A Note on the State of Writing and Creating on the Internet

This whole moment in writing on the internet is really important. We are all splintering off into our little corners of the internet with substacks, ghost pages, patreons, or medium outposts. Many of us are asking for folx to financially contribute to their projects for the first time, projects that folx used to enjoy for free. I am sure folx feel pulled in a lot of directions now with all the pleas to join folx substacks or email lists. It sure feels like the right move for the right move for me, because I do not want to experience the censorship of the Instagram algorithm or its arbitrary rules on photography size, caption length, and hashtags. I also personally do not want to contribute to their explicit necronomy that is just deadening your mind with AD after AD after AD. I also think it is the right move to also consider valuing ourselves by making some essays live behind a paywall. After 5 years of sharing all my art and stories for free, I am actually valuing my writing and asking for some people to provide a meager financial contribution to access my stories and thoughts. And yet, it’s still hard.

The actual structural circumstances that have led many of us to this place of becoming internet culture entrepreneurs is not lost on me. Of particular help in thinking through this moment from a labor market and economic perspective was Alexander Brentler’s essay in the latest Jacobin Magazine (I’m a lifetime subscriber—which is weird flex but solidarity with the red press forever) entitled “Artificial Intelligence Solves Problems We Don’t Have.” Brentler’s fundamental thesis is that the ubiquitous use of AI in culture creation will lead to artists having to decide between the sort of bullshit administrative/ supervisory work of Greaber’s Bullshit Jobs or a drive into a highly personalized form of care work by cultivating a direct support subscription community. He most clearly notes this in the following section:

“Perhaps the emergence of semi automated art under market conditions does not lead to the disappearance of artists and cultural workers, but on the contrary to the intensified personalization of the cultural sector and an expectation of paradoxical self-exposure. Culture workers would then be forced to choose between two unattractive career paths: either working as supervisors of an ever more automated machine, producing content around the block, or marketing themselves as individuals.”

He noted that the pathway toward marketing themselves as individuals would lead to coddling a very small group of rich folx who benefited financially from the collapse of traditional labor.

If I take a step back and reflect on this, the effect is sort of dizzying. As someone steeped in the intense personalization of managing an art account on social media for the last 7 years, I know this experience of marketing myself as an individual well. As someone who took this substack project public in the last few months to take a chance on myself, I know all too well what it’s like to be an “individual content entrepreneur,” and yet sometimes I completely forget about it. That is, until it dawns on me: “Yes, of course, this whole thing I have been doing is a deeply personal commodification of myself.” It’s as if you forget your own reflection exists and you are startled to find it in a mirror one day. 

This is one of the deeply disturbing elements of trying to survive in late stage capitalism. Because the tendency to commodify every usable resource, even our our humanity and stories, is so ubiquitous, we don’t even readily notice our impulse to make something into a sellable commodity until some kind person, like Brentler, reminds us of the larger economic forces at play. You know it’s exactly what Foucault talked about in The Order of Things, when he noted the power of the existing set of cultural assumptions to pen us into certain modes of thought that we don’t even realize are setting very explicit guardrails for how we approach the world. One of my college advisors described this concept by saying that each person in every age throughout modern history is like the fish who has no conception that they are swimming in water. We, in our attempts to run our tiny little businesses, often forget that there are a host of economic and cultural forces that nudge us in this descent to the bottom of commodifying every facet of our lives. 

Yet, this shift that Brentler is pointing out has been brewing on instagram for years. Sure, we can say that AI and the erosion of traditional structures that employ artists are part of the technological and structural realities pushing this shift. Yet, instagram set the model for how one can commodify sharing themselves on social media. They offered a platform that taught a whole generation of people how to sell their attention, stories, and personal data for social, political, and economic capital or just mindless entertainment. One can see it readily with the phenomenon of influencers, who also have completed a similar development toward hyper individualized content capitalism.

I only learned about some of the wildest versions of this influencer phenomena once I became a parent. There was Taking Cara Babies, a “baby and toddler sleep expert,” who donated over $1K to the Trump campaign from 2016-2019 and promised to curse anyone who shared her class materials with another family without them paying her. There are also the more run of mill people who post about their picture-esq family lives and sell various products to anxious mom and dads that are in the very vulnerable position of looking for answers to age old problems of sleep, digestion, and irritability. These are people who are the quintessential, unhinged internet culture entrepreneurs who slap a label of specialist on their instagram profile, turn their family into set pieces in their advertising, and prey on your ignorance by offering you their half-baked solutions.

