Comment by onion2k
4 years ago
I want an internet of specialty sites, browsable curations, diversity of offering, freedom of choice, and full of the quirky/unusual.
You can have that. All you need to do is make sure the developers who make those sites get rich. Find the sites and tell your friends about them. Subscribe to their work. Buy their merch. Click on the ads. Pay them. Then everyone else will see that sort of site making bank, and they'll follow along with similar things.
The only reason the web is what it is today is because the money went to the walled gardens and social media sites. To change that, change where the money goes.
Possibly an unpopular opinion but I'd argue that, in the main, the people creating interesting stuff as a sideline never got rich. Maybe it's a side effect of the startup and side-hustle mentality here but I'd argue that maybe discussions about these sorts of things emphasize monetization too much.
Maybe people who see moderate success turn it in to a full time job, and it stops being a side hustle.
Sure. There are best selling authors who started out writing in the evenings. My point though is that it's a very small proportion of those who try who parlay music/fiction writing/video/etc. into even a median household income full-time job (say $50K/year in the US).
Personally I feel like there are a lot of important and opposing conversations about the interaction between authentic creativity and money.
One of the biggest reasons I’m a proponent of Universal Basic Income is that I want creative people to be able to create without having to fall prey to things like cutting out their medium in order to make sure they can eat and have a place to live.
However: we are currently within a capitalist society, and because of that we have to think of how we can financially enable the art and culture that we want to see more of.
This is a deeply interwoven and complex topic, but at the end of the day I just want to see interesting stuff and know that the people creating it are better because of it.
"...To change that, change where the money goes..."
Creative work is currently having its sources of income decimated, from all sides. We should get used to reminiscing.
> Creative work is currently having its sources of income decimated, from all sides. We should get used to reminiscing.
This is just anecdotal but I see a lot of very niche creative people making money that they wouldn't have made before through YouTube, Discord, Patreon, Gumroad etc.
I think the opposite is true, while in the past it was maybe PayPal there's a lot of ways to make money online that's very approachable for everyone.
It's still very hard to actually bridge the gap between putting something out there and getting people to pay for it. All those platforms did was expand the lucky few from .1% to 1% of people trying. A big jump, but few people make enough to cover the costs, much less live on it.
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The niche stuff is definitely happening. As are new ways to monetize; but online only. What is certainly being eroded that cannot be achieved online is live performance. Include in that phrase what you will. But those opportunities are currently almost zero internationally. What the long term effects of this are is hard to predict but human to human emotional contact is imperative to our survival.
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