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A list of the top recipients on Patreon shows an obsession with the ordinary

andybak 7y ago
What a bizarre distinction. I'm not even sure I understand the classification. Art can make the ordinary transcendent - it's the treatment not the subject matter.
- xxxpupugo 7y ago
  It seems the author believes that American as an identity bares great significance that Americans were and should be destined to greatness, or at least in favor of such ambitious ideals. But let's be honest. The idea of human has mission to achieve greatness by itself is, just a belief. Human life can be any form it needs to be, if the owner him/herself desires so. And the in the age of internet, it is easy to at least observe afar what your desired life would be like by watching others do it. I'd argue people are much aware and resourceful to decide what he/she wants to be, and being ordinary yet full-filling is perfectly fine goal to pursue, and it is arguably not easy still.
patternmaster 7y ago
Very odd article.. When looked to see the name of the author, I was very surprised to see economist Tyler Cowen
- chongli 7y ago
  If you had read the book The Case Against Education by his George Mason University colleague, Bryan Caplan, then you might not be as surprised. That economics department seems to be a haven for libertarian thought, opera, classical music, and Renaissance paintings.
  - patternmaster 7y ago
    I did happen to read that book. Still I don't see what beef a libertarian economist should have with voluntary donations to "ordinary" causes.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or an electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, 'How beautiful.' The World is Beautiful - that is the title of the well-known picture book by Renger-Patzsch in which we see New Objectivity photography at its peak. It has succeeded in turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment. For it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption. -- Walter Benjamin, lecture at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris, 27th April 1934 > The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment… To believe that such a society will become more “cultured” as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers’ society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches. -- Hannah Arendt, "Between Past and Future"
- new2628 7y ago
  Nice finds, and both quotes strike me as quite insightful and prescient.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    The article made me think of the first one, then I thought of the second one and added it to explain what might be wrong with turning everything into an object of consumption. To be honest, I don't know a lot about the work of Walter Benjamin, maybe he also had more to say on this. But I do know that Hannah Arendt was on to a lot, and is as timely as ever. I love and recommend her more than I can say. > When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the market cheaply and attain huge sales, this does not affect the nature of the objects in question. But their nature is affected when these objects themselves are changed rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction, or in preparation for the movies. This does not mean that culture spreads to the masses, but that culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment. > The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and those who actively promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley composers but a special kind of intellectuals, often well read and well informed, whose sole function is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to persuade the masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and perhaps educational as well. There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Culture - Its Social and Its Political Significance", http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v2.pdf http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v...
SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
Culture evolves, and people increasingly question tradition for tradition's sake. Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world, the decision to have children or not has many contributing factors (economic, for one), and it's hard to be patriotic when every country has so many skeletons in the closet you'd think it's perpetually Halloween.
- superqwert 7y ago
  > Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world No, it's not. > it's hard to be patriotic when every country has so many skeletons in the closet you'd think it's perpetually Halloween When did nations not have skeletons in their closets?
- baud147258 7y ago
  > Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world I'd say both are orthogonal to each other. The religious view of the world explain the "why do we exist?" and the scientific view the "how do we exist?".
  - krapp 7y ago
    Religion lays claim to both the why and the how. The belief that "religion explains why and science explains how" is entirely modern. For most of human history (until secular science arose as a concept,) every aspect of the material world was seen as having been created and controlled by divine powers. Even when "natural laws" were discovered, those laws were divine in origin, and thus could conceivably be arbitrarily suspended or changed under divine will. God created the heavens and the earth, created man from the dust of the earth, and woman from man's rib. There's no room in that for the big bang, modern cosmology or evolution - one cannot accept the latter while believing the former to be anything but prose, which would make it no longer religion. Thus religion can only coexist with science as long as religion isn't taken seriously.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Sure, if you define religion as literal interpretation of the Bible, stuck in the 9th century, while allowing science the full benefit of modern understanding. For example, you probably didn't have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism in mind when you said religion. > Even when "natural laws" were discovered, those laws were divine in origin, and thus could conceivably be arbitrarily suspended or changed under divine will. We still don't know the origin of natural laws. It's very probable that such knowledge is unattainable.
jetru 7y ago
So true. So many people I know and myself included are tired of the "rat race". We don't want to keep working for nothing, we don't want to keep hoping for that next raise, we don't want to pretend to be smarter or cooler or better than we are. What a horrible way to live in the age of plenty. Maybe, we like cold pizza. Bougey is a dirty word. We want to chill. We want fairness. Simplicity is where Happiness lies. There's nothing bad about that. What is "grand" anyway? Those 500 people currently living that the rest 7+ billion should aspire to be? Nah. I'd rather be like my grandfather. Smiling even when I'm old. It's hearkening back to a simpler time, and this gives me hope that more people might be "getting it" edit: typos
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  In case anyone else gets stuck on 'bougey', it is apparently an abbreviation of bourgeoisie. Is this US slang?
  - palebluedot 7y ago
    Yes, and as far as I can tell, relatively new. I learned it from my middle school child last year.
