The Last Sponsor

They want you making shorts, not Movies.

We are meant to consume only that which is worthy of our rave reviews. We can go searching for it, chance upon on it, or have it fall into our lap. But it is best when our experience with it is Direct. What does this mean? For absolute starters, it means no sponsors. When was the last time you dove into such a World? Of direct experience, of total immersion, effortless inspiration.

I can count on one hand those who have genuine communion with their audience.

The tendency is this: the totality of human expression gets distorted and diminished ... whenever sponsors are thrown into the mix. I don't make the rules. It would, however, be lazy to conclude that sponsorship is indiscriminately “bad”. Time and place.

People who accept sponsors tend to lose their freedom .. even if ... by only a little. Say, you are no longer 100% free, but now only 99%.

Virtually all social media platforms, however, run on the sponsorship and ads. Creators who depend on such middlemen to make a living are not necessarily corrupt ... but what they are is ... structurally compromised.

Platforms make money off of advertisers. Slowly but surely, the platform rules over the creator-audience relationship. This gives rise to a new species of creator that is in it mainly for platform bucks and points because outside of it, they are Homeless. Few ... have a World of their own.

Homeless creators beg for you to 'like and subscribe' or 'follow for more content like this'. Eventually the algorithm shifts to favour this because, again, it's the platform that stands to gain the most. They want you making shorts, because they want impressions, retention, conversions, and sponsor exposure. Legibility and measurability, ideally at light speed, is what the game is about.

Imagine, now, that this weren't the case. Suppose that the audience-creator relationship were direct and impenetrable, that each creator had a World of their own. How does the 'platform' then sustain itself?

The platform, if needed at all, must exist solely to facilitate the relationship between creator and audience.

And vitally, every creator's Home must be outside of any platform. It must exist on the open, decentralized web that has stood the test of time. It must be an Island unto itself. To depend on a platform, to seek, by any means, to "grow" on a platform, to need "earnings" from a platform ... this is the approach we don't need anymore.

A platform, in peak form, is a World, one of discovery and depth, where those inside of it live to see another day of inspiration. And each creator brings his or her own World along for the ride. This is such a potent combination ... a perfect storm; it would only be logical to expect some kind of constructive, supernova collision.

There is still a small problem, though.

The need to be understood is one of the biggest weaknesses of the modern creator, and so, few dare embed easter eggs in their work lest they under-stimulate their audience. A tiny fraction have the luxury of building something with infinite replay value. Most content is thus surface level with no dirt-covered treasures to uncover.

But a World can afford ambiguity, hidden rooms, slow discovery, revisitation, and things whose value cannot be exhausted in one encounter. The machinery can absolutely exist.

Advertising a thing that is only marginally better, be it faster or cheaper, is a net harm simply because it is uninspiring and a waste of time. On the other hand, something that is constructively cataclysmic, shapeshifting and game-changing, while it may be advertised, does not feel a cheap desperation to be so.

Our survival problems have been solved. We can automate our intellectual labour, have Amazon Prime at our doorstep, and fresh fruit is at our beck and call. So something of Value, beyond basic need, even if it happens to be advertised ... it would be for the purpose of having a specific person serendipitously chance upon it.