Singing for our supper?

(or painting, knitting, whittling, writing, caring...)

This – my first real post here – carries with it a bit of baggage.

All creators know it – that’s why this place is full of newsletters that are barely started then abandoned, or newsletters with a catchy title and a single ‘Coming Soon’ post (dated 7 months ago).

Be somewhat assured, I’m not planning for this one to be one of those ones.

But, regardless of how big someone eventually gets on a platform like this, some little part of anyone who clicks a START WRITING or UPLOAD VIDEO or START SELLING button is thinking: “If I work at this, and make good things, I could make money out of it”. And that gets me thinking about people being rewarded by their craft, and rewarding people for their craft. Essentially, incentives.

See, I’m pretty sure I was going to write this regardless.

I’m lucky to be in a position where I don’t need extra money right now: Not ‘I wouldn’t even notice it’ kind-of lucky; just ‘I don’t need paid subs to pay rent’ kind-of lucky… I just have a, I think, naturally human desire to create a thing.

What each new technology gives us is a wider, more open, space for people to create things into and, with each new communications technology in particular (including the internet), a sightline for a load more people to watch you do it. Before the internet, many silly little hobbies could never have turned into careers but, in our very human way, that also didn’t stop us doing them before the internet. Similar might have been said before TV, radio, print, writing, speech…  

What the reach of the newer internet appears to have done is turn that idea on its head. So, now thousands of people start each day with the question “what can I make money out of?” - and then they land on some silly little hobby. A large bunch of these hobbies end up being garbage things like ‘watch me eat disgustingly’ or ‘I’ll convince people that Elon Musk is a god’ or whatever, because – in spite of the loud voices of market acolytes – creativity is not actually something that necessarily benefits from incentives.

But the core difference between the internet and those earlier communications technologies is not that the internet changed how communication works. It’s just, in the same era, money has also been changing. So now, the money that rewards internet garbage comes from a pool which is increasingly disconnected from the value that money is supposed to represent.

To be clear, it’s not that both the desire to make money, and dumb ideas, didn’t already exist pre-internet; they just weren’t able to operate on such a fluid and expansive spectrum. People still value things that money can buy, but money itself – largely released of the scarcity that previously ensured it was spent on worthwhile things – is no longer propelled by value. We used to conceptually think of money as a technology that would be magnetic for things we needed or wanted more of. But it should be obvious that it no longer works that way - as evidenced by the near-infinite supply of pointless influencers, NFTs and luxury-hacked goods.

We don’t actually need more response videos on YouTube. We certainly don’t need revenge porn, or debt instruments, or the container-ship of garbage the AI is just starting to tip onto us.  

We don’t need another Instagram photo of #ThatWanakaTree.

Much as I like myself, the world probably doesn’t even need a Substack newsletter called “I’m a little teapot” with my ranting in it.

As I write this, I can’t help wondering, how much responsibility for the labour on this platform should be apportioned to the prospect of a little more comfort or luxury or charitable giving, vs just being human? And how should that make us think about things of value?

I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) recently and I’m wondering if it’s just a foregone conclusion in the world we’ve created for ourselves: A world where we finally acknowledge the thing that money has become.

That’s a topic for another day. Stick around.