Abandoned America1/ Today it occurred to me that I am very grateful that the internet has been wonderful for "getting my work out there" but 25 years ago I could have produced 1/10 the work I have now and had a tenured position for it and rested on my laurels. But because content is constant and disposable now the need to create it never stops. And you never "get there", you just keep treading water until you sink beneath it.
2/ It's not that I'm ungrateful for the people who appreciate my work or the fact that I get to share it with them. I am, so much. But we replaced stability and security with internet attention and that doesn't pay bills. It doesn't get you health care. And it doesn't give you any sort of longevity with your work. When you stop posting the already shallow well dries up and you're forgotten. That's what being an Internet Presence is. It's pouring your work and life in a bottomless hole.
3/ Most people are supportive of people posting their merch or Patreon links but at the end of the day that absolutely unreliable income has replaced any semblance of safety for those of us in the arts. And some people hate us for the fact that we have to dance for our dollar while still wanting us to produce for their enjoyment. It's just messed up to think it never ends. You never "get there". You just live to hustle another day until you don't.
4/ There are so many creators struggling and people think if you have a solid follower count that automatically means you have security. It doesn't. If you're out there struggling to get by, whether you have 10 followers or 1,000,000, I see you and feel it too. This isn't the way it should be, and isn't how it always was. There are a lot of great things about the internet but constantly having to put things out there or starve is not one of them. Your work has value beyond that.
5/ The industry of "content creation" doesn't care about you. It doesn't care if you have a safe home or heat or electricity or access to a doctor. It's all about posting things that are interesting for the moment they exist on the cusp of a trend so they can make ad $$ or whatever and then vanish. It's a sick, garbage cycle. Don't confuse the things you need to get by for internet fame, which is nothing. Idk what the alternative is. I haven't found it either.
6/ F*** me, I should've just swallowed my bile and got into NFTs* from the start, regardless of whether they were a scam or not đ
* Look, I hate NFTs. That's not serious. Except I would be a lot better off if I didn't have a conscience then. You don't have to tell me NFTs are bad. If I had no morals I would have stayed on Twitter.
Ali@AbandonedAmerica I used to be a content creator, back when it wasnât called âcontent creationâ. I published a daily webcomic for a few years. If Iâd understood the grind that would involve, maybe I wouldnât have started.
It taught me a lot of lessons that just keep giving (Just work, the ideas will come. Someone will love the things, even the ones you donât. You never know how a skill can become relevant in a completely different context.)
But it also ground me down, and eventually I couldnât do it any more. Still I had in my head that I could reboot it, or do something else with the characters to create content.
Now I do things like stare at a computer screen for six hours to try and work out why subtitles arenât working on a TV system on the other side of the country, and I enjoy my work. I walk away at the end of the day and donât spend my remaining time trying to work out how to feed that beast too.
I had fans & followers, and now I have a small group of friends instead, and I can support other people, and I have no regrets that I spent that time in my life doing that, and no regrets that Iâm not doing it now
@grissallia idk. Maybe that's where I'll wind up. But I feel like giving up on The Thing would kill me. It's what I am.
@AbandonedAmerica thatâs just it, there are folks like you creating wonderful things, who deserve to be supported in those endeavours
@grissallia you too, buddy. I'm sorry you had to go on to other stuff. The world would be better off if it hadn't forced you to.
@grissallia PS and I don't mean that's it's bad that you did. Not at all. But I wish we didn't have to make those decisions.
@AbandonedAmerica oh, it was bad, but it was external factors on top of the grind that just made it untenable.
I couldnât try and make jokes when I was working for a sociopath who was grinding me into paste.