A lot of so-called value in the stock market is based on the notion that advertising works and is valuable.
Google and facebook are only as valuable as they are because the market assumes that their audience’s attention has a certain value for advertisers. They are basing this on old notions like a billboard having a certain rental value depending on its location and the amount of street traffic.
Think about this for a minute.
A major cornerstone of Western economics is now advertising. Not making things we need. Not fixing infrastructure we have. Not even making the shit that they’re trying to get us to buy.
Advertising. Illusions and bullshit. Barkers and touts on digital street corners. And here we are, wandering those corners, ignoring all of it. Valuable? Think that all you want, oh Wall Street goons, but sooner or later gold spray-painting bullshit to sell to each other will stop working.
What’s a major trope we’re seeing these days? “Millennials are killing the (insert advertising reliant, bullshit product here) industry!”
But why are millennials killing the diamond industry? Is it because the diamond industry is spending less money on marketing?
No. It is because their fucking advertising doesn’t work anymore. They are realizing this. The shit is about to hit the fan, because as soon as the advertisers realize that advertising isn’t worth what they’ve been paying for it, this whole inflated digital market is going to crash.
That’s one thing, and it’s not great for anyone. But if any of your plans for your career or income involve advertising revenue from content generation: buckle up. It is not going to pan out for you the way you think.
The whole instagram famous, youtuber millionaire industry is going to crash too. Soon.
The only way forward for normal folk is for consumers to start paying creators directly. We have to stop stealing content, and we have to start supporting creators. As individual consumers, we must do this.
If we don’t, very soon, there will be very little content left that hasn’t been churned through the entertainment industry’s digestive tract for extrusion through the streaming feeding tubes.
Find what you like as an audience. Work until you find an audience. Support each other. This is the only way.
Person to person. A human connection. This is what is valuable. This has value.
It always has.
Muse Vassal 