Engagement is a form of debt creation
September 6, 2022 7:46 AM Subscribe
Towards a theory of the creator "It is too late to push back against the term “creator.” Most culture industry people I know never say it out loud, much less discuss the ways it displaces many of the things we love. But for better or worse, the creator names an important figure in our society... This is no doubt in part because creators have essentially replaced authors, artists, and directors, along with dancers, cellists, and whoever else. These titles are fossils left behind by the tectonic shifts of 21st century mediatization..."
As someone who has experienced the change in access to the ability to create content and have a means to reach a considerable audience without the old gatekeepers getting in the way, I am mostly pleased with how things are going. I started work when there were just a few large publishing houses (along with smaller presses and those associated with Universities, etc.) and the same for music. These had high barriers to entry and were highly biased towards cis/het white men. I really enjoy being able to hear really diverse content in all forms. Yes, there is a lot of chaff with the wheat, but it is relatively easy to ignore. As for it being akin to junk food, yes, that is true as well, but just as those of us who want can find master chefs doing interesting things with food that challenges us, it is possible to find people who are thinking deeply about niche subjects (or vast subjects in a niche way). Substack is becoming a place to find that kind of content. I welcome the new creators!
posted by agatha_magatha at 8:25 AM on September 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by agatha_magatha at 8:25 AM on September 6, 2022 [9 favorites]
They saved it for number 12
12. Everyone with a smartphone is a creator.
Well that fucks the venn diagram doesn't it.
There was an author being debriefed after a television interview, when a studio flunky popped their head in to say 'the talent can smoke now'. This was during that transitional period when indoor smoking had a question mark. It occurred to him that the employees had no idea who he was or why he was there. There would be another talent in his place in fifteen minutes, and more tomorrow. They're just getting on with the job, 'the talent' being a commodity they handle in their business.
This was in an article they wrote in the 90s. It's probably been part of the business of show for a long time.
posted by adept256 at 9:57 AM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
12. Everyone with a smartphone is a creator.
Well that fucks the venn diagram doesn't it.
There was an author being debriefed after a television interview, when a studio flunky popped their head in to say 'the talent can smoke now'. This was during that transitional period when indoor smoking had a question mark. It occurred to him that the employees had no idea who he was or why he was there. There would be another talent in his place in fifteen minutes, and more tomorrow. They're just getting on with the job, 'the talent' being a commodity they handle in their business.
This was in an article they wrote in the 90s. It's probably been part of the business of show for a long time.
posted by adept256 at 9:57 AM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
In the streaming era, there are probably more working directors right now than have existed at any point since the invention of moving pictures, so I'm finding an argument that creators have replaced directors a bit hard to accept. I read somewhere that Amazon publishes something like 2500 self-published books a day -- and even if a significant percentage of those are AI generated crap, I also don't think creators have replaced authors.
Dancers I'm a little less clear on. Some creators are (very well trained, professional quality) dancers and some just do videos of quick hit memey dancing in between their confessional videos, so maybe they aren't really dancers, but are they taking actual dancing jobs (which were always kind of rare) from actual dancers?
Certainly creators who are doing short form video or podcasts or whatever have siphoned some attention from traditional arts practitioners, but I don't think there has ever truly been artists who were able to successfully live off the avails of art without also engaging in self-promotion and marketing and audience building or hiring somebody else to do those things on their behalf for a percentage of their income. Nor has there ever been a lack of hacks who are doing purely commercial things for popular appeal in every genre of human endeavor.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:03 AM on September 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Dancers I'm a little less clear on. Some creators are (very well trained, professional quality) dancers and some just do videos of quick hit memey dancing in between their confessional videos, so maybe they aren't really dancers, but are they taking actual dancing jobs (which were always kind of rare) from actual dancers?
Certainly creators who are doing short form video or podcasts or whatever have siphoned some attention from traditional arts practitioners, but I don't think there has ever truly been artists who were able to successfully live off the avails of art without also engaging in self-promotion and marketing and audience building or hiring somebody else to do those things on their behalf for a percentage of their income. Nor has there ever been a lack of hacks who are doing purely commercial things for popular appeal in every genre of human endeavor.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:03 AM on September 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't think there has ever truly been artists who were able to successfully live off the avails of art without also engaging in self-promotion and marketing and audience building or hiring somebody else to do those things on their behalf for a percentage of their income.
