[corry]

Classic PG essay in a lot of ways, but I was expecting (a) the entire watch discussion to be 1/10th of its length, and (b) lead DIRECTLY into a social commentary around how every area -- politics, software dev, music creation & distribution etc -- are now firmly in their terminal brand ages.

A political admin lies directly to your face daily - well, the base doesn't care because they've bought into the brand. The Truth and principles are irrelevant.

A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Creating software used to be a very human thing - empathetic understanding of the user's problems, a dash of inspiration and good taste, and you get some cool stuff and possibly a valuable company; but now, if all that's automated, what is it? The craft is irrelevant.

Hmmmm. Perhaps his essay wasn't dark enough.

[aalukabi]

I thought the essay would get into current events, but I felt sad that it didn't. And I don't feel it was dark, it was just just a chapter of history.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Kudos! This comment really gave simplicity to my feelings on this whole thing too! (Favourited your comment)

I just want to add a minor point that the marketing/advertising industry in general just sometimes feels very unethical to me and I am worried about that too.

Increasingly so, The only way to survive in brand age is to connect to two or three centralized platforms. Authenticity feels redundant.

> A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Although I could've ended my comment previously, I do think that there are just very few cracks and ripples within the algorithm. At some point we have to step up to preserve authenticity. It isn't as if those people aren't trying but that you can't find them.

I found this person who makes music[0] on my youtube shorts on how his genz cousin told him to make videos of his everday life with his music in background (He sells pizzas and left college to make music) and there is a small community of viewers/music listeners who have joined him now. It made me genuinely think and stop from the doom scroll, Although small but it was one sure of an experience.

I do think that if there is a race to the bottom for code/infra/even marketing. At some point, the idea becomes of fulfilling/creating an experience but I do think that the passion of the people who create things isn't gone to waste because the passion that they applied into creating any form of software now, can be reflected back to the user in form of experience.

Atleast that's my take. Another product I found interesting like this was fluxer.gg[1](discord alternative)

Maybe there can be a platform/mass adoption of the thing where one can just share cool people doing cool things and have links of them which can say "hey check them out! What they are doing is cool"

(I actually tried out some bookmark app just right now but funny thing happened haha where it accidentally destroyed my whole collection as I tried to have a collection name be All, and they don't have support so that I can't even guide them to fix it :/ so its better if we use open source solutions in this maybe, Luckily I was only trying it out but this actually makes me feel like this sharing should be made easier and less error prone

it would be hard to see if average people realize this and if they do end up doing it at decent scale where it makes meaningful difference tho.)

Edit: I rediscovered Linkhut, it feels really good as well. I will be having some fun with it especially with the social elements of it, its front page is about what the official logo of html should be :D (https://ln.ht)

[0]Fuji Gateway - Tuesdays, Am I Right? (Official Lyric Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijjb_0RW28c

[1]Fluxer: https://fluxer.gg

[corry]

Nice points! You reminded me that, actually, contrary to my hand-wringing, the IG algorithm is excellent (for me) when it comes to recommending music - and it's often artists with very few monthly listeners on Spotify.

Why is IG so much better than Spotify itself's algo? Or YouTube's? Or... etc? No idea. And also - it's always paid ads from these artists that get me.

So on the one hand, <insert my original point>; but on the other, as much as technology is perhaps driving the brand hollowness, it's also allow for more long-tail discovery precisely because it makes powerful marketing/advertising channels accessible to that girl making beats in her bedroom - so long as she has a bit of $ to deploy. It still may not be profitable for her (because: Spotify) but I also try to support these artists with merch buys, physical buys, etc.