Comment by TheRoque
12 days ago
Sounds a bit pessimistic. It has never been that easy to create music, videogames, produce videos, comics, and distribute them. Nowadays basically anyone can do it, so the amount of content available is gigantic. Moreover, alternative ways of getting money have appeared: patreon, kickstarter, various donation websites, partnerships...
On top of that there are still countless communities, free of any monetized algorithm, thanks to forums and things like discord.
So I think that it's more "tenable" than ever, and I don't thing that the cultural situation is worse than it was before, actually I think it's way better. It's just so easy to find a new think to dive into, connect to other hobbyists, discuss it, and for the most motivated, create content.
> Sounds a bit pessimistic.
And legitimately so.
> It has never been that easy to create music, videogames, produce videos, comics, and distribute them. Nowadays basically anyone can do it, so the amount of content available is gigantic.
And they all compete in one giant global marketplace, which often undermines the viability of "local productions."
There's probably some counter-intuitive principle that infinite choice has a homogenizing effect. It's probably because people generally lazy, but historically have lived in environments with more barriers to that laziness that kept it in check (e.g. no one's becoming a solo game playing hikikomori in 1800, because they'd quickly become bored out of their minds). In the past local culture was unavoidable and required no special effort, because of travel and communication barriers. How the travel and communication barriers are gone, which means local culture requires special effort to maintain, and the lazy will hook into the homogenized culture that requires less effort.
> On top of that there are still countless communities, free or any monetized algorithms, thanks to forums and things like discord.
IIRC, forums have been dying off for a decade or more.
> no one's becoming a solo game playing hikikomori in 1800
John Bentinck, fifth Duke of Portland? He had England's biggest ballroom built, and a billiard room with multiple billiard tables, but never threw a party, hated meeting people, and lived underground. He had all the above ground rooms in Welbeck Abbey painted bright pink, with a toilet in the corner of each one. Any workman who acknowledged he existed was dismissed.
I have this occasional daydream of two internets, one global (the one we all know and love), and one local, where you can only see content from within a 10 mile radius.
Like local and long-distance phone calls
> IIRC, forums have been dying off for a decade or more.
And they'll keep "dying off" for many more decades.
The problem with discord is that there is no permanence or visibility to it on the open internet. This is both good and bad. You can't search for problems you are trying to solve unless you are part of that discord server. Communities can get deleted and that's that. On the other hand it is more private and there is a direct connection rather than waiting for people to respond to your post.
The problem is same as it has always been, getting old.
I have got old now and the medium of artistic expression that young people are into is not the same as when I was young.
In 40 years old people will complain no one makes crazy tiktok videos like they use to.
Of course in the moment, no one considers social media videos art. Just like at one point rap was noise, rock music was noise, the electric guitar was noise. William S Burroughs, jazz, blues, on and on back.
Same narrative over and over by old people. "My youth was filled with high art while kids these days like such trash."