This is true if you include "getting randomly discovered by a rich patron" because maintaining a patron-artist relationship has always required some form of marketing/networking. For as long as art has existed as a profession (at least 3000 years), the main two paths to success have been high art that caters to rich patrons looking for status and popular art that caters to the fleeting attention span of the general public. Creators are the modern evolution of medieval minstrels.
The article is too reductionist when it claims "To post in pursuit of genuine self-expression rather than commercial or ideological interest is delusional" because self-expression is a completely rational goal! Creative self-expression (enhanced by peer feedback) legitimately helps us healthily deal with difficult personal issues and develops creativity that helps for all sorts of practical tasks. Any "rational economic" model that denies the value of creative self-expression is based on a really flawed understanding of human psychology.
posted by JZig at 10:42 AM on September 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
This is true if you include "getting randomly discovered by a rich patron" because maintaining a patron-artist relationship has always required some form of marketing/networking. For as long as art has existed as a profession (at least 3000 years), the main two paths to success have been high art that caters to rich patrons looking for status and popular art that caters to the fleeting attention span of the general public. Creators are the modern evolution of medieval minstrels.
The article is too reductionist when it claims "To post in pursuit of genuine self-expression rather than commercial or ideological interest is delusional" because self-expression is a completely rational goal! Creative self-expression (enhanced by peer feedback) legitimately helps us healthily deal with difficult personal issues and develops creativity that helps for all sorts of practical tasks. Any "rational economic" model that denies the value of creative self-expression is based on a really flawed understanding of human psychology.
posted by JZig at 10:42 AM on September 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
There are some interesting ideas in here. Certainly the social media information economy has all kinds of bad effects. But I'm not sure all of the attributes identified as specific to creators are as novel as the author implies.
For example:
While creators may convey a sense of expertise across a large body of work, their individual pieces of content will rarely demonstrate expertise on a given subject.
Creators are generally better at persuasively aggregating other peoples’ work, herding pieces of information like cattle, than producing insights of their own. One of the skills of the creator is the ability to strategically curate influences.
Content is designed to tactically engage with the present, shifting contemporaneous currents of information in one direction or another. Creators tap into and channel the mediatized energies of a moment. Great creators are able to shift the form and content of moments. ...
All of those things (and a number of other assertions in this piece) could have been said of journalists, going back 200 years or more.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:50 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
For example:
While creators may convey a sense of expertise across a large body of work, their individual pieces of content will rarely demonstrate expertise on a given subject.
Creators are generally better at persuasively aggregating other peoples’ work, herding pieces of information like cattle, than producing insights of their own. One of the skills of the creator is the ability to strategically curate influences.
Content is designed to tactically engage with the present, shifting contemporaneous currents of information in one direction or another. Creators tap into and channel the mediatized energies of a moment. Great creators are able to shift the form and content of moments. ...
All of those things (and a number of other assertions in this piece) could have been said of journalists, going back 200 years or more.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:50 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
The posted link reminds me of someone who has read a few books, followed a few ideas, and begun to scratch out the base of an idea. However, they have failed to digest the true meaning of what their message is supposed to be. This would be better suited as a Year 1 term paper than posted to the wider world. There are some wide, sweeping, and unqualified statements made which fail to be backed by any solid content.
Yes there are a few 'I'm an intellectual so I will include a few names and reference points for street cred' name drops - one, Barrett Avner, a minor sub-culture 'icon', and the other Roland Gérard Barthes, a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician - but the 'creator' here has not expounded sufficiently to justify even one more 'iteration'. Back to the drawing board I suspect.... (that last bit is an ironic comment btw)
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 11:10 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes there are a few 'I'm an intellectual so I will include a few names and reference points for street cred' name drops - one, Barrett Avner, a minor sub-culture 'icon', and the other Roland Gérard Barthes, a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician - but the 'creator' here has not expounded sufficiently to justify even one more 'iteration'. Back to the drawing board I suspect.... (that last bit is an ironic comment btw)
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 11:10 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
This is an interesting piece with some interesting ideas, but I think it suffers from a poor choice of terminology that confuses things and leads the analysis astray. Specifically, while this focuses on the idea of the "creator" as a new and degenerate form of artist, I think this focus is missing the mark. In general I have no problem with people operationalizing terms in idiosyncratic ways for the purposes of a focused analysis, but in this case "creator" is a stand-in for the more complete and commonly-used phrase "content creator," and when using this phrase it's more apparent (to me, anyway) that the problematic concept is "content" rather than "creator". The notion of "content" rather than "creator" being the real issue seems to bubble up in a few places in the piece, most notably at point 5, but to me its pull is felt throughout the piece like an unseen gravitational well that his discourse about "creators" orbits around.
I think "content" is a more useful focus for analysis for several reasons. First, "content" is a word that necessarily centers the perspective of the platform. A work is not content if it's not on a platform, and the word "content" conveys nothing other than its relationship to a platform. Given that the platforms in question are for-profit enterprises composing modern digital capitalism, a work being "content" is essentially acknowledging its role as an asset on a ledger, earning profit for the owners of the platform hosting it, and nothing more. Second, the phrase "content creator" centers the relationship between the worker and the platform. An artist is someone who produces art, but a content creator is someone who helps to fill up a platform. It's common to hear, for example, educational YouTubers refer to themselves as "content creators," which I think only serves to illustrate how effectively the platform has dictated the terms of engagement between itself and the people who produce videos for it. The term has spread throughout the culture of the Internet: people talk about finding "good content," or "sharing content." It has become a synonym for "work", a catch-all covering essays, videos, tweets, image posts, or anything else. But in using that term, the interests of the platforms, and thus the interests of Capital, are being tacitly acknowledged and deferred to.
This piece seeks to problematize the concept of the "creator," as the type of person who produces content for the sake of engagement rather than as an authentic expression of interest and hard work. While there's certainly plenty to criticize with that concept, I think it misses the role that that person plays within the ecosystem of digital capitalism. The phenomenon, in my opinion, that is degenerating authentic creation lies in the relationship between large, heavily-capitalized platforms (the modern synonym of "media," that which carries communication) and the people who create content for them. I think focusing on "content" rather than "creators" does a better job of casting light on this relationship and the problems it causes, and also helps us think better about who has the real power in this relationship and who bears the most responsibility for the race to the bottom of algorithm-driven engagement for profit.
posted by biogeo at 11:58 AM on September 6, 2022 [23 favorites]
I think "content" is a more useful focus for analysis for several reasons. First, "content" is a word that necessarily centers the perspective of the platform. A work is not content if it's not on a platform, and the word "content" conveys nothing other than its relationship to a platform. Given that the platforms in question are for-profit enterprises composing modern digital capitalism, a work being "content" is essentially acknowledging its role as an asset on a ledger, earning profit for the owners of the platform hosting it, and nothing more. Second, the phrase "content creator" centers the relationship between the worker and the platform. An artist is someone who produces art, but a content creator is someone who helps to fill up a platform. It's common to hear, for example, educational YouTubers refer to themselves as "content creators," which I think only serves to illustrate how effectively the platform has dictated the terms of engagement between itself and the people who produce videos for it. The term has spread throughout the culture of the Internet: people talk about finding "good content," or "sharing content." It has become a synonym for "work", a catch-all covering essays, videos, tweets, image posts, or anything else. But in using that term, the interests of the platforms, and thus the interests of Capital, are being tacitly acknowledged and deferred to.
This piece seeks to problematize the concept of the "creator," as the type of person who produces content for the sake of engagement rather than as an authentic expression of interest and hard work. While there's certainly plenty to criticize with that concept, I think it misses the role that that person plays within the ecosystem of digital capitalism. The phenomenon, in my opinion, that is degenerating authentic creation lies in the relationship between large, heavily-capitalized platforms (the modern synonym of "media," that which carries communication) and the people who create content for them. I think focusing on "content" rather than "creators" does a better job of casting light on this relationship and the problems it causes, and also helps us think better about who has the real power in this relationship and who bears the most responsibility for the race to the bottom of algorithm-driven engagement for profit.
posted by biogeo at 11:58 AM on September 6, 2022 [23 favorites]
"Content" is a cipher, it's just some interchangeable goo for a platform to deliver.
I will continue to insist that I'm a musician, not a "content creator." My music isn't making any money for myself, but on the bright side, it's not making money for anyone else either.
posted by Foosnark at 12:58 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
I will continue to insist that I'm a musician, not a "content creator." My music isn't making any money for myself, but on the bright side, it's not making money for anyone else either.
posted by Foosnark at 12:58 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Yeaaaaah, I'm not in love with "creator" as an insult, or slight. I'm a writer and author professionally and a few other things on an amateur basis, and all of those are pretty much species under the genus of "creator" (or if you like, "artist" is the genus and "creator" is the family). I don't find it insulting to be called a creator; I literally create. And while not everything I create is for the ages (trust me), the act of creating itself is not a trivial thing, even if the experience is transient or the enjoyment of it is such. Look, in the long run, everything is transient. For every Shakespeare there are ten thousand playwrights, popular in their day, whose work is now unknown by everyone but a few graduate students.
The gist I get from this is that creativity now has a low(er) bar of entry and that means the zone is flooded with crap; why struggle to be an artist when Midjourney will take your prompt and whomp up something in seconds, which will itself be forgotten a few seconds later, and the only one who materially benefits will be the social media entity you post it on. Which, okay. One, get your own site; it benefits you and no one else. Two, get over the whole lowered barriers. You know why I'm an author? Because computers exist, so I don't have to fucking retype and redraft manuscripts over and over again. I know myself well enough to know that using a typewriter -- itself a technology that lowered barriers! -- would have driven me to distraction with all the hoops I would have to jump through to get a completed manuscript. At the very least, I'd've written many fewer novels and short stories.
Three, everything is normalized and compensated for over time, and people making new art will be the ones who are doing more than the minimum with these new tools, which they are now learning to create on. Which is to say that just as computer lowered the barrier to entry low enough to get me over, there will be people who will use today's technology the same way. And if in the meantime lots of people are creating crap, so what? As Ted Sturgeon famously posited, 90% of everything is crap, and that was before the Internet. It doesn't matter if most of it is crap. People will find the stuff that will matter to them. And in the meantime the people who are creating are (hopefully) enjoy the act in itself, for themselves. Engage with it it or don't. Your participation is neither mandatory nor needed.
posted by jscalzi at 2:51 PM on September 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
The gist I get from this is that creativity now has a low(er) bar of entry and that means the zone is flooded with crap; why struggle to be an artist when Midjourney will take your prompt and whomp up something in seconds, which will itself be forgotten a few seconds later, and the only one who materially benefits will be the social media entity you post it on. Which, okay. One, get your own site; it benefits you and no one else. Two, get over the whole lowered barriers. You know why I'm an author? Because computers exist, so I don't have to fucking retype and redraft manuscripts over and over again. I know myself well enough to know that using a typewriter -- itself a technology that lowered barriers! -- would have driven me to distraction with all the hoops I would have to jump through to get a completed manuscript. At the very least, I'd've written many fewer novels and short stories.
Three, everything is normalized and compensated for over time, and people making new art will be the ones who are doing more than the minimum with these new tools, which they are now learning to create on. Which is to say that just as computer lowered the barrier to entry low enough to get me over, there will be people who will use today's technology the same way. And if in the meantime lots of people are creating crap, so what? As Ted Sturgeon famously posited, 90% of everything is crap, and that was before the Internet. It doesn't matter if most of it is crap. People will find the stuff that will matter to them. And in the meantime the people who are creating are (hopefully) enjoy the act in itself, for themselves. Engage with it it or don't. Your participation is neither mandatory nor needed.
posted by jscalzi at 2:51 PM on September 6, 2022 [10 favorites]
Most streaming “creators” aren’t DGA or WGA, won’t get pensions or residuals.
posted by Ideefixe at 3:54 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ideefixe at 3:54 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Now that I've read TFA...
On the one hand, I don't think dedicated artists (of any type) are really being replaced by casual social-media creators. (AI tools possibly reducing demand for commercial illustrators is a different issue but also not so straightforward IMHO.) In a lot of cases, those "creators" actually are serious and dedicated artists; they're playing the social media game because it is giving them some financial stability without needing a non-arts day job, while also giving them more exposure than they could get in other ways.
But on the other, social media posts do seem to have more influence than I (as an old, I guess) would like. I'm on a few forums for electronic musicians, and it seems that a lot of people think of YouTube and Instagram as the primary place to hear other peoples' music -- rather than albums or live shows. And from that they get a narrow and distorted view of what music people are making. There are people who avoid a couple of specific brands of Eurorack modules because they were often used by about 3-4 musicians to make gentle noodly ambient music on social media five years ago -- in something that was honestly more of a stereotype and then a mocking meme than a real trend in the first place.
posted by Foosnark at 5:32 AM on September 7, 2022
On the one hand, I don't think dedicated artists (of any type) are really being replaced by casual social-media creators. (AI tools possibly reducing demand for commercial illustrators is a different issue but also not so straightforward IMHO.) In a lot of cases, those "creators" actually are serious and dedicated artists; they're playing the social media game because it is giving them some financial stability without needing a non-arts day job, while also giving them more exposure than they could get in other ways.
But on the other, social media posts do seem to have more influence than I (as an old, I guess) would like. I'm on a few forums for electronic musicians, and it seems that a lot of people think of YouTube and Instagram as the primary place to hear other peoples' music -- rather than albums or live shows. And from that they get a narrow and distorted view of what music people are making. There are people who avoid a couple of specific brands of Eurorack modules because they were often used by about 3-4 musicians to make gentle noodly ambient music on social media five years ago -- in something that was honestly more of a stereotype and then a mocking meme than a real trend in the first place.
posted by Foosnark at 5:32 AM on September 7, 2022
I'm partial to "author, dream weaver, visionary (plus actor)".
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:14 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:14 AM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
don't forget storyteller
posted by mmascolino at 7:57 AM on September 7, 2022
posted by mmascolino at 7:57 AM on September 7, 2022
don't forget storyteller
Speaking as someone who has done this professionally (in a literal stand on stage and tell stories way) and personally (in an I make up stories and write them down way), this term has been perhaps so completely ruined by advertising/marketing (ironically my own day job) that I'd be happy if it disappeared for, like, a decade at least. I swear to christ, every time I hear someone talk about how how their brand manager is a story teller and they can't wait to tell the story of their crypto app or their bespoke CBD kombucha or their minimalist diet clothing subscription podcast service, I just want to beat my head against a fucking wall.
posted by thivaia at 8:16 AM on September 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Speaking as someone who has done this professionally (in a literal stand on stage and tell stories way) and personally (in an I make up stories and write them down way), this term has been perhaps so completely ruined by advertising/marketing (ironically my own day job) that I'd be happy if it disappeared for, like, a decade at least. I swear to christ, every time I hear someone talk about how how their brand manager is a story teller and they can't wait to tell the story of their crypto app or their bespoke CBD kombucha or their minimalist diet clothing subscription podcast service, I just want to beat my head against a fucking wall.
posted by thivaia at 8:16 AM on September 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
I do a bunch of different creative things in my work and private life, and they all inform each other so completely that I really feel like 'creative' or 'creator' is the only real way to describe how it's done now. Creator covers so much of how people produce their work. And I feel like even though 'content' is derisive, it's hard to explain to people who *aren't* in creative spaces how interlocking everything is, and how hard it is to break down those parts into discrete units anymore.
And fuck the gatekeepers, man. I love how anyone with a phone can start making comedy shorts, or recording music, or tiny little documentaries on their emu. I love the democratization of it all. Got a keyboard? Write a novel! Email the file to a friend who can beta read or edit, publish on ich.io or Wattpad and AO3 and bam. Your work is now out there, able to find readers who will love it. Got a touch screen? You can paint now. I paint too, traditional media, old school style, and the thing that made me stop was the cost and the lack of space. Oils take up a lot of room, but a touchscreen and a good stylus? There's fantastic art being produced by people all over the world who would not have been able to take up the craft twenty years ago due to cost.
There's so much more on the Internet than just TikTok and Insty, and it frustrates me when the handwringers get about as deep as the surface and that's it, that's as deep as they go. They don't see the barriers between the audience and the work that existed before all this.
posted by Jilder at 2:23 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
And fuck the gatekeepers, man. I love how anyone with a phone can start making comedy shorts, or recording music, or tiny little documentaries on their emu. I love the democratization of it all. Got a keyboard? Write a novel! Email the file to a friend who can beta read or edit, publish on ich.io or Wattpad and AO3 and bam. Your work is now out there, able to find readers who will love it. Got a touch screen? You can paint now. I paint too, traditional media, old school style, and the thing that made me stop was the cost and the lack of space. Oils take up a lot of room, but a touchscreen and a good stylus? There's fantastic art being produced by people all over the world who would not have been able to take up the craft twenty years ago due to cost.
There's so much more on the Internet than just TikTok and Insty, and it frustrates me when the handwringers get about as deep as the surface and that's it, that's as deep as they go. They don't see the barriers between the audience and the work that existed before all this.
posted by Jilder at 2:23 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Hear hear! I don't have to make nice with nasal, dipthong sretching, gatekeepers to post some visual works, here and there. No, I don't. Life could be much terse, but it isn't. I don't have to pretend an interest.
posted by Oyéah at 3:34 PM on September 7, 2022
posted by Oyéah at 3:34 PM on September 7, 2022
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posted by Oyéah at 8:11 AM on September 6, 2022 [5 favorites]