[twelfthnight]

So, marketing is inevitable and necessary, but I have a hypothesis that the current Internet is making it worse. For example, creators (I'm lumping in researchers with songwriters, actors, etc) used to focus on passing the hurdle of getting an "elite" power (record company, publisher, University) to support them. Once over that hurdle, they specialized in creating and left marketing to the elite.

The elites would pressure the creators to do things they thought were marketable, but it didn't always work because creators had some leverage in negotiation and a small number of elites actually cared about making good stuff.

Now, there are fewer gatekeepers, but instead there is an all powerful algorithm. Creators all have to do their own marketing in addition to creating, and the algorithm can't be negotiated with.

So what we wind up with is insipid YouTube thumbnails and myriad academic papers with breathless "state of the art" claims.

There are tradeoffs, but I do think it's worth noticing how effectively we've started to reward creators for marketing rather than creating.