I think a lot of the cynicism, exhaustion, and quiet bitterness that has crept into professional life over the last years is downstream of this problem. I don’t believe that people no longer want to do good work, but I think that doing good work has stopped paying the way it used to, while doing bad work loudly has started paying significantly better, so people notice and they adjust.
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/the-rise-of-the-bullshittery/
oof
If you, as a viewer, can afford it, pay for the human-made version when you can. If a writer, an engineer, a designer, a musician is doing the work, and there is a way to give them money that does not pass through three instances of platform extraction, do it! The economics of doing real work in public are bad enough already without the further insult of zero direct support.
I think the start of publications like Defector, Aftermath, etc. has showed that this is possible…
… just in time for a bunch of pedophilic fascists to increase the cost of living so much that many people simply can’t afford to spend the money required to keep such publications afloat.
nm