  - LogicX 7y ago
    Yes, I think it's actually out of vogue now, but a few years ago it was trendy to describe things as bougey: bougey (pronounced: boo-G) a condensed version of the word bourgeoise, used to refer to capitalists, the upper class, gaudiness, and profit-oriented viewpoints http://bougey.urbanup.com/4157958 http://bougey.urbanup.com/4157958
  - kipari 7y ago
    Usually it's spelled 'bougie' cf. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bougie https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bougie
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Unfortunately the slang tends to refer to acts or items that are expensive, rather than, y'know, class relations or members of the French Third Estate.
nindalf 7y ago
Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. According to him, there is nothing special about folks creating podcasts, but there is something special about a singer-songwriter. He does not say why. Take https://www.patreon.com/sonicether https://www.patreon.com/sonicether who earns $50k a month creating shaders for Minecraft. That sounds mundane until you realise that he's probably enabling tens of thousands of people to create transcendent art from the comfort of their homes. He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years. If you want to appreciate your fine classical works in a museum while listening to an orchestra and sipping your Pinot Noir, that's fine. But I think it's incorrect to presume to know what "real" culture is and labeling everything else "ordinary".
- phoe-krk 7y ago
  > Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is not classifiable like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for me.
  - justanothersys 7y ago
    Art’s subjectivity has been debated since forever. It’s not a fact. That being said, I also didn’t enjoy the point of view in the article very much and I mostly agree with your sentiment.
  - scrdhrt 7y ago
    Art is whatever you get away with.
dbcooper 7y ago
Anyone who can't recognise the genius of Nick Mullen and Cum Town deserves to find disappointment.
- _--___-___ 7y ago
  my man laughing cause he know
noobermin 7y ago
It is rather convenient the author defines "mundane" as things he doesn't like and "grand" as things he does like. It sounds like he's merely upset that a majority of patrons on patreon don't share his tastes.
- 0815test 7y ago
  This, so much. I for one find the vast majority of so-called "high art" and "high culture" to be frankly depressing and off-putting, rather than "grand" or "transcendent" in any way. In the best of cases this is somewhat offset by the HNish intellectual interest and curiosity one can take in the stuff (and some variant of this is an often-cited point that's supposed to demonstrate the superiority of "high" culture) but all things considered, I'd rather explore the hidden intellectual interest of things that are usually dismissed as mundane, "middlebrow" or even "lowbrow".
itemGrey 7y ago
> As today’s young become wealthier and more philanthropic Is this correct? My understanding was today's youth in the U.S are taking on more debt than ever.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I wouldn't interpret comparing one generation to a previous generation but against itself as it grows older. (as in, most people earn more money and become more able to donate money as they get older)
raxxorrax 7y ago
I cannot really understand the perspective of this assesment. Perhaps these "ordinary ambitions" have become something unachievable by so many people, that it can highlight the relativity of the statement itself? Starting "culture wars" about mundane shit isn't my definition of extraordinary either. If so, Burger King vs. McDonalds could be a culture war. But compare that content to former reality TV and I can only see improvement everywhere. On the other hand, I don't mind the loss of splendor, pomp and royal weddings. I do like architecture and jazz though. But yes, I would prefer to have an "ordinary" house first instead of some abstract effort to build the pyramids 2.0. Does the author work for a bank?
colechristensen 7y ago
Those are some pretty -- to use the author's word -- transcendent conclusions to draw from a top 50 Patreon list. Even if you were assuming the patrons were all American (obviously false) the most popular creator would have fewer than 1 in 10,000 people subscribing. Patreon is an obscure way to fund yourself that a very small number of people make their living from, it's not a bellwether for the American heart. I don't know what high brow things the author finds missing from the list that would change his conclusion, but this seems very much like a conclusion looking for scant evidence for to justify something to write. That page would have been better left blank.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
'Ninety percent of everything is crap' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- AlexDragusin 7y ago
  Hey, the Internet called, it wants its tagline back!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 7y ago
A recent survey of American values indicates that patriotism, belief in God and having children all rate much lower than they did 20 years ago. Gosh, one wonders what could have happened? Maybe two decades of pointless soul-rotting stupid wars, all supported by the most patriotic and pious among us? That has certainly sapped this correspondent's patriotism. (His piety, though, something else sapped that...) Next you'll be telling us that trigger-happy crowd-murders are more common, and we'll think of all the wedding parties, funerals, open markets, etc. we've incinerated in the Middle East. It's as if chickens... come home to roost! TFA is definitely the most pedestrian, limp, effort-free deposit one has ever read from Cowen.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > Maybe twenty years of pointless soul-rotting stupid wars > Next you'll be telling us that trigger-happy crowd-murders are more common > It's as if chickens... come home to roost! I'm a bit confused, are you of the mind that there is some relation between mass-shooters and the wars in the Middle East? Or just those wars are why people feel less positive about patriotism?
