I'm not a "good" content creator

People who follow me have likely noticed that I’ve been making far less stuff lately. There are actually many reasons for that. Firstly, I do enjoy making things, as evidenced by the fact that I am currently making several projects (including a new documentary about the Joker movies and Luigi Mangione that should be out before the end of the year, hopefully around Halloween). But, if you remember, at the start of the year, I talked about a severe burnout (one that I am not sure I have completely recovered from).

In sorting through what happened to cause this, something I keep coming back to is just a massive conflict between how I do things and how a successful content creator creates things.

The chart I put at the top of this isn’t what I would call a new thought, per se. Any time I have talked about “systemic critique,” this is what I am referring to. When I say people are incentivized not to do systemic critique, this is very specifically what I’m talking about.

If you notice in the chart, I’ve flagged that I observe conditions (which often include historical data) and critique the mechanics as they are applied. I advocate engagement rather than propose solutions. This is, at least as far as I can tell, whether working in dialectical materialism or a 12-step program, the actual path to resolving contradictions.

By pointing towards a result rather than at those mechanics (or giving lip service to the mechanics), one gives oneself the ability to pretend each result is a discreet, separate subject rather than a node on an interconnected web.

To put it another way, someone might criticize cryptocurrency, as there are certainly issues with it. But those issues are downstream of conditions and mechanics. Someone might be tempted to say “the problem is cryptocurrency,” but that is a mechanic that exists within conditions. If we want to generalize “the problem” without going out entirely to “imperial-stage capitalism,” then the real issue is the financial system. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts and detractors alike want to believe cryptocurrency is a discreet “alternative,” but it isn’t. It didn’t start as one, and it didn’t become one.

It’s money that is more or less fiat by market rather than by state, although this does give it an almost gold-standard-lite quality as its value is tied to actual work being completed (math, to simplify). Understanding that, we can see it as a sort of “unofficial” financial product, a perfect expression of neoliberalism: the marketization of markets.

To see it as an ad-hoc financial product, we have to understand it as subordinate to the global financial system, which, if we make a video about the global financial system, we’ll be called “anti-Semitic.” You know, because a bunch of people who think they aren’t anti-Semitic start thinking about Jews and banking when you say that (read my book Woke Ouroboros: Segregation and Essentialism)!

Further, you can make a video about the global financial system. Then, if you want to do it again, you have to find a different angle. Which, if you’re eventually going to get to the systemic aspect of it, is going to feel like nothing more than a different coat of paint on the same video, both for the creator and the viewer. This will lead to burnout, whether or not you are autistic.

The sticky issue here is that… It’s also how we need to start addressing things if we don’t want to continue cycling. My Joker documentary has been tough to write because I don’t want to shove the same shit in your face repeatedly. The only way to do this is to find and define a scope and rigidly stick to it. That is how the last several have come out well. It’s also the problem of Less Sucks, the scope is massive, and to keep it around 2 hours, I talk way too fast.

I hate the “art vs. content” dichotomy because it represents a misunderstanding of what is wrong. People associate art with “good” and content with “bad,” often because they believe recent stuff is worse (“Where has all the art gone? I hate that word content!”). But these words are only used after the fact; the system of commodifying art to a greater and greater extent is what is making the thing that people don’t like, not saying the word “content.” This is an example of what I am talking about, and it is something I want to illustrate what I am making from now on: art that isn’t made for the market.

Now, I could say “non-commodified art,” but the fact is that’s impossible. Whether I personally commodify it or not, it will be commodified. Given that, I would also like to make money from it and will monetize it, but the key is that I will never create content primarily for financial gain again. Which means, this isn’t my job and it never will again be my job. If somehow I suddenly make millions from content, that will be an accident and hooray.

But if I specifically work to depend on content, I will not be able to say what I want to say (which is talking about conditions and mechanics).

This was a lot to say, if you see something I have personally published, it likely has a tremendous amount of work behind it and is meaningful or insightful as I can make it. And this isn’t new thinking, but I’ve really spent the last few years considering what the actual implications of art-as-work are.

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