Hey video creators, do you want to get featured in a Community Media Spotlight?

We do a regular series on youtube and peertube (and our blog, though they don't all publish at the same time) where we highlight independent media creators across the world.

The most recent one is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD_Xsb1LECU

and here: https://communitymedia.video/w/gMNVH3gRZBcG1bksiLF7y1

and is about Working Class Music, who's videos can also be found on New Ellijay Television at @workingclassmusic

If you do a series of videos, podcasts, a live stream, a video game, fiction, or other "media" and want us to give you a shoutout, reach out!

Community Media Spotlight - Working Class Music

YouTube

I said it at the end of that post, but I was not clear at the top.

This offer also extends to all #gamedevs, toymakers and and any other kind of independent media producers.

I'm looking for a 30 - 90 second video spot about what you do that we can upload (like what we've done so far for Joker Joker TV and Working Class Music) and, if you're interested, a longer interview about your creative process in the style of What's Stopping You: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/pgudbseVPhheAjpbC8fDYb )

What's Stopping You - S01E01: Introductions

PeerTube

This all ties back in to the thing I was talking about with @MannycartoonStudio this past weekend (see: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/116236626685474151 )

We want to live in a world where independent creative people can make their own things and be successful, without having to borrow mindshare from Disney or the (fascist monsters in the) Ellison family.

And that means that we have to showcase independent creators at every turn, and highlight and celebrate and *pay for* their works.

Andrew (Television Executive) (@[email protected])

Spent the day with a friend from the indie toy world and one of the things we ended up discussing at length was the idea that, as artists, it's very difficult to make a living without engaging some kind of pandering. In the art toy community this takes the form of something called "platform toys" which are largely generic barely characters that serve as a platform for multiple color schemes. Mostly, this means making a boring toy, and then letting a bunch of different artists get together and paint it in the color schemes of well known characters from big corporations like Skeletor or Darth Vader. I had thoughts, I'm going to try and summarize them here.

Retro Social

There's another aspect to that idea, though.

The fan art/fan fiction/mash-up/bootleg phenomenon happens partly because that's how people process the world.

Pop Culture is Folklore. Star Trek fan films are Dante's Inferno.

But a fascist sympathizer owns star trek now, and when we tell Star Trek stories we're allowing a little more of our collective folklore and collective culture, our mindshare, to go to a thing owned by fascists.

(and, certainly, vice versa. Every queer star trek story is an act of defiance, but it's an act of defiance that still requires being versed in a media property owned by shitbags.)

This is not to say "don't make fan fiction", and I fear that's how it reads.

I love fanfiction. I think it's wonderful. I like to see more of it.

I do a lot of what is essentially fan fiction!

But I work with characters from the public domain. Stuff that no one owns, or I guess that everyone owns.

I'm not against the idea of remixing. I love a remix.

I'm against the fact that most modern remixes accidentally serve to keep things owned by Disney and David Ellison in people's brains.

When two independent toy makers make their own versions of Dracula or Frankenstein, or repaint one another's toys in their toy's color scheme, I get hype. No one owns those things they're creating but them, and no one benefits from it but them, and that's sick.

When independent toymakers make another skeletor variation, I also get hype, but I also get a little sad because Universal could step in at any moment and say "I don't like this, you can't do it" and they would have very little recourse.

Fuck a corporate copyright, remix whatever you want, don't feel bad about it, figure out how to make your bread.

That's why, when I make something (like a Sky Pirate dime novel series, or a Space Exploration/Away Mission video game (and podcast series) or a show about hunting bigfoot) I use a cc-by-sa license.

I want people to remix. I want them to do it without fear or real constraint (beyond simply telling the world that it came from something I produced and making it a little easier for folks to find my thing.)

Actively and desperately, I want to see more independent artists and creators embrace more things that don't enrich a distant (often fascist) billionaire, and if they can shine a little more light on one another in the process, all the better.

I wrote a lot about this idea.

I wrote a "manifesto" about it.

https://ajroach42.com/the-small-things-manifesto/

The core idea is that we have to stop giving power to major corporations.

Stop asking for permission, certainly, but also stop working in ways that allow them to gatekeep us, or encourage us to be silent, or push us to the margins.

And, whenever possible, work together by default.

The small things Manifesto

This is a work in progress, a living document.

I advocate for using a cc-by-sa license whenever possible, because it gives explicit permission for other people to adapt, remix, re-share, and re-use your work, while maintaining your clear ownership of that work, and actively requiring remixes, re-shares, and other adaptations to link back to your original.

I use a cc-by-sa license for all my blog posts, most of my video work, and nearly everything I write.

It's the default license for #JupitersGhost and #ExpeditionSasquatch and #TheMysteriousAirPirates (and the rest of our #SkyPirates work)

It's the default license for our original toys.

In the era of AI scrapers, this might seem like a bad idea (and maybe it is!) but the AI scrapers seem to be scraping everything, regardless of how it is licensed, and if they are ever held legally accountable for that, their use of my works will be as much of an illegal license violation (no attribution!) as the rest of their reuse is illegal copyright infringement (probably, I am not a lawyer, and I'm definitely not your lawyer.)

What I am, though is very much in the "rising tides raise all ships" camp of creativity.

If someone remixes something I've created and they do really well with it, that's great. Legally, it'll have a very clear statement that it includes part of X created by Me and linking to the place where I publish X.

That just serves to further highlight my creative work.

And the more substantially their work is based on my work, the more likely it becomes that my work will be seen.

You can see this in action with the new Antimemetics short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v8AsTHfAG0

It's based on a serial published on the SCP wiki ( https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub ) which the author later adapted as an SCP novel https://dn710000.ca.archive.org/0/items/there-is-no-antimemetics-division/There-Is-No-Antimemetics-Division.pdf

and then, ultimately, as an original novel with references to the SCP project removed: https://dn710000.ca.archive.org/0/items/there-is-no-antimemetics-division/There-Is-No-Antimemetics-Division.pdf

There is at least one other series of short films that I'm aware of (which we've redistributed on NETV: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/2z7ZxKWko9MgdeyuaVcehf )

Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division" | DUST | Starring Jasika Nicole

YouTube
@ajroach42 thanks, enjoyed the stories/videos