In my corner of the web, however, it wasn’t until meta turned instagram into a dumpster fire of ads, sponsored content, and tiktok recycling that people sought out alternatives to instagram, like substack. Folks that used that platform to share their art or stories have turned to substack because they are sick of fighting for visibility with mama mafia clothing brand and Abrysvo, a RSV vaccine (real ads I was served when I opened up instagram right now) and a Pandora’s box of algorithmic rules. Given that some folks with tens of thousands of instagram followers routinely report that they reach a small fraction of their audience, it’s not surprising to see folks open to using a different platform. They would much rather just keep to their existing channel of communication, but predatory tech practices have made social media incredibly unreliable for reaching folx.

You know, it’s still true that Material Relations Rule Everything Around Me, MRREAM, dolla dolla bills, y’all. While we get all bent out of shape about shitty AI art, most artists on the internet are just making simple decisions on what technological tool is best for their business. I know it’s more sexy journalistically to link a couple trends together like AI and direct support tools like substack, Patreon, and Only Fans and state that all culture producers will end up precarious care workers catering to a small group of fragile rich folx that need coddling. Yet, I bet the reality for most people using those tools is far worse. I bet most people using substack, only fans, or patreon would love to have their projects become an “economic imperative” that could support them. However, most of those folks likely have to get ground into a pulp in the grinding reality of selling their labor in capitalism to supplement that dream. For example, I bet you on a stack of twinkies that the vast majority of folx running a business on those platforms do not make enough to support one person, let alone a family. No, they are literally just dreaming that they could leave a soul crushing job to be able to coddle some rich folx.

This is less about me pointing out shortcomings with Brentler’s essay and more about pointing out how undervalued art is in our society. I think Brentler’s essay is actually quite good and thought-provoking. I mean, look, am I still writing about this issue several paragraphs later, right? Yes, and that’s because of the yarn he strung along in his essay. I just believe he missed out on the inherent inequality that will come along with the crap shoot of which culture workers are able to build a community of subscribers. Even today, I feel that folx are burned out on people asking them to sign up for their free subscriber offerings, let alone asking for a financial contribution. How many heartfelt passion projects do people have the ability to financially support and pay attention to? I think their is a real limit that exists and this will lead to only a very small number of people making enough money to financially support themselves. This is most likely because of a lack of government support for the arts and our willingness to watch re-runs of x-files and gilmore girls until our eyes bleed nostalgia than seek out new cultural experiences.

I suppose all this is just a clear-eyed, honest reflection of the limits of betting on yourself and starting a business. I resisted it for a long time because of these sort of fundamental issues that I knew may come up. Yet, intense feelings of alienation and disenchantment in my career left me trying to take a shot at this whole culture entrepreneur thing. Again, MRREAM (material relations rule everything around me). When yo real job crushes your soul, you ain’t got no union, and your most viable political party supports a genocide in gaza, you are left in the typical American situation of trying to make that shit happen for yourself. So far, the response to my project has been more muted than I thought it would be. Full disclosure, I have 400 some free subscribers on this platform and 29 comp’d and paying subscribers. This is after talking about my substack incessantly, offering free weekly essays for a year, and offering sales on subscriptions. I am thankful for all that support, but it shows how even putting a year into a project and 5 or so years building yourself into a fuckin’ brand will not net you some sort of life changing success. No, everyone is a brand now and we are all selling ourselves to each other.

But, this isn’t supposed to be a whiny essay about how some white guy wishes he could pay his bills by writing about his feelings. I think there is enough of that in the world — see my recent comments on the shortcomings of Thom Yorke’s lyrics in the essay “I’d Rather Be Dwelling in Obscurity” for an example of this strain of thinking. No, I think this is just my way of processing what it means to be an artist and a writer in late stage capitalism. This is just an overly analytical, and, to be honest, nerdy way, to ask you that if you are still listening, please sing back to me. Yes, just like in the seminal rock anthem “Sweetness” by Jimmy Eat World.

“Are you listening? (Whoa oh-oh-oh-oh)
Sing it back (whoa oh-oh-oh-oh)”

Jimmy Eat World — “Sweetness”

I really think that underneath all that material reality and social structures we are just a bunch of separate animate hunks of meat trying to share our love with the world and connect with other people. I don’t write from a place of wanting to be famous or rich. Glob Damn, NO! I write from my hip and straight from my heart. I would still be writing even if no one was reading, because it means that much to me. So, if you feel the same way about your work, lets all sing back to one another.

As always, dear reader, thanks for reading. I have made the last few essays free, because I want everyone to be able read them. We will go back to our regularly scheduled paywall next week.

Best,

James