint in F the algorithm,

00:42:53.470 --> 00:42:58.119
despite not being platforms themselves, is
that they demonstrate how Youtube’s monetization

00:42:58.119 --> 00:43:03.660
culture ripples out, how it affects people
even at the most entry of levels, creates

00:43:03.660 --> 00:43:08.000
“languages” of creativity, or…moreso,
production.

00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:14.870
The creativity itself is a casualty to trying
to be “picked up.” Uniformity begets best

00:43:14.870 --> 00:43:21.770
practice, best practice begets uniformity,
so unto us all. In the language of youtube

00:43:21.770 --> 00:43:27.100
an Objectively Good thumbnail can exist. “Objectively
Good Practices” exist.

00:43:27.100 --> 00:43:31.930
Hell, while making this video I legitimately
debated excising the entire Lunyr section

00:43:31.930 --> 00:43:36.559
so I could market it as its own standalone
video, one that could more easily be attached

00:43:36.559 --> 00:43:40.760
to discussions of crypto cringe, more easily
offered as some manner of companion piece

00:43:40.760 --> 00:43:42.380
to Line Goes Up.

00:43:42.380 --> 00:43:46.420
Alternative to making it a punchy standalone
bit, I would feel disingenuous making it the

00:43:46.420 --> 00:43:51.619
center feature of the title or thumbnail for
*this* video. In turn, people won’t know

00:43:51.619 --> 00:43:56.660
to come to this video for a juicy crypto L.
I’ve had to, in that, consider the integrity

00:43:56.660 --> 00:44:02.670
of making an exploration of monetization culture
in one “succinct” video, or tearing out

00:44:02.670 --> 00:44:08.590
a chunk to use as bait on its own. That itself
is the impact of monetization culture.

00:44:08.590 --> 00:44:14.339
In that same vein I debated the near hyperbolic
positions of finding it either supremely tasteless

00:44:14.339 --> 00:44:18.800
or entirely to my point to mention patreon
in this video.

00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:22.940
While I recognize having an algorithm and
monetization culture itself are nominally

00:44:22.940 --> 00:44:28.099
distinct and that all sites have algorithms
(despite what some people think) we don’t

00:44:28.099 --> 00:44:32.460
see the same fretting over algorithmic impact
on other sites unless there’s a flare up

00:44:32.460 --> 00:44:37.690
in consciousness about the presence of an
algorithmic bias, like Facebook or Tiktok

00:44:37.690 --> 00:44:42.740
boosting fringe ideologies.
There’s a reason “Youtube and The Algorithm”

00:44:42.740 --> 00:44:48.500
is a truly endless discussion, rivaling theology.

00:44:50.640 --> 00:44:51.640
I’m so F*cking stressed out from running
my Pet Lizard’s Instagram account, I’m

00:44:51.640 --> 00:44:52.640
about to have A Nervous Breakdown.
I told my therapist…

00:44:52.640 --> 00:44:56.570
She said “well take a break from your pet
lizard’s instagram account”

00:44:56.570 --> 00:45:05.770
I said “I can’t! It’s my sole source
of income!”

00:45:05.770 --> 00:45:07.810
[smoking intensifies]

00:45:07.810 --> 00:45:11.910
When I started doing youtube a year ago, I
didn’t really have a sense of how to compare

00:45:11.910 --> 00:45:17.119
my experience to others, to get my bearings
on when I was doing something right or wrong,

00:45:17.119 --> 00:45:23.359
to find feedback. I craved it, particularly,
because I knew on some level platform success

00:45:23.359 --> 00:45:30.160
was not correlated to quality. There was an
algorithm in the way of meritocracy. Nevertheless,

00:45:30.160 --> 00:45:36.280
I still held, and indeed may never relinquish,
that sense of a looming… Question of Merit.

00:45:36.280 --> 00:45:40.109
At the end of the day, I don’t know how
anyone who makes content on a platform like

00:45:40.109 --> 00:45:46.130
this could even believe in meritocracy. I’m
not exactly pulling from a huge sample size,

00:45:46.130 --> 00:45:50.530
mind you, but just from my own work since
I’ve started, it’s been incredibly obvious

00:45:50.530 --> 00:45:55.990
that Youtube has complete control over my
success on the platform. You may say that’s

00:45:55.990 --> 00:46:00.890
hyperbolic. And maybe it is, but here’s
my perspective on the matter: In a space where

00:46:00.890 --> 00:46:06.570
total appeal, that is, appeal to every single
potential viewer is not my goal, all I can

00:46:06.570 --> 00:46:11.960
do, as a creator, is try to present myself
in ways that either I find appealing, or I

00:46:11.960 --> 00:46:17.051
assume will appeal to an audience.
Those aren’t entirely the same thing, and

00:46:17.051 --> 00:46:21.630
there’s a question raised about displaying
one’s own taste in personality vs appealing

00:46:21.630 --> 00:46:27.980
to people and being a “character” but
that’s a huge branching topic all its own.

00:46:27.980 --> 00:46:32.790
Mirroring that is another branch into what
living under an algorithm is even like, and

00:46:32.790 --> 00:46:37.441
how a subculture of snake oil seminars has
formed in that ecosystem, but I’ll leave

00:46:37.441 --> 00:46:42.140
that exploration to Super Eyepatch Wolf’s
video linked below. There’s little I could

00:46:42.140 --> 00:46:46.690
add to that conversation beyond the glimpse
at the creator discords I already gave.

00:46:46.690 --> 00:46:52.770
For now I want to center on a different element,
the reason for the Algorithm: Audience.

00:46:52.770 --> 00:46:57.539
The audience we’re appealing to is and isn’t
people. Of course, youtube’s algorithm,

00:46:57.539 --> 00:47:01.640
from what we know, really only cares about
marketability and watch time. It promotes

00:47:01.640 --> 00:47:05.950
people who keep people on the platform for
as long as possible, in range of their ads

00:47:05.950 --> 00:47:10.900
for as long as possible. But there’s something
of a tension there. Quality is measured by

00:47:10.900 --> 00:47:16.300
quantity. It’s a framework of: “Let the
free market of the attention economy decide”

00:47:16.300 --> 00:47:21.079
rather than the marketplace of ideas. There’s
a lot of implicit assumptions about the value

00:47:21.079 --> 00:47:26.369
of a video in the valuing of watch time.
While it would be easy, nay, expected for

00:47:26.369 --> 00:47:31.520
me to say this is all bad, this is ultimately
the quirk that has led to the relative success

00:47:31.520 --> 00:47:36.431
of the Video Essay Genre in a world of tiks
and toks. And credit where it’s due, the

00:47:36.431 --> 00:47:40.849
reason I keep to this medium, both in terms
of consumption and production are because

00:47:40.849 --> 00:47:47.100
it is *the best* way to find and be part of
thoughtful, topical, and radical conversations.

00:47:47.100 --> 00:47:50.740
Imagine telling literally anyone in the year
2000 that there would be a video hosting site

00:47:50.740 --> 00:47:55.119
where people make a living not just giving
quirky skit-laden rants about “[popular

00:47:55.119 --> 00:48:00.180
thing]” but in-depth analysis of global
economic conditions. Imagine telling someone

00:48:00.180 --> 00:48:05.550
that even in Early Youtube days. You’d sound
more out of touch than early Lunyr adopters,

00:48:05.550 --> 00:48:07.880
except for the whole part about being wrong.

00:48:07.880 --> 00:48:12.760
But remember. Just as Quality is measured
by Quantity here, viability is measured by

00:48:12.760 --> 00:48:17.550
someone…or something, that doesn’t even
watch the videos.

00:48:17.550 --> 00:48:21.830
James Stephanie Sterling of The Jimquisition
has– I promise I’m going somewhere with

00:48:21.830 --> 00:48:27.420
this–, in the past, raised the point that
game players are not consumers so much as

00:48:27.420 --> 00:48:32.720
cattle when it comes to how very large publishers
work their business models. The customers

00:48:32.720 --> 00:48:37.780
are shareholders who are, in turn, catered
to with large presentations not showcasing

00:48:37.780 --> 00:48:43.339
new and exciting games, but revenue streams
and monetization models. That’s why despite

00:48:43.339 --> 00:48:48.210
being remarkably unpopular, something very
few people really wanted in the games they

00:48:48.210 --> 00:48:53.710
played, NFTs sort of manifested in a manufactured
consent kind of way and were just offered

00:48:53.710 --> 00:48:58.960
as inevitable exciting upcoming features,
with the guise that players had demanded them.

00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:03.859
It was a new revenue stream, and it indeed
had been demanded by customers, but those

00:49:03.859 --> 00:49:06.150
customers weren’t the players.

00:49:06.150 --> 00:49:12.869
And so unto Youtube and platforms like it.
Advertisers are the customers, buying ad space.

00:49:12.869 --> 00:49:18.750
Creators aren’t creating content, as far
as youtube cares, they’re creating ad space.

00:49:18.750 --> 00:49:24.510
Content consumers, in turn, are less customers
to be appealed to as they are the responsibility

00:49:24.510 --> 00:49:31.500
of a creator to cultivate. I am but a free-range
cow growing its own grass. There’s not even

00:49:31.500 --> 00:49:34.270
an effective illusion of hierarchy here..

00:49:34.270 --> 00:49:38.240
And, mind you, youtube doesn’t pay creators,
technically.

00:49:38.240 --> 00:49:42.059
Let’s compare this model to two typical
service style jobs in the US:

00:49:42.059 --> 00:49:47.220
A cafe job works like this: a worker puts
together x drinks an hour each worth some

00:49:47.220 --> 00:49:51.940
small cost in materials and sells them. Profit
for the business comes from the difference

00:49:51.940 --> 00:49:56.869
between the income represented by how much
the drink sells for and expense in the form

00:49:56.869 --> 00:50:02.099
of materials and labor cost. Basic stuff.
A bartender is the same thing, except we have

00:50:02.099 --> 00:50:07.329
to change the model for expense. There’s
no labor cost. In a sense, because the bartender

00:50:07.329 --> 00:50:11.390
earns from the goodwill of patrons through
tips alone, as a worker, they are, from a

00:50:11.390 --> 00:50:16.140
twisted perspective, renting the bar and its
stock from the owner in order to put on a

00:50:16.140 --> 00:50:21.680
show of work. The cost of doing their work
is simply everything they made from drinks.

00:50:21.680 --> 00:50:26.490
They may not bring their own tools.
Youtube is somewhere between this. It both

00:50:26.490 --> 00:50:32.040
seeks the charity of patrons, and gives a
cut of ads. We effectively rent the platform

00:50:32.040 --> 00:50:36.700
by paying half our earnings. In that way,
pay is based on performance without pretending

00:50:36.700 --> 00:50:41.590
to be a commission model. You’re paid what
you “earn” in that you are not paid if

00:50:41.590 --> 00:50:46.980
you earn them nothing. But at least you owe
no rent for the space.

00:50:46.980 --> 00:50:50.910
Now imagine if a bartender’s boss, instead
of just scheduling for good or bad shifts,

00:50:50.910 --> 00:50:56.420
had a lever they could pull to invite people
to the bar and more or less invent a “good/busy”

00:50:56.420 --> 00:51:01.710
night whenever. Now imagine the bartender
never knows when it’s gonna happen, if ever,

00:51:01.710 --> 00:51:06.700
and granted, no promises are made, but there’s
always the idea. Instead of the normal system

00:51:06.700 --> 00:51:12.150
of taking a slow tuesday to earn a good friday,
we are constantly working Sunday, with no

00:51:12.150 --> 00:51:14.230
idea if the crowd is coming.

00:51:14.230 --> 00:51:19.089
And it doesn’t seem to be based on quality
of work, expediency, contentedness of guests,

00:51:19.089 --> 00:51:23.890
just quantity of drinks drunk. But there’s
hints everywhere that maybe the lever gets

00:51:23.890 --> 00:51:27.470
pulled based on what outfit the bartender
wears and what drink they’ve got listed

00:51:27.470 --> 00:51:30.480
on their sandwich board outside.
More than anything, there’s a pervading

00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:34.390
mood that the boss might hate your music taste
and just hasn’t told you yet, even though

00:51:34.390 --> 00:51:38.020
you still use the default bar playlist and
radio safe edits.

00:51:38.020 --> 00:51:39.099
That’s youtube.

00:51:39.099 --> 00:51:42.930
To anyone who has spent more than one angry
headline pondering what censorship truly is

00:51:42.930 --> 00:51:46.451
in the corporate age, it is no surprise that
the dictates of content are not the First

00:51:46.451 --> 00:51:50.290
Amendment or “cancel culture” or anything
beanie boy would decry, they’re…corporations.

00:51:50.290 --> 00:51:55.540
I almost want to go on a whole tangent about
the massive sides of the human experience

00:51:55.540 --> 00:52:00.210
that are left out of discussion on platforms
because of this angle, but I don’t want

00:52:00.210 --> 00:52:04.059
to risk demonetizing this video that’s also
already approaching an untenable length. For

00:52:04.059 --> 00:52:08.450
just a singular example, look at what creators
like Evie Lupine have to go through to talk

00:52:08.450 --> 00:52:12.670
about their content, the hoops being jumped
through, and the eternal feeling of being

00:52:12.670 --> 00:52:17.420
“unsafe” from it all suddenly vanishing,
of getting hit by the ban bat that’s so

00:52:17.420 --> 00:52:21.190
inconsistent and malleable it might as well
be a pool noodle.

00:52:21.190 --> 00:52:26.680
Much, very much has been said on this topic
before. It exemplifies the negative current,

00:52:26.680 --> 00:52:31.420
an impact of monetization culture, just as
much as bait content, just as much as memetic

00:52:31.420 --> 00:52:36.160
language. The key takeaway from a space like
YouTube is that its monetization, the way

00:52:36.160 --> 00:52:42.020
it has the potential to be a job has shifted
the incentives for making content. To Corporate

00:52:42.020 --> 00:52:46.299
Youtube, the ideal would be that nobody even
looks at or thinks about their analytics,

00:52:46.299 --> 00:52:51.710
“just, just create some things, make stuff,
fill the space,” that’s their ideal. We

00:52:51.710 --> 00:52:56.060
shouldn’t even think of the fact the algorithm
is there, just let it do its magic

00:52:56.060 --> 00:53:01.530
Instead, they’ve created a space where entire
channels find success in trying to talk people

00:53:01.530 --> 00:53:03.390
through navigating the algorithm.

00:53:03.390 --> 00:53:08.059
There’s a paradox to those channels too,
which I only note here because I love a good

00:53:08.059 --> 00:53:10.940
paradox.
Say my channel is expressly dedicated to teaching

00:53:10.940 --> 00:53:16.499
people about the algorithm. Subscribe for
more hot tips like these! Okay, now, the audience

00:53:16.499 --> 00:53:21.420
is only going to be youtube hopefuls. But
how does one get that ball rolling? Who would

00:53:21.420 --> 00:53:25.670
listen to some guy claiming to have Cracked
the Code™ on the algorithm, who himself

00:53:25.670 --> 00:53:31.650
only has like…300 subscribers, you know?
They don’t *make* content that looks remotely

00:53:31.650 --> 00:53:37.220
similar to what any aspirants come to them
for. They aren’t like you or any of the

00:53:37.220 --> 00:53:42.359
hopefuls. Using themselves as an example of
what to do is absurd, because their audience

00:53:42.359 --> 00:53:47.579
is remarkably desperate, by design. I don’t
say this to knock them, but to simply call

00:53:47.579 --> 00:53:50.710
attention to the way authority for these claims
works.

00:53:50.710 --> 00:53:54.559
I watched a few hours of content from these
kinds of channels to shore up my thoughts

00:53:54.559 --> 00:53:59.050
for this section and it wasn’t very worth
it, at least for the sake of this video’s

00:53:59.050 --> 00:54:03.261
content. In terms of the advice they had,
I learned what I’ve always known, which

00:54:03.261 --> 00:54:08.000
is that youtube is unsuited for “rapid pivots”
as I appear to do on my channel, and that

00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:14.180
youtube deeply prioritizes growing within
niches over reaching into many niches. Which

00:54:14.180 --> 00:54:19.809
makes sense. The reason larger channels, even
in LeftTube Land can do pivots is because

00:54:19.809 --> 00:54:23.840
with their personality in effect becoming
their own niche they are, effectively, too

00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:27.130
big to fail.
By every tip and bit of advice they give,

00:54:27.130 --> 00:54:32.220
Hbomberguy should be an abject failure channel,
and yet he’s managed to “crack the code”

00:54:32.220 --> 00:54:37.000
in an entirely different direction. It’s
the kind of thing they, in salvaging authority,

00:54:37.000 --> 00:54:41.750
would incredulously laugh off as “It shouldn’t
work but it does” like a poker player who

00:54:41.750 --> 00:54:43.109
failed to call a bluff.

00:54:43.109 --> 00:54:48.680
Regarding the content of the gurus:
The advice is usually genuine, sometimes sound,

00:54:48.680 --> 00:54:52.760
and always more subjective than they can admit.
One added feature of it all is that they often

00:54:52.760 --> 00:54:58.130
want to play up how much youtube is “constantly
evolving” so that they can remake old guides.

00:54:58.130 --> 00:54:59.319
It’s a business.

00:54:59.319 --> 00:55:03.960
They’re a monetized channel that makes its
money in ways that I can seldom call outright

00:55:03.960 --> 00:55:07.809
predatory, despite its intrinsically desperate
audience. Some of these channels are also

00:55:07.809 --> 00:55:12.170
the only place I’ve seen discussions of
what I can only call…content creator self

00:55:12.170 --> 00:55:17.201
care? Things like reminders of one’s own
worth, that this is a job, that it’s not

00:55:17.201 --> 00:55:23.410
a reflection of self worth, that Youtube hasn’t
exactly done you any favors. It’s almost…radical

00:55:23.410 --> 00:55:27.069
to see that in spaces so dedicated to grind.

00:55:27.069 --> 00:55:32.490
My point is that there is a, perhaps unexpected,
kindness in these guide spaces sometimes,

00:55:32.490 --> 00:55:38.160
it’s not raw grift. But that gets washed
out by where the brunt of content positions

00:55:38.160 --> 00:55:39.160
itself.

00:55:39.160 --> 00:55:44.380
The odd but entirely predictable prevalence
of videos claiming to be a guide to the…exact

00:55:44.380 --> 00:55:49.589
minimum requirements for monetization paints
its own picture. This stuff is exclusively

00:55:49.589 --> 00:55:54.910
a product of the monetization culture. Without
the culture, yes, people would still desire

00:55:54.910 --> 00:56:00.750
to be viewed, but I think folk practice would
outstrip guides. This stuff is pure business.

00:56:00.750 --> 00:56:05.460
It’s mysticism. It’s content that would
be entirely meaningless without other youtubers

00:56:05.460 --> 00:56:11.230
and self-imagined “soon-to-be” youtubers
to consume it. It’s bait and confidence,

00:56:11.230 --> 00:56:13.430
but that’s business.

00:56:13.430 --> 00:56:17.349
Looking back at it all, I want to say “Oh
Brave New World” to this whole monetized

00:56:17.349 --> 00:56:22.520
platform thing, this world of creativity being
a job, but the truth is… our expression

00:56:22.520 --> 00:56:26.430
has always been for sale.

00:56:26.430 --> 00:56:30.450
The monetization of content has always kind
of been there, but in a more implicit and

00:56:30.450 --> 00:56:34.359
insidious way. Don’t worry this isn’t
about to pivot into some lecture about the

00:56:34.359 --> 00:56:38.540
patronage of Early Modern painters or something.
Also, before this point I’ve contained the

00:56:38.540 --> 00:56:45.410
conversation to sites focused on…well, “creators”
figures intended to be the key content generators.

00:56:45.410 --> 00:56:51.010
But I want to expand our perception of what
“content” is and, in turn, who does “content

00:56:51.010 --> 00:56:52.010
generation.”

00:56:52.010 --> 00:56:55.780
We’re sticking to the internet, and going
back to 1994.

00:56:55.780 --> 00:57:00.040
Note that there is a lot going on in this
essay to come, and I won’t unpack even most

00:57:00.040 --> 00:57:05.349
of it. I look to it here, for our purposes
as a cultural artifact, one that illuminates

00:57:05.349 --> 00:57:08.539
how innate these issues are to the internet.
_______________________________________

00:57:08.539 --> 00:57:14.211
it is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace
is some kind of island of the blessed where

00:57:14.211 --> 00:57:17.900
people are free to indulge and express their
Individuality.

00:57:17.900 --> 00:57:23.059
some people write about cyberspace as though
it were a 60′s utopia. in reality, this

00:57:23.059 --> 00:57:29.440
is not true. major online services, like comp-u-serv
and america online, regular[ly] guide and

00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:34.970
censor discourse. even some allegedly free-wheeling
(albeit politically correct) boards like the

00:57:34.970 --> 00:57:39.559
WELL censor discourse. the difference is only
a matter of the method and degree.

00:57:39.559 --> 00:57:46.039
i have seen many people spill their guts on-line,
and i did so myself until, at last, i began

00:57:46.039 --> 00:57:51.640
to see that i had commodified myself. commodification
means that you turn something into a product

00:57:51.640 --> 00:57:57.099
which has a money-value. in the nineteenth
century, commodities were made in factories,

00:57:57.099 --> 00:58:02.950
which karl marx called “the means of production.”
capitalists were people who owned the means

00:58:02.950 --> 00:58:06.670
of production, and the commodities were made
by workers who were mostly exploited.

00:58:06.670 --> 00:58:11.359
i created my interior thoughts as a means
of production for the corporation that owned

00:58:11.359 --> 00:58:15.800
the board i was posting to, and that commodity
was being sold to other commodity/consumer

00:58:15.800 --> 00:58:22.190
entities as entertainment. that means that
i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived

00:58:22.190 --> 00:58:27.150
no profit from the sale of my soul…
proponents of so-called cyber-communities

00:58:27.150 --> 00:58:31.940
rarely emphasize the economic, business-mind
nature of the community: many cyber-communities

00:58:31.940 --> 00:58:38.049
are businesses that rely upon the commodification
of human interaction. they market their businesses

00:58:38.049 --> 00:58:44.089
by appeal to hysterical identification and
fetishism no more or less than the corporations

00:58:44.089 --> 00:58:46.930
that brought us the two hundred dollar athletic
shoe.

00:58:46.930 --> 00:58:53.890
people can talk about cyberspace as a Utopian
community only because it is literature, and

00:58:53.890 --> 00:58:58.579
therefore subject to editorial revision. [Prior]
events plus another where a woman’s death

00:58:58.579 --> 00:59:03.760
was choreographed as spectacle online, made
me think about what electronic community was,

00:59:03.760 --> 00:59:09.059
and how it probably really did not exist,
except like i said, as a kind of market for

00:59:09.059 --> 00:59:13.640
the consumption of sign-value.

00:59:14.789 --> 00:59:19.079
The full essay is linked below. It’s interesting
and briefly touches many things that are…

00:59:19.079 --> 00:59:23.660
outside the scope of our discussion. I do
not intend to do a disservice to the questions

00:59:23.660 --> 00:59:28.470
it has for diversity, feminism, greenwashing,
any of that, by not including them. I recommend

00:59:28.470 --> 00:59:32.079
it in future, and may even cite it again someday.

00:59:32.079 --> 00:59:36.780
I won’t spiral all of this into talking
about the failed liberatory promise of techno-futurism

00:59:36.780 --> 00:59:41.740
and the internet, but I can’t help feeling
like with the communal internet, we are looking

00:59:41.740 --> 00:59:46.400
at a revolution betrayed. Perhaps that too
is for another day.

00:59:46.400 --> 00:59:51.359
From Pandora’s Vox, we see that questions
of commodity, of production have been here

00:59:51.359 --> 00:59:56.869
longer than, I would wager, half of today’s
prolific internet users have even been alive.

00:59:56.869 --> 01:00:02.700
In a sense, crypto is an attempted modern
solution to this now age-old problem. It is

01:00:02.700 --> 01:00:08.650
a solution that required the intensification
of the problem in the process of solving it.

01:00:08.650 --> 01:00:14.130
Crypto looked at how this manufacture of content
for the Owners of the Internet in 1994 could

01:00:14.130 --> 01:00:20.720
be solved by simply placing the power of monetization
in the hands of creators, of manufacturers.

01:00:20.720 --> 01:00:25.140
With that vision set, their eyes widened at
the potential of making every single facet

01:00:25.140 --> 01:00:31.119
of digital existence an earning opportunity,
of effectively seeing all things as production,

01:00:31.119 --> 01:00:35.680
without ever speaking in terms of labor. They
have blurred the meaning of being “paid

01:00:35.680 --> 01:00:40.300
for one’s time” imagining the entirety
of digital existence as transactional, which

01:00:40.300 --> 01:00:45.200
is, in some sense, like viewing every meal
in one’s life by a dollar to calorie ratio.

01:00:45.200 --> 01:00:50.230
It’s practical to a point of misery, mathematical
to the point of inhumanity.

01:00:50.230 --> 01:00:54.750
The execution of that ideal was far from successful
and, in turn, more or less created monetary

01:00:54.750 --> 01:00:59.980
schemes we’ve always had. Most of digital
monetization as a practice, from 1994 to now,

01:00:59.980 --> 01:01:05.789
has used some manner of democratization or
empowerment as its rallying cry, giving YOU

01:01:05.789 --> 01:01:11.020
the Creators a slice of the pie, finally.
But from Medium’s deployable walls to crypto’s

01:01:11.020 --> 01:01:15.329
feudal structures, to Youtube’s kingmaking
ghost in the machine, we’ve gotten nowhere

01:01:15.329 --> 01:01:16.660
fast.

01:01:16.660 --> 01:01:20.789
Tangential to this, there’s also a means
of monetizing our interaction not as a creative

01:01:20.789 --> 01:01:25.430
energy, but as a malicious little monsters.
To that, there’s a video by SK the Crusader

01:01:25.430 --> 01:01:30.880
that goes into the Main Character phenomena,
which has been with us since Humdog’s time.

01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:36.710
Ultimately, this is not a perfect and totalizing
view of the past, but it is a prescient relic.

01:01:36.710 --> 01:01:43.630
In it, we see a disdain for imagined utopia,
a critique, contempt, thus for the evangelizing

01:01:43.630 --> 01:01:49.210
utopians… who denied the monetization was
a danger. It hearkens to the cryptospace near

01:01:49.210 --> 01:01:58.980
two decades early. But it also reminds me
of someone and somewhere else.

01:01:58.980 --> 01:02:04.210
Okay okay, no I can’t find a way to pretend
Runescape is a platform, even if it does have

01:02:04.210 --> 01:02:06.450
one hell of a shitposting community.

01:02:06.450 --> 01:02:10.890
We’re returning to the present day with
Twitter, a place I never expected would become

01:02:10.890 --> 01:02:12.470
part of my job.

01:02:12.470 --> 01:02:16.950
Twitter is a bit of an odd addition to this
mix because it’s inherently opposed to monetization,

01:02:16.950 --> 01:02:21.589
and not just in a “how do we even do it”
kind of way like Vine was.

01:02:21.589 --> 01:02:26.109
I… I can’t believe I’m saying this but
maybe more sites need to be like twitter.

01:02:26.109 --> 01:02:27.510
Or like it was.

01:02:27.510 --> 01:02:32.510
I won’t go too deep into the evolving story
of Twitter’s…descent, both in that it

01:02:32.510 --> 01:02:37.140
is ongoing, and in that it’s covered ground,
but here’s the shortest bit for the blissfully

01:02:37.140 --> 01:02:38.380
logged out:

01:02:38.380 --> 01:02:43.049
In a fundamental misunderstanding of how Verification
is even given its value, Musk opted to turn

01:02:43.049 --> 01:02:49.070
it into a mix of paid status symbol, a membership
system, and a soft…inverse paywall. There

01:02:49.070 --> 01:02:54.020
are supposed algorithmic benefits to having
the verification, though nothing has materialized

01:02:54.020 --> 01:02:58.760
as of yet. If we know anything from exploring
Youtube, it’s that preferential algorithm

01:02:58.760 --> 01:03:02.980
treatment is a dream for many.
Following a slew of impersonation gags that

01:03:02.980 --> 01:03:08.320
cost advertisers collective billions in market
cap value of their stock, and delighted the

01:03:08.320 --> 01:03:13.520
entire internet, all for $8, there are now
allegedly plans to make company and government

01:03:13.520 --> 01:03:18.119
specific verification. The whole thing has
been like watching someone walk backwards

01:03:18.119 --> 01:03:19.869
in a spiral.

01:03:19.869 --> 01:03:24.349
Inexplicably we have ended up with Musk being
a hands-on moderator like this is some dingy

01:03:24.349 --> 01:03:28.150
DnD forum in 1994, or a contemporary crypto
scam.

01:03:28.150 --> 01:03:32.779
There has, for weeks now, been talk about
abandoning the platform. But there’s an

01:03:32.779 --> 01:03:36.420
important part of that which hasn’t exactly
been hashed out.

01:03:36.420 --> 01:03:41.720
The reason “where do we go now” is an
unanswerable question is because all the options,

01:03:41.720 --> 01:03:47.090
frankly, suck. Those of us on twitter know
we are on an imperfect platform. And all the

01:03:47.090 --> 01:03:51.231
other ones are no better. People talking about
Hive bring up that it’s “owned by an ableist

01:03:51.231 --> 01:03:56.101
and a trump supporter” as though that isn’t
the case with 4/5ths of the venture capital

01:03:56.101 --> 01:04:00.000
funded tech landscape.
Like seriously, good luck finding a site that

01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:03.130
isn’t owned by an ethically compromised
billionaire.

01:04:03.130 --> 01:04:08.100
My personal solution is that we all just colonize
academia.edu and set up accounts, shitposting

01:04:08.100 --> 01:04:11.369
in faux-essay, or critical response format.

01:04:11.369 --> 01:04:15.079
“Sir,
I have reviewed your recent post with regards

01:04:15.079 --> 01:04:22.200
to the claim that Stalin “would have been
an e-boy” with intense frustration. It is

01:04:22.200 --> 01:04:28.390
clear to me you lack either the seriousness
or the vigor to make it in this discipline.

01:04:28.390 --> 01:04:32.460
Clearly, Bukharin was the one with e-boy energy.”

01:04:32.460 --> 01:04:38.980
Now, realistically twitter is no stranger
to jokes and hyperbole about leaving the “hellsite”

01:04:38.980 --> 01:04:43.549
forever, but I want to, for a moment, take
quick stock of what stands to be lost with

01:04:43.549 --> 01:04:47.650
Twitter, because I think it’s dawning on
people that this sucks for a reason.

01:04:47.650 --> 01:04:51.510
Twitter is very helpful and effective for
activists and outreach programs.

01:04:51.510 --> 01:04:55.930
Much has been said about the efficacy of organization
and dissemination of information during the

01:04:55.930 --> 01:04:57.530
Floyd protests.

01:04:57.530 --> 01:05:01.930
For an even older example, think of the role
social media took in the Arab Spring, you

01:05:01.930 --> 01:05:06.210
may likely know more about the presence Twitter
had in that historical moment than the current

01:05:06.210 --> 01:05:09.450
state of a single country for whom it was
historical.

01:05:09.450 --> 01:05:14.390
But those things are practical. They’re
important, but not the focus of this discussion.

01:05:14.390 --> 01:05:18.460
I won’t go into every detail of twitter’s
culture, as shitpositng is more universal

01:05:18.460 --> 01:05:23.369
than the site, but I will explain what features
I think make it both a useful tool, a place

01:05:23.369 --> 01:05:28.270
of communities, and in some ways, resistant
to advertisers and…until now, cataclysmic

01:05:28.270 --> 01:05:29.380
levels of monetization.

01:05:29.380 --> 01:05:34.650
Twitter’s features allow for relatively
easy circulation of content, but also curation

01:05:34.650 --> 01:05:39.010
of one’s own feed. Where places like Tiktok
just blast you with the next thing in a row

01:05:39.010 --> 01:05:43.480
and it can be like Russian Roulette for transphobia,
twitter is more about following people than

01:05:43.480 --> 01:05:48.599
implicit ideas. There is an algorithm, to
be sure, but ad-spaces are noted when they’re

01:05:48.599 --> 01:05:52.779
present, and other than the occasional slot
dedicated to outright promotion or “based

01:05:52.779 --> 01:05:57.970
on your likes” content, most of the momentum
behind discovery is social networking.

01:05:57.970 --> 01:06:02.260
Corporations know this, which is why there’s
the existence of Brand Twitter, and brands

01:06:02.260 --> 01:06:03.789
trying to go viral.

01:06:03.789 --> 01:06:07.050
Likes and retweets come from individuals,
and while you can’t exactly predict the

01:06:07.050 --> 01:06:10.829
extent of what a mutual might like, which
could mean getting smacked in the face with

01:06:10.829 --> 01:06:15.130
er*tic zootopia art, for the most part it’s
a curated experience.

01:06:15.130 --> 01:06:19.829
The other end of this curation is that muting
and blocking accounts is easy and effective.

01:06:19.829 --> 01:06:24.930
You can block advertisers, no questions asked.
It’s so mundane a significant feature I’m

01:06:24.930 --> 01:06:28.130
going to repeat it for emphasis: you can block
advertisers.

01:06:28.130 --> 01:06:32.869
That may sound like it would cost twitter
a lot of potential clients, but think of it

01:06:32.869 --> 01:06:38.080
as the obverse of self selection. Advertisers
want their product shown to people who *are*

01:06:38.080 --> 01:06:45.010
interested, and if people who expressly *aren’t*
block them, that’s not a “wasted” impression.

01:06:45.010 --> 01:06:49.720
Some people like to brag about how deranged
their ads get because of their expert curation.

01:06:49.720 --> 01:06:54.140
Ads themselves are not rampant, which makes
me wonder if Musk’s claim that Twitter Blue

01:06:54.140 --> 01:06:58.340
will give you half the ads is either true
and meaningless, or they’re going to also

01:06:58.340 --> 01:07:02.310
crank the ad dial.
…if there’s anyone left who wants to advertise.

01:07:02.310 --> 01:07:07.150
Either way, it is very funny to see a paid
premium service that doesn’t even offer

01:07:07.150 --> 01:07:11.940
an ad-free experience. And again, we had the
means to block ads we didn’t like, which

01:07:11.940 --> 01:07:13.960
could be…cathartic.

01:07:13.960 --> 01:07:19.040
Ads aren’t the nuisance of twitter, bots
are. But bots are blocked just as easily and

01:07:19.040 --> 01:07:24.020
only really swarm to viral posts or ones that
mention keywords. I took a video of finding

01:07:24.020 --> 01:07:28.829
an ad, blocking it, and then scrolling until
I found another one and gave up after 2.5

01:07:28.829 --> 01:07:34.390
minutes because I was tired of speed scrolling.
Note this isn’t emptier than pre-Musk. The

01:07:34.390 --> 01:07:39.890
only difference is that half the ads now are
some Saudi image laundering program.

01:07:39.890 --> 01:07:43.299
Interesting to note here is that Musk’s
paid verification system conflicts directly

01:07:43.299 --> 01:07:47.940
with this “block whoever” system. With
this system of “negative curation” the

01:07:47.940 --> 01:07:51.760
incentive to actually be boosted isn’t all
that strong when you anticipate selective

01:07:51.760 --> 01:07:57.220
blocks. Verified status won’t evade blocking.
And in turn, as intimated when I said this

01:07:57.220 --> 01:08:01.710
became a new badge of shame to wear, people
have already figured out that best practice

01:08:01.710 --> 01:08:06.070
will be to auto-block anyone that has paid
verification, at once getting rid of the clowns

01:08:06.070 --> 01:08:09.530
willing to shell out and nullifying the signal
boost they paid for.

01:08:09.530 --> 01:08:15.320
This, all together, is the impact of monetization,
even in the negative, in resistance. Twitter

01:08:15.320 --> 01:08:20.390
is resistant to monetization because it gives
the users some tools of curation.

01:08:20.390 --> 01:08:24.600
And even without those tools, Twitter doesn’t
have the same capacity towards monetization

01:08:24.600 --> 01:08:28.739
as something like Youtube. Musk, bizarrely,
said in one tweet that he planned to turn

01:08:28.739 --> 01:08:33.969
twitter into a youtube competitor, saying
it would be partly financed by the verified.

01:08:33.969 --> 01:08:38.509
This would ostensibly adopt a somehow worse
form of what Medium does with its content

01:08:38.509 --> 01:08:44.110
with a vastly more significant data footprint.
He wanted to offer room for posting 40 minute

01:08:44.110 --> 01:08:49.960
videos at 1080p. That could be anywhere from
300 mb to 3 gigs an upload. On top of that,

01:08:49.960 --> 01:08:54.359
Twitter does not have what I would call a
navigable system. Tweets are meant to be flung

01:08:54.359 --> 01:08:58.929
into the aether and then forgotten about,
not something as laboriously crafted and “shelf

01:08:58.929 --> 01:09:01.130
stable” as a youtube video.

01:09:01.130 --> 01:09:02.969
Let’s step aside for a second.

01:09:02.969 --> 01:09:08.529
A few months ago Patreon lost a LOT of money
and had to fire a LOT of people over a failed

01:09:08.529 --> 01:09:13.420
attempt to break into tiktok. What Patreon
did was throw a lot money at a few big tiktokers

01:09:13.420 --> 01:09:18.219
and *some* money towards mid sized ones, in
an effort to promote patreon, to get the tikotkers

01:09:18.219 --> 01:09:22.940
to try it out and tell everyone to pay them.
This misstep was colossal.

01:09:22.940 --> 01:09:26.171
For reasons other than this, I was already
convinced that Patreon didn’t understand

01:09:26.171 --> 01:09:30.650
its own platform. But illustrative for our
purpose is how they failed to understand Tiktok.

01:09:30.650 --> 01:09:35.600
They assumed that creation was the same on
there as it would be on youtube, that fandoms,

01:09:35.600 --> 01:09:40.469
followings, support, was the same. They mistakenly
assumed that just because a tiktokker had

01:09:40.469 --> 01:09:45.029
1 million subs and millions of views, it would
be the same as hooking youtube audiences.

01:09:45.029 --> 01:09:48.640
They failed to consider the relative value
people put into short form video content consumed

01:09:48.640 --> 01:09:53.810
in a slurry. Supporting creators from places
like Youtube off-platform leads to the creation

01:09:53.810 --> 01:09:59.530
of things meant to endure– works.Tangible
things. Not necessarily to be viewed as funded

01:09:59.530 --> 01:10:04.130
projects, but at least as something with presence.
There are people who make longer form content

01:10:04.130 --> 01:10:09.360
than shorts for whom patreon would also be
a bad fit, on youtube no less. They also tried

01:10:09.360 --> 01:10:14.460
to get Mr Beast to join patreon which is an
even worse idea and I cannot afford to tangent

01:10:14.460 --> 01:10:17.370
into that.
The point is that they saw that some youtubers

01:10:17.370 --> 01:10:21.969
use patreon and without thinking through the
specific details of who, why, and how, they

01:10:21.969 --> 01:10:25.280
tried to slap that idea onto another video
platform.

01:10:25.280 --> 01:10:30.070
Similarly, Musk failed to consider just how
many people would be willing to pay for twitter.

01:10:30.070 --> 01:10:34.270
Sycophants came out of the woodwork to be
like “it’s just $8” usually ending it

01:10:34.270 --> 01:10:39.300
with the new calling card of the least funny
people on earth, the tilted cry laugh emoji.

01:10:39.300 --> 01:10:43.290
All that to say that Twitter is not in the
hands of someone who understands twitter.

01:10:43.290 --> 01:10:47.510
Musk is redesigning the app around his own
experience with having an abnormally high

01:10:47.510 --> 01:10:51.970
bot following and presuming that’s a shared
experience for all users, he’s presuming

01:10:51.970 --> 01:10:57.600
his experience as the world’s richest man
is normal. He’s listening to a cadre of

01:10:57.600 --> 01:11:03.560
dorks and somehow creating a publicly observable
echo chamber. Twitter is, ostensibly, in the

01:11:03.560 --> 01:11:08.460
hands of those assuring the emperor his clothes
look lovely.

01:11:08.460 --> 01:11:14.500
This leads us to the situation we were always
in, Twitter, our space, is out of our hands.

01:11:14.500 --> 01:11:20.563
I have likely done an imperfect job distinguishing creativity and production.

01:11:20.563 --> 01:11:23.002
To that end, I will
restate and emphasize.

01:11:23.002 --> 01:11:29.136
Creation is jeopardized when it becomes production
on the behalf of an entity like these platforms.

01:11:29.136 --> 01:11:37.770
However, on these platforms we cannot avoid
our creations becoming productions, even when we are, ourselves, unrewarded.

01:11:37.770 --> 01:11:43.409
Digital spaces are not a commons, not freely
owned by us all, though we are what comprises

01:11:43.409 --> 01:11:48.610
them. Without people, there is no platform.
That leads to a separate and, perhaps more

01:11:48.610 --> 01:11:50.179
subliminal theme:

01:11:50.179 --> 01:11:54.420
The way that these sites rely on users as
content creators.

01:11:54.420 --> 01:11:58.020
Simply that.
In part, though not formally a response to

01:11:58.020 --> 01:12:03.719
Line Goes Up, it did inspire this work, in
a perhaps unexpected way. The obvious route

01:12:03.719 --> 01:12:08.420
would be that I had the Lunyr story, but really
it wasn’t the “I too know about crypto

01:12:08.420 --> 01:12:13.860
nonsense” as much as it was that it forced
me to remember those spaces, their culture,

01:12:13.860 --> 01:12:19.400
and in doing so, I reconciled the uncomfortable
overlap with my youtube experience, with discussions

01:12:19.400 --> 01:12:25.250
of individualist communities, aspiration,
“making it.” I remembered that while crypto

01:12:25.250 --> 01:12:31.659
is a creatively bankrupt space, conversations
in Small Youtube were nearly as stark. What

01:12:31.659 --> 01:12:37.239
Lunyr did in having it’s only remotely academic
articles end up being about crypto projects

01:12:37.239 --> 01:12:42.449
feels like what Medium is doing with its articles
on being good at Medium, what part of youtube

01:12:42.449 --> 01:12:44.550
does with its gurus.

01:12:44.550 --> 01:12:49.120
There’s value to understanding how cultures
shift with monetization, and how incentives

01:12:49.120 --> 01:12:54.219
are formed, and how those incentives shape
what gets produced, but the biggest unifier

01:12:54.219 --> 01:12:59.070
here is that we don’t congregate on these
sites because they, the site, provide us with

01:12:59.070 --> 01:13:05.380
content, we congregate to witness and experience
other people. Despite these dual revelations,

01:13:05.380 --> 01:13:10.401
that of the filters and walls monetization
creates and of platform versus people, we

01:13:10.401 --> 01:13:16.810
are not granted some easy actionable control.
We are, thus, bound on both ends, unable to

01:13:16.810 --> 01:13:23.280
control our own output, even as nominally
free agents, and unable to reorganize.

01:13:23.280 --> 01:13:28.179
Efforts such as F the Algorithm, as I mentioned,
attempt to change this. Supporting others

01:13:28.179 --> 01:13:33.310
attempts to change this. But working within
these systems, there will always be that specter

01:13:33.310 --> 01:13:37.659
of monetization, wielding the algorithm like
a scythe.

01:13:37.659 --> 01:13:41.980
This is not my moment to call for revolution
so that I may make art freely without having

01:13:41.980 --> 01:13:47.150
to earn my keep, no, even now in the throes
of some form of passion, I have the clarity

01:13:47.150 --> 01:13:52.840
to see that as hyperbolic. It is more a reminder
that we are creating communities in spaces

01:13:52.840 --> 01:13:59.560
we cannot own, cannot control, cannot take
ownership of. What does the Twitter Purchase

01:13:59.560 --> 01:14:05.330
prove if not that? There is no Promised Land
we might flee to next.

01:14:05.330 --> 01:14:09.580
To end this on a note about the Digital Commons
would appear to get away from my point, but

01:14:09.580 --> 01:14:14.550
in truth these things are interlinked. As
I said, as Humdog expressed for us, these

01:14:14.550 --> 01:14:18.900
problems have been with us far longer than
even the titans of the modern internet in

01:14:18.900 --> 01:14:22.989
Google and Facebook.
We saw the flood wash over the dreams of the

01:14:22.989 --> 01:14:27.970
early tech utopians, and we could not build
upon that land, for laying foundation deep

01:14:27.970 --> 01:14:33.949
into mud, jagged with rubble, required power
we could not have, could not organize. It

01:14:33.949 --> 01:14:38.480
is not the fault or failing of anyone on the
internet today that it is how it is. Companies

01:14:38.480 --> 01:14:44.640
laid new foundations, and we moved onto the
land they owned. The Commons was never an

01:14:44.640 --> 01:14:53.390
option, the root issue, bigger than the whole
of the internet.

01:14:55.489 --> 01:14:59.970
Originally I intended to just cut this video
off. Full stop. I wanted to end on a note

01:14:59.970 --> 01:15:05.120
of dramatic impact but I don’t think it
matters that much. People click off when they

01:15:05.120 --> 01:15:09.870
do and being overly wrought in drama in the
last ten seconds isn’t what makes a video

01:15:09.870 --> 01:15:14.409
“do well”
I’m very very brainpoisoned right now about

01:15:14.409 --> 01:15:20.580
algorithms and success and caught in that
mixed web of like, wanting things to do well,

01:15:20.580 --> 01:15:25.100
naturally, and worrying I’m losing sight
of the distinction between reaching people

01:15:25.100 --> 01:15:29.230
and reaching numbers.
As I said at the start, this video has (or

01:15:29.230 --> 01:15:33.810
will have, depending on schedule) a companion
video that’s fully anecdotal and just exploring

01:15:33.810 --> 01:15:39.450
the last year. It’ll probably also be melodramatic
or sappy.

01:15:39.450 --> 01:15:43.910
Speaking of sappy.
Thanks, like, real, sincere thanks to everyone

01:15:43.910 --> 01:15:49.380
who contributes to the production of these
things, be it voice talent, with Little Hoot

01:15:49.380 --> 01:15:54.690
and Armchair Egyptology, script reads,..letting
me use the lizard breakdown, or patrons.

01:15:54.690 --> 01:16:00.449
..That’s not to say or imply prior thanks
were insincere, but I guess making this has

01:16:00.449 --> 01:16:06.360
made me hyper-aware of support.
Voiced Credits thanks this time go to:

01:16:06.360 --> 01:16:10.199
Chandler Mason*
Étienne Garant*

01:16:10.199 --> 01:16:12.120
Freddy*
Hausum*

01:16:12.120 --> 01:16:14.030
Nic*
Nitesurgeon*

01:16:14.030 --> 01:16:19.060
There’s a few new names here, and sorry
if you came for map game and got smacked with

01:16:19.060 --> 01:16:23.960
this. There will be map game again soon, after
the video in early January where I’m remaking

01:16:23.960 --> 01:16:29.929
my first one. That one doesn’t really have
a negotiable schedule spot if it’s an anniversary.

01:16:29.929 --> 01:16:33.370
But there I go, breaking my rule on promising
things.

01:16:33.370 --> 01:16:35.139
Uhh, bye.