Vi Hart, taking a break from math/music, made a great video[1] on how artists (or "thought leaders", etc) create audiences. She quotes heavily from the forward

Vi Hart, taking a break from math/music, made a great video[1] on how artists (or "thought leaders", etc) create audiences. She quotes heavily from the forward to Edmund Snow Carpenter's book "They became what they beheld", which was probably written (or at least heavily influenced) by Marshall McLuhan. The main thesis is that old-media was about finding channels of distribution. If you didn't utilize existing media channels, nobody would see your ideas. When technology made the mechanics of publication cheap and easy, it became easy for the artist and audience to interact without the need for an imprimatur or interacting with any gatekeeper. True "thought leadership" was made a lot easier - and a lot more powerful - because original thoughts could be conveyed with new types of media to create new audiences. > If you address yourself to an audience, you accept at the outset the basic premises that unite the audience. You put on the audience, repeating cliches familiar to it. But artists don't address themselves; they create audiences. The artist talks to himself out loud. If what he has to say is significant, others hear & are affected. > The trouble with knowing what to say and saying it clearly & fully [old media's methods], is that clear speaking is generally obsoleted thinking. Clear statement is like an art object; it is the afterlife of the process which called it into being. The process itself is the significant step and, especially at the beginning, is often incomplete & uncertain. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, "the medium is the message". Utilizing existing mediums is by definition following what worked successfully in the past; the "thought leaders" and avant-garde artist are seen as "leaders" because they utilize new mediums, not just new messages. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4