One of the reasons I’m drawn to moving away from corporate media content platforms and storefronts is that, especially when it comes to music, there’s this never-ending pressure to “make content” as fast as humanly possible, rather than reclaim a natural rhythm to what I do again.
This didn’t start with whatever’s happening to Bandcamp, but that has definitely quickened things a bit.
The irony here is that one, I tend to write music faster than the market can sustain, especially when it comes to compositions, and two, bottlenecking that level of production with enshittification messes with not only my creative process around making music, it also messes with my creative process around writing as well — *and* it messes with my ability to “make content” that looks more like “content” as in actually useful sharing of information, especially around the intersection of arts and technology, in practical, everyday terms.
In other words, corporate media companies, as well as their “Make more content! Make, make, make” pitch men eat my entire lunch, then they want to eat the entire house that I can’t afford, because even my middle class ass can’t realistically sustain that — at least, when things in the wide, wonderful world of creative neofeudalism are this bad. (There’s also the realities of “home ownership” when you’d rather make art for 10+ hours a day, so your perpetually single ass does exactly that — such that, even if you can sustain a mortgage off of your art, the minor repairs tend to not get made, you resent the more major repairs and wonder what the hell you signed up for, your neighbors talk about you and your lack of showering very day and waving as they walk by, walking their dogs or whatever middle class homeowners do these days, such that the local HOA is starting to talk as well — then, a dark, mysterious cloud settles over the neighborhood, and every seventh pet can suddenly not only speak, they keep quoting 1950s era pulp horror dialogues — but I digress), and so on.
The “You’re moving too fast for the market” problem is not a new one — Keith Haring faced much the same problem, for example. It’s just that “content branding experts” love to push this idea that more, and longer, “content” is the only true path to success — but the reason for this is a) rubes who think that they’re going to be the next PewDieDie (or Andrew Huang, or) make very good marks, b) said experts’ actual benefactors, hidden or actual, are advertisers, because what do advertisers love? Longer form content that is effectively worthless or at least, brand-friendly, so they can peddle more ads for longer periods of time on content platforms such as YouTube.
The problem here is that this entire dynamic is toxic to the creative process, let alone coming up with a finished, “ready for the public” piece of art or other creative form of expression. Things just snowball from there.
For example, I’m beginning to realize that the reason I haven’t been writing more is at least partially because everything is moving way too fast. Online life, “content” production (both artistic and functional), rent prices, gentrification of former “subculture-friendly” neighborhoods, the price of health care, food prices — everything. But in terms of making art, the entire process of putting art out somewhere for money, has reached a tipping point in the pressure cooker labeled “make more content” that things are starting to collapse inward.
Further, rather than these platforms and their pitch men admitting this (which they likely never will, until things have already collapsed in some post-early-2000s-Napster music industry implosion, if ever), we are constantly reminded that said toxic dynamic “is for our own good”. When in fact, it’s the opposite.
I don’t even like influencers, the last thing I want to do is become one.
Personally, I need to end that cycle, wherever it might lead. So I am. Stay tuned…