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I've been around long enough to have seen karma in action. If I pay enough attention, I often find that "karma" is another name for "obvious consequences". The things that we're encouraged to blame for these mass murders: guns, crazy people, Republicans, white supremacists, etc. we've always had in USA. What has changed? I submit that over time we've been subjected to ever-increasing levels of war-media conditioning. We're constantly encouraged to fear, to hate, to destroy. Right now we're hating on Iranians and Venezuelans, with plenty of leftover hatred for Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, etc. The idea is that we'll funnel that insanity into voting for, or at least tolerating, increased payments to armaments manufacturers, and the contrived wars necessary to "justify" same. Some people just aren't mentally pliable enough to focus on the desired end goal. If you tell them often enough to fear and kill, eventually that's what they'll do. Maybe they'll try to kill mostly "others" on their killing sprees, but maybe they're such loners that anyone human parses as "other" to them. It's not a coincidence that the "first" one of these things took place in 1966. The military-media-industrial complex was pulling out all the stops on their first big project since Korea. Yes, also, obviously, the wars have killed patriotism among thinking people. Again, though, it hasn't just been the wars, but also the industrial-strength war-media war conditioning that was necessary to bring them about.
bakuninsbart 7y ago
He mentions Kurzgesagt as a positive example - but ignores other educational channels like CGP Grey, CrashCourse and ContraPoints. - There's also many more highly educational podcasts and youtube channels that are very popular. Entertainment has shifted from TV to the internet in recent years, and as it grew more popular it also grew more mundane. - But looking at TV entertainment of previous decades, I think it is hard to claim there has been a reduction in quality.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- longtom 7y ago
  "ContraPoints" is not an education channel.
  - kingbruce90 7y ago
    Political education is education even if it's also propaganda (in the sense of information designed to persuade). A large number of political YouTube channels across the political spectrum could be called educational.
    - longtom 7y ago
      No, it's something like political satire or political entertainment. If the category education should mean anything then it certainly does not include a man pretending to be a woman pushing political agendas in some completely overblown and sexualized manner. This is ridiculous.
parsimo2010 7y ago
I don't think that examining the breakdown of one funding source is indicative of a shift in culture. Especially not a funding source like Patreon. Patreon is especially suited for funding ongoing efforts or something that has a recurring payoff (weekly podcasts, YouTube videos, or regular releases of comics). That lends itself to "mundane" things as the author puts it. If you want to create a magnum opus you need to raise funds for a single big effort, so something like Kickstarter is a lot more appropriate. I'm sure if the author perused Kickstarter they would find many "grand" ideas. There is also traditional funding for established creators looking to do something grand. If you are a director looking to create the masterpiece to cap your career, chances are that you're getting a movie studio to pay for it based on your previous successes. The same goes for successful artists in most fields that can use their reputation to fund something grand. Looking at Patreon only gives you a single piece of the puzzle.
glangdale 7y ago
It's amusing that the only sign of a "culture war" here is the author's tendentious carping about, of all things, the Patreon Top 50 list. Why? Very possibly, if you are doing things that random economics professors consider "transcendent", you are probably extremely well served by the far more lucrative network of grants and funding that exists outside Patreon. He nods briefly to this idea before rejecting it and just plain making some shit up: "Maybe, but there is another possibility: that Patreon is the tip of an ever-growing iceberg." Awful.
jamisteven 7y ago
How exactly, is this "culture war"?
mcv 7y ago
The article identifies a culture war between the ordinary and the transcendent, and sees in the Patreon top 50 that the ordinary has won, but it doesn't do a great job of how it determines how it classifies the entries. Apparently a political podcast is ordinary, things that are NSFW or dealing with history are ordinary, and photos of New Yorkers are ordinary. The only things it considers transcendent are educational videos and Amanda Palmer. As examples of what he means by transcendent, he mentions ancient Greeks, Christianity, Enlightenment, classical music, the US Constitution and scientific revolutions. But honestly, hasn't the ordinary always outnumbered the transcendent? There first needs to be an 'ordinary' to transcend. Even during the height of enlightenment, the world was filled with the ordinary. We remember the transcendent because it is what changes things.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  Especially as there are creators like 3blue1brown on that list. The videos 3blue1brown does should certainly be considered transcendent in the classical sense, those are easily the highest quality math education videos I've ever seen. The linear algebra series definitely expanded my appreciation for the subject in a way no textbook has ever done. Sure, there is crap like MxR Mods on the list, but there is also stuff like crash course & clickspring. I don't know if I'd call clickspring's videos themselves art, but what he is producing in his shop is certainly art and the opportunity to view the process is just magnificent; this is certainly a channel that shows how great online video can be. And Contrapoints; while very much political, does an excellent job of engaging with topics much more deeply than what one normally reads in publications like Bloomberg. I honestly found reading this list encouraging; most of the top 50 creators definitely deserve that place and I'm glad that the people benefiting most from Patreon deserve it. Aside from MxR, he's a cancer on the Bethesda modding scene.
fareesh 7y ago
For those who work there - I am curious, I occasionally come across complaints online that much of Silicon Valley and tech companies have a large "dirtbag left" (not my term, I am referencing what is written in the article) contingent of employees, who actively "cleanse" their ranks of all right-leