Consolidation and Stagnation
So the last article I posted was about web three. In that video, I said, I had an idea about how we might create a broader base of people creating content or get paid for your content because the current system is not working as well-intended.
I've been trying to figure out a solution to that idea. But unfortunately, my solutions have not come easily because a lot of the problems that I'm seeing or the answers that I see don't change depending on the system is overall.
The big issue is that it's just a numbers game. You have too many people creating things, and it almost just comes down to persistence, instead of talking about hoping for some utopian view where the majority of us get paid for the things we want to do. It's more of being persistent, having a niche.
Once you satisfy those two things where you get really good at one thing, you are doing it long enough to have a recurring base of users. That is when you can then explode or grow. And that's like where all the rest of this kind of falls into place.
This thinking was triggered for me by the consolidation of big creative companies. Most recently, we've had Microsoft acquire Activision-Blizzard purchase for $68.7 billion. We also had Sony acquire Bungie, which for me, it's really interesting that these kinds of deals go through.
I think it's telling for the kind of state that much of these industries are in, and that's why I believe we are ready for some shift or pivot from the systems, which means the age of the entire system has matured. And so that means there's ripe for innovation, for new categories or ideas to disrupt these markets.
So that one is good, and two is bad because it makes me worried about where we are in an ideal sense. After all, it shows that people are not risk-taking. They're looking at what's out there and say, okay, that's a safe bet. And they're going to pull their chips in right there.
These giant companies see easy money out there. They're like, let's pull those guys in, and that'll help us from like a portfolio standpoint, but that is big giant corporation thinking that's not small, nimble individual thinking and pushing ideas further. And this is me. This is where I always go with these kinds of things because I'm an individual.
I like to think, where could it possibly go? And what are the downstream effects for consolidation or bureaucracy, I guess, at a high level. Right? Because when you get pulled into a giant company, now you have a whole bunch of other things get in the way. It's similar to the idea of, like, how does guerilla-style warfare beat giant industrial powerhouse.
Because they can move faster and decentralized, they don't need to rely on a giant supply and demand infrastructure and things like that. So they can move and be nimble and react, you know, and provoke and disappear.
That's where like the web three aspects of this come back for me because if that stuff pulls off or prompts, like the promises of it unfold, there is a chance that we would have more people who can make good content or good products that are not beholden to current systems. And that's what makes me excited because instead of relying on all of these systems, We're marketed to us as a meritocratic system saying, Hey, if you make something better than other people or something more entertaining, the other people, you will get to the some, you know, Heights that can still happen. That is very true, but it's very far and few between.
Maybe this is no different from any other period that has changed from one form to another. And you know, the medium is the internet. And before, it was the newspaper or your shows that you didn't live or whatever it is, right? There are so many different things, but it doesn't mean that we can't make a better system that creates more opportunities for more people.
If that is all the case, I think there should be a limit on how big you want to grow, like this idea of infinite growth metrics. So I get it fundamentally, but I also don't understand it from like, just a human perspective, because at least from my perspective as a creator, it, the service is.
He made the individual create things that further my human potential, which hopefully further other people's human potential. So you're always feedback looping, back and forth, and you're putting things out there that help you that hopefully help others, and then vice versa. And it's like this constant tension or pushing forward.
Sure, that helps you go far or grow faster in a shorter amount of time, but B, you become a victim of your success. And I think that's where it's. The pitfall possibly, because if you're someone and I'm just using myself, for example, like, I enjoy the idea of remaining as independent as possible, because if I stay independent, then nobody can dictate how or what I say outside of my values in those that I trust.
This is part of why I feel so strongly about improving these systems. It allows individuals like myself to generate value so that you can continue to do things where you don't have to have external sources of funding because external sources of funding will change how you interact with your audience.
No matter how much you think, it won't. That's why this is such a strong point for me and why I see the consolidations. I get worried because it makes me think, do one day, do you have to become part of a giant media company? You know, if I wanted to take Feeding Curiosity to that level, right?
Would I have to sign a deal, be exclusive? Because part of me also thinks that if you go exclusive, you're sacrificing your overall reach because you're hoping that. The audience we'll follow you to your destination platform.
It's always been part of my goal is to just be shotgunned in as many places as in the world. So that's why I've now transitioned to video because not everyone will meet you and your standard format. If you're just only writing blogs, are written posts, right. So not everyone's going to want to read, so you have to go where people are, you got to do audio, or you got to do a video like this, but again, I'm still not a hundred percent sure. Is this thought just something that mutates and forms every time there's a new technology medium, like the internet, does, or is there a point where we can transcend it?
Now we have this like NFT thing. I mean, it's no different than a monthly membership profile. Instead of using ad sense trafficking to monetize your content, is there a way where you would get like a tiny amount of money from just like a click of likes, or the viewing of your webpage, or like you get paid per engagement?
You could do that stuff in a blockchain so that you get paid, and it's honest, you didn't have to put ads. Like you could still do those things if that was part of your business model. You could still throw in the mid, mid-roll ads like people already do if you're self shows, but you could sacrifice that if that's not your forte.
I think that's where the core of this is for me is like, are there ways to do this that are not. For example, in service of ad models, where you have to subsidize your content and all the effort you put in to make something good, you have to insert the words of another person's product that hopefully gets you paid.
This might be a bad example. The easiest way to put this as is in audio form. Imagine a free book, and you go to a service like audible. But instead of paying for the book, the, in the middle of it, or every, you know, hour or something, there was an ad, and that ad would then be what would constitute the payment of said, a book that feels foreign.
But there is a way that could work or a model for that to work. But I think it shouldn't be that way. You accept the book for what it is. Even if you don't know how much value you're going to get from it. If you hate the book or if you don't even finish it, you've already paid for it.
There are two quotes I want to kind of wrap up with. The first one is from Chris Anderson, who is the founder of Ted. And he has this idea of the long tail, and it kind of is similar to books, but he thinks that, or he predicted the internet would lead to less hit domination, more exploration, individual passions. In 2005, he wrote,
If the twentieth-century entertainment industry was about hits, the twenty-first will be about niches…This is not a fantasy. It is the emerging state of music today."
I found that interesting because it has evolved much more than it has previously or much more than it ever has. We see that play out with how many different niches, like if you go to somewhere like Twitch.
How many different niches are there that have a garnering audience of like 10,000 or more, or even a couple thousand or more that I think says something? And then the other one is kind of on the growth side.
Rather than endless growth, the goal should be to grow as quickly as possible—what technologists call hypergrowth—until the breakpoint is reached. Then stop and reap the benefits of scale alongside stability. (From Breakpoint by Jeff Stibel Amazon Link)
I thought it was telling what I'm trying to get at, and it's, maybe I'm not going for hyper-growth here, but I'm going for growth at Whatever level of development you as a creator wants to hit and then get there. Then figure out how to stabilize your framework so that you can continue to grow at that pace or not even grow, but like stabilize at that pace and then reap all of that benefits. So I'll leave it here.
Where do you think we could implement a better model that makes content creation better for smaller creators? And I'm not saying we have to fix this overnight and say, like, everyone has to make a living wage, which would be awesome. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if you could do that, but I think there is a way you could do this.
That is kind of like UBI (universal, basic income), but you couldn't create a system that allows more people to at least maybe break even for what they make. So the goal is maybe not to go net negative for so many years and burn yourself out on creating things because I think the world is better off; the more people that create in general and your work should allow you at least sustain yourself in the twenty-first century.