One day, our reach is just fine... the next, it's tanked because of some opaque change. Those in power, who have money, have shut down the passageways in an effort to restore the status quo that existed in the 1990s, when a small number of people held control over everything cultural. A time I plainly remember, and which I enjoyed the death of. Well, it's back.
I don't blame the concept of an algorithm for this. Like any tool, it can be used for good or ill; in this case, however, those with the power to create one also have the power to use it selfishly, there being no option for the internet's user. This is what the gatekeepers want: control of what's seen, what gets promoted, what thrives. Those who naively believed the internet would shatter that model, giving creators direct access to audiences without needing permission from a record label, a publisher, a network executive, are discovering that monster doesn't just go away. It has the money and the will to fuck with the system, and it's back.
It's no wonder we're feeling a general apathy to this. As people read this here, and on Patreon's site, the general feeling is going to be, "Oh well, what can we do about it?" The answer to that is nothing. I'm not going to quibble on that point. Anyone who now thinks that there's room for a counter-movement, or that the governments might act (and I hear this nonsense from professional pundits daily), are fooling themselves. It won't be a grassroots movement that changes this, because it wasn't a grassroots movement that created the present situation.
The internet was not "made" by a socially conscious group, and it wasn't made by villainous corporations. It was not asked for on a widespread basis. Even in its first ten or fifteen years, it was utterly overlooked by everyone as a joke, a thing for nerds, a sidequest into wasting time. It was something that just happened — a messy, organic, almost accidental force that emerged out of military research, academic curiosity and hobbyist experimentation.
There is a tendency to relate the internet to the printing press... and that relationship applies. But the same applies to the advent of newspapers, book publishing, radio and television. With things going as they are now, we're not going to have another 50 year gap before the internet is suddenly obliterated and replaced by the next thing... and it has been 35 years already.
What is that upheaval going to be? If you, like me, were around in 1992, what would you have said it was? Most likely, "e-mail." Or the "online imaging." For the average person 30 years ago, what was coming was utterly obscured by the first tiny revelations — which seemed utterly amazing given their tiny scope. 10 years before that, freaking dial-up seemed amazing.
And people thought, well, this is it — this is the big change. But it wasn’t. It was just the first crack in the dam. It was a tiny, clunky version of something that would eventually become so fundamental we don't even think about it anymore. That’s the pattern. The thing that looks revolutionary today isn’t the real revolution — it's just the first primitive version of what’s actually coming.
Here's what's funny. A couple of minutes thought can point to half-a-dozen things that might be that crack. AI is being dismissed so easily, because a couple of companies have rushed into gatekeeping it, but those "gates" are failing all over. Anyone who wants can get around them and break the rules they're setting up. Distributed computing, self-hosted identities, take your pick. It might be some experimental, obscure technology that barely works right now.
But you, Dear Reader, aren't thinking about that. Patreon certainly isn't, because it's business model depends on making its creators into cows in a field, that exist to give the company milk and nothing more, in exchange for the grass we eat: that being you, Reader. None of the aforementioned villains are... they've built their platforms. And having once worked for a platform that was crumbling under the weight of technological development, those platforms are rigid, inflexible monsters. When they go down, they do it all at once. Hell, I don't even use Google any more. I haven't in months.
Everyone right now with money in the game — including, on a miniscule scale, creators — depend on this game not changing. But it is changing, and at a pace that makes Patreon's little survey look like it was made by grade-3 elementary school students.
I have an ex-military friend who plays guitar. He's moving out of town because the particulates here are getting the better of his asthma as he ages, but he's not worried. In addition to being ex-military, he's an electrician and a retired bus driver. And as a musician, he can thrive anywhere. All he needs is a stool in front of a crowd of people and, artistically, he's fine.
If Canada were occupied by a foreign force, I'd cook. I make amazing soup and I can make it by the barrelful, quite literally. I have a 63 gallon recipe in my head right now. Actual creators, not those chasing clicks and algorithms, are flexible. We move easily to what's next.
Corporate types do not. They get eaten by other corporate types, because they're all wolves. No one likes them? Hell, they don't like each other.
The internet came along and I dove in. And did fine. The next thing comes along, I'll be fine. Whatever it is. Meanwhile, all these problems that exist right now with closed doors and deplatforming. It'll all be gone, in a fingersnap.
Don't worry about what those people are doing to you. Take comfort in how you're going to be fine when they're being led up to the guillotine... metaphorically or for real.
Oh, I know... most reading this are going to think I'm indulging in wishful thinking. That is always the reaction of those who are heavily invested in the status quo. They wave their hands, they say, "Oh, nothing real is ever going to change; no matter what the technology is, the big stuff is always going to just go on." After all, we look around and the world sort of looks like 1995. I mean, the walls are still standing, right? 'Course, a lot of those walls don't surround businesses that used to exist and run the world, but hey... that wasn't the rug being pulled out, right? They just failed to adapt. In time.
Strange they don't think about how words like "engagement," "watch-time," "short-form" or "algorithm" would mean nothing whatsoever to an adult in 2005. They'd look at you like you were speaking another language. Because back then, the internet wasn’t engineered the way it is now. It was still organic, still chaotic, still mostly just a playground where people threw things out into the void and saw what stuck. There was still room for people to argue that "this internet thing" ought to be ignored by decent people. Yet those voices, those people... made up of intellectuals, media elites, respected cultural pundits... lost. Their viewpoint, and their relevance, evaporated. Some of them maintain rather pathetic careers on youtube... where they can't get more pageviews that one lone pundit endlessly repeating the same post on how bad Emily in Paris is.
This is what happens. The mass of people shrug. Change is bad. We'd rather not think about it. Look all around. The zeitgeist is filled with a different present-day class of elites and effetes belying the value of digital doubles, deepfake technology, volumetric capture... and poor little chatGPT... yet these things are so plainly the inevitable death of the entire media industry.
Where's the government protection for that? Did the actors and writers really win that strike? Did they make the technology go away? They talk like they did. But it was a truce. It did nothing more than kick the can down the road. And not very far, either. The technology is going to get better. Does anyone with a brain really not understand this? Can it not be that those who are invested in the present have an agenda to say otherwise... and no other real arguments beyond that? They have to pretend this technology is overhyped, that it won't take their jobs, that "true artistry" can't be automated. They have nothing else they can say. I hope they're saving their money.
Patreon paints their problem as TikTok. I think it's a little funny how short-sighted that is. But I suppose, like the folks just discussed, they've got to wave their hand at some enemy.
I knew the day I joined Patreon that there'd be a day I left it. And I will. When the next thing comes.
The shift has been led by Instagram, Twitter and YouTube... but of course TikTok perfected it. But before anyone rushes to suppose that without these villains, everything would have been just fine, I want to stress that there are thousands and thousands of villains in the game, across the board. These are just the villains who did it the most ruthlessly... but the present state was inevitable. We shouldn't doubt this.
The shift has been systemic: but there have been two things that helped perpetrate this state of mind. There are those who say, "the internet was never going to stay free forever"... but this is merely the voice of those who are bent on killing what it brought. The deeper truth is that what we're experienced is a lull, imposed not by the villains, but by the passive forces that let them be and those who can't get the financial support to wreck the status quo.
I haven't much faith in governments or the law... anyone whose worked in a government-run office isn't surprised to find themselves working on computers with black screens and green-lit text, because the system they used in 1992 still hasn't been updated. It is hardly news for any of us that the governments of the world simply failed to act... and when they did, fearful of the strangling of their supportive election capital, they went after the individual on behalf of the corporation, because that is their way. It is easier to make one fat cat happy than to assuage the fears of a million mice.
Inaction, the lack of meaningful resistance, the inherent blindness of those for whom the bread was not buttered, simply did nothing. The glacial pace at which authority moves, being inherently conservative, was not going to get in the way here... and they have happily stood aside as rights we gained through technological means are now being arbitrarily taken away. Emerson said, "For evil to succeed, it is only necessary that good men do nothing." Since the world bureaucrats aren't "good" in any sense of the word, we can argue without difficulty that this is doubly so when tired, selfish, insipid persons do nothing.It's no wonder we're feeling a general apathy to this. As people read this here, and on Patreon's site, the general feeling is going to be, "Oh well, what can we do about it?" The answer to that is nothing. I'm not going to quibble on that point. Anyone who now thinks that there's room for a counter-movement, or that the governments might act (and I hear this nonsense from professional pundits daily), are fooling themselves. It won't be a grassroots movement that changes this, because it wasn't a grassroots movement that created the present situation.
The internet was not "made" by a socially conscious group, and it wasn't made by villainous corporations. It was not asked for on a widespread basis. Even in its first ten or fifteen years, it was utterly overlooked by everyone as a joke, a thing for nerds, a sidequest into wasting time. It was something that just happened — a messy, organic, almost accidental force that emerged out of military research, academic curiosity and hobbyist experimentation.
There is a tendency to relate the internet to the printing press... and that relationship applies. But the same applies to the advent of newspapers, book publishing, radio and television. With things going as they are now, we're not going to have another 50 year gap before the internet is suddenly obliterated and replaced by the next thing... and it has been 35 years already.
