These days, people talk a lot about Web 3.0, and everybody being "their own brand" and content creators being fairly rewarded for what they create.
But what are we creating? And why are we creating?
Meanwhile, we increasingly ask for/demand rewards but are we actually adding any value to people's lives, and to the overall data stream?
Sometimes I wonder...
I'll only say this once, but from my perspective of having been a blogger for 25 years, web content has gotten dumber in the time I have been doing this!
I don't say that as a direct criticism of anyone — after all, markets tend to find their own equilibrium; a sort of demand-and-supply in terms of what is considered worthwhile, and what is not.
I have heard and read — a great many times — that "blogging is out" with the rationale offered that "nobody has time" to read long form content. If I were to take that at face value and contemplate what is "in," in its place, I end up at memes everybody's already shared a million times and 30-second Tiktok clips of somebody doing something stupid.
On a much larger scale, consider YouTube's "600lb gorilla" of creators, Jimmy Donaldson, aka "Mr. Beast." He has over 300 million subscribers on YouTube... but have you actually ever paused to consider what his content really is made up of?
Although there are definitely exceptions — to be fair — the vast majority of that content is basically "immature 13-year old boy humor."
And it is being "consumed" to the tune of 150 million+ views per video, which by most calculations ends up at income somewhere north of $500,000 per clip.
Of course, it all begs the question of what "value" actually means.
When I look around me at the world, there's clearly entertainment value there (at least for some people), even if there are no other socially redeeming qualities.
Which leads me to the topic of learning. Do we even care, anymore? Or is the entire notion of "learning something" changing in such a way that we consider what we can glean from a meme or a 250-character tweet sufficient depth to forego reading about — and studying — something in detail?
Is the assumption there that if something actually sounds interesting from a meme, the old "I can Google that!" method applies?
There is ultimately a problem with that assumption because if we are entirely reliant on "snippets," who is going to create the foundation of information about any given thing? Are we going to depend on AI?
As far as I am concerned, the jury is out, on that one.
Which leads me back to my original perspective, which is that I am just not prepared to just "go with the flow" towards this strange abbreviated world, because I just don't feel like it adds much value to the data stream... and to the world, in general. And so, I don't really want to be part of the problem, by simple resigning myself to going with the flow.
Of course, that's just my opinion... which is not to say that I am right or even know what I am talking about!
Thanks for visiting and having a look at my blog, and till the next one!
