We Are All Creative Now

  ~300,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. GOOD LUCK!

  Audio - "Jumping Off Point" 2:37

DRAWING THE LINES

In the beginning, there was only one creator – whoever or whatever dialed in the FORCE that energized the universe. Long story short, there came a reason for being. A little later, CREATIVE TYPES of human debuted with cave paintings, leaving messages on walls that lasted longer than their being. Some of these priceless artifacts will outlive us all, but none will survive to the end of the universe.

CREATIVES have been capturing and coding the world for eons. There was always a storyteller, as there was and is always a story to tell. When hunting and gathering was critical to our tribes, the CREATIVE BEING would have been very unique – assuming they still had to hunt and/or gather for a living.

CREATIVE THINKING was surely an evolutionary advantage at some point. The CREATION of content provided others a life training system that changed everything for humankind. Without the practiced and refined motor skills to RECREATE that which one sees, there would be no history and arguably no civilization.

REVENGE OF THE ARTISTS

CREATIVE ARTS have not always been recognized as a worthy endeavor through all times. NON-CREATIVE types do not have the aptitude or attitude to CREATE, so they aren’t apt to share resources and help those types along. To be realistic, if times are tough in any century and currency, hunting and gathering will always be the necessity.

Upon graduation in 1957, my father’s high school principal told him that he would never make it as an artist. Not because he wasn’t talented, but because there were no big local jobs or easy money ventures in the small world of doctors, lawyers, police officers, firefighters, mechanics, farmers and teachers.

Dad was successfully discouraged from CREATING his own hand-made path to the future, but went on to achieve degrees in Education and Arts anyway. He is forever well known in his community for his capability in art and music, but encouragement would have surely scaled up his ability. You can quell the creativity, but you can’t destroy it.

To this day there are Neanderthal quarters afoot that malign the arts as a less-than worthy fields of endeavor. Unwashed trolls of the political realm will always make education and arts the first budget cuts. Such suppression is needed by these swamp-dwellers so they aren’t out-evolved quite so fast. Smart and cultured subjects do not always make for good office slaves and malleable citizens – they ask pesky questions and don’t always stay between the lines set out for them.

HIGHLY INFLUENCED

Before Y2K/2000, comparatively few people had access to video technology, so post-production was an expensive, time-busting and challenging field to break into. In the social media era (error?), creative content can be made in an instant for free, so it seems everyone wants to do it this instant because they can.

Now that we are all CREATORS, how is this going to work? Not long ago everyone went off to pay for university degrees in business rape-and pillage, North Elbonian history and basket weaving – leaving no one behind to be doctors, lawyers, police officers, firefighters, mechanics, farmers and teachers. If everyone is a creator, who is going to do the hunting and gathering? How do we eat?

I am not old enough to have grade-school grandchildren, but they both told us recently they want to be YouTubers – wannabe content producers. Kids see adult technology and assume it was made for them, because they already know how to use it better. Arrived in the world with phones in their face, they grow up with a fixed arm’s length relationship with apples and androids, and only instant gratification will do until death.

I was mostly concerned with hopelessly fixing my dirt-jumped 10-speed bicycle at their age, but it looks like we’ve already come full creative circle in the family. The kids’ parents are not officially artists, but they are fully immersed in CREATING CREATIVE tools used to help other artists with business management software Dubsado. Lots of molecules rubbed off that branch.

NOT YOUR-TUBE: QUALITY of PRODUCT vs. QUANTITY of REVENUE

As with any success curve, highly successful CREATORS are rare but soak up an overabundance of revenue. There are many good “YouTubers” (97% YT earn less than minimum wage) but a few have figured out how to game the system. It is all about the “algorithm” - the secret recommendation formulas which are rarely even understand by the algorithmers, let alone algorithmees.

Google/Facebook/Apple/Etc is in the business of making money – and they have to make all the money or they take their marbles and go to the next hustle. They do not care a bit if content is good; they just care if you pay for play or keep clicking on the boxed shit they put in front of your face. Free is fantastic, but if you are not a paying customer, you are the product being sold. All the ads mindlessly endured in dead ends make for a lot of billionaires at the head end.

Breaking through on the daily 300,000 videos (YT alone) is akin to winning the lottery, except the next ticket buyer will study and copy exactly what was done to gain algorithmic favor. The other 299,999 videos will be watched only by close relatives or by accident. Get loud, mean or radicalized if you want to rise above the sour cream.

I am always quietly disappointed when a carefully crafted video of mine (complete with pretty cars, music, titles, interviews, graphics, credits etc.) gets a thousand views while a shaky, vertical phone video nothingburger story by another nobody gets 10x that. I am not out for “likes” and don’t do all the boosting needed, but that will have to change soon. How long before silly dances ends as a trend, anyway?

MONEY FOR NOTHING 2022 – DIRE CURVES

The worse half of the micro-production job is all the tagging, linking, hashtagging, ‘gramming and serving the social media masters for access to the play party. Though you will play by their rules, your current YT/FB/TT/SC/IG business model can be at constant risk of harpooning by “algorithm adjustment.” What works today may be lost for unexplainable reasons.

The good news for some is the Walled-Gardens are throwing tons of cash at CREATIVES to produce for their flower demographics, hoping their platform is chosen flavor-of-the-month one day. That success will pay very well for that month, but until then there is no end of investment capital to chase after the content Golden Land.

Social media outlets like Snapchat, Pinterest and many needy Walled-Gardens have been throwing million$ in SCRATCH at the CREATIVE ITCH, knowing the next wave of content CREATOR apps may leave them beached and abandoned.

Throwing around pretend money (so they can pretend they are a player) is the high-tech corporate version of socialism – a bribe offered to people with the money made off same peoples’ backs. $250 million can’t buy you one professional baseball player - maybe we are all playing the wrong game.

  PRO 

  In social media, creators have the programming power. As a result, “social media is effectively a “competition based on popularity, not on quality of content”. It favors the creators with the biggest followings; the bigger the following, the bigger the potential for distribution and influence. 

  CON 

  In social media, creators maintain programming power over what gets seen and when. But in recommendation media, the platform is always in control. Since a platform is in control of what content gets served to who and when, there’s no expectation that a creator’s social network is guaranteed to see their content. Therefore, platforms can also choose what not to program, and there’s little creators can do or say to counteract this.

Source: Connect the New Social in Social Media

THEN THERE WAS LIGHTNING

CREATIVITY, however difficult - has never been so popular, both from a consumption and a delivery standpoint. While there are many more opportunities than ever before, these new digital markets are overwhelmed with many more micro-competitors.

Flip through the online design for hire site fiverr for fiverr minutes be dually amazed: 1) there are so many custom project designers for hire so cheaply, and 2) you have been replaced by the internet and have no chance. Why would anyone pay thousands to your face when they can pay hundreds to someone far away? On the other hand, how does anyone that wants to get rich get there at $5 or $100 and up?

There will be various descriptions of the coming ages, eras or economies since the Information Age is old aged by now. A new BUZZWORD developing is in recognition of the expected CREATIVE ECONOMY. Already 25% of the US workforce toils in what is considered a CREATIVE ROLE.

TURN ON, TUNE IN – DON’T DROP OUT

Our youth are not shy and will do very well with phones on face and faces on phone. Hopefully they will discover phones can also take some pictures and videos horizontally, where viewers can see fewer skies and bellies, the whole group in the “selfie” shot, and wide format landscapes. We can say it was their invention - we can be dazzled as they rotate +/- 90 degrees.

Rather than be turned away by naysayers, people of all ages should embrace the technologies in our hands and in our faces. Accept your fate, and turn on your devices – get ready to learn. It will take days, months and years to figure out the “‘RITHYM” and the “RHYME” of your CREATIVE STREAK, but you may have a few. Do not worry that you will fall behind, as that already happened again while his sentence was being composed.

The best players at any game are the most talented players that never give up. If all odds are against the SELF-STARTER, the payoff for a win is going to be pretty big. The attraction to be a CREATOR, an INFLUENCER, a CREATOR, may secretly be a guiding FORCE within a lot of us.

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Randy Berg

xyz digital inc.

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