What is that upheaval going to be? If you, like me, were around in 1992, what would you have said it was? Most likely, "e-mail." Or the "online imaging." For the average person 30 years ago, what was coming was utterly obscured by the first tiny revelations — which seemed utterly amazing given their tiny scope. 10 years before that, freaking dial-up seemed amazing.
And people thought, well, this is it — this is the big change. But it wasn’t. It was just the first crack in the dam. It was a tiny, clunky version of something that would eventually become so fundamental we don't even think about it anymore. That’s the pattern. The thing that looks revolutionary today isn’t the real revolution — it's just the first primitive version of what’s actually coming.
Here's what's funny. A couple of minutes thought can point to half-a-dozen things that might be that crack. AI is being dismissed so easily, because a couple of companies have rushed into gatekeeping it, but those "gates" are failing all over. Anyone who wants can get around them and break the rules they're setting up. Distributed computing, self-hosted identities, take your pick. It might be some experimental, obscure technology that barely works right now.
But you, Dear Reader, aren't thinking about that. Patreon certainly isn't, because it's business model depends on making its creators into cows in a field, that exist to give the company milk and nothing more, in exchange for the grass we eat: that being you, Reader. None of the aforementioned villains are... they've built their platforms. And having once worked for a platform that was crumbling under the weight of technological development, those platforms are rigid, inflexible monsters. When they go down, they do it all at once. Hell, I don't even use Google any more. I haven't in months.
Everyone right now with money in the game — including, on a miniscule scale, creators — depend on this game not changing. But it is changing, and at a pace that makes Patreon's little survey look like it was made by grade-3 elementary school students.
I have an ex-military friend who plays guitar. He's moving out of town because the particulates here are getting the better of his asthma as he ages, but he's not worried. In addition to being ex-military, he's an electrician and a retired bus driver. And as a musician, he can thrive anywhere. All he needs is a stool in front of a crowd of people and, artistically, he's fine.
If Canada were occupied by a foreign force, I'd cook. I make amazing soup and I can make it by the barrelful, quite literally. I have a 63 gallon recipe in my head right now. Actual creators, not those chasing clicks and algorithms, are flexible. We move easily to what's next.
Corporate types do not. They get eaten by other corporate types, because they're all wolves. No one likes them? Hell, they don't like each other.
The internet came along and I dove in. And did fine. The next thing comes along, I'll be fine. Whatever it is. Meanwhile, all these problems that exist right now with closed doors and deplatforming. It'll all be gone, in a fingersnap.
Don't worry about what those people are doing to you. Take comfort in how you're going to be fine when they're being led up to the guillotine... metaphorically or for real.
Oh, I know... most reading this are going to think I'm indulging in wishful thinking. That is always the reaction of those who are heavily invested in the status quo. They wave their hands, they say, "Oh, nothing real is ever going to change; no matter what the technology is, the big stuff is always going to just go on." After all, we look around and the world sort of looks like 1995. I mean, the walls are still standing, right? 'Course, a lot of those walls don't surround businesses that used to exist and run the world, but hey... that wasn't the rug being pulled out, right? They just failed to adapt. In time.
Strange they don't think about how words like "engagement," "watch-time," "short-form" or "algorithm" would mean nothing whatsoever to an adult in 2005. They'd look at you like you were speaking another language. Because back then, the internet wasn’t engineered the way it is now. It was still organic, still chaotic, still mostly just a playground where people threw things out into the void and saw what stuck. There was still room for people to argue that "this internet thing" ought to be ignored by decent people. Yet those voices, those people... made up of intellectuals, media elites, respected cultural pundits... lost. Their viewpoint, and their relevance, evaporated. Some of them maintain rather pathetic careers on youtube... where they can't get more pageviews that one lone pundit endlessly repeating the same post on how bad Emily in Paris is.
This is what happens. The mass of people shrug. Change is bad. We'd rather not think about it. Look all around. The zeitgeist is filled with a different present-day class of elites and effetes belying the value of digital doubles, deepfake technology, volumetric capture... and poor little chatGPT... yet these things are so plainly the inevitable death of the entire media industry.
Where's the government protection for that? Did the actors and writers really win that strike? Did they make the technology go away? They talk like they did. But it was a truce. It did nothing more than kick the can down the road. And not very far, either. The technology is going to get better. Does anyone with a brain really not understand this? Can it not be that those who are invested in the present have an agenda to say otherwise... and no other real arguments beyond that? They have to pretend this technology is overhyped, that it won't take their jobs, that "true artistry" can't be automated. They have nothing else they can say. I hope they're saving their money.
Patreon paints their problem as TikTok. I think it's a little funny how short-sighted that is. But I suppose, like the folks just discussed, they've got to wave their hand at some enemy.
I knew the day I joined Patreon that there'd be a day I left it. And I will. When the next thing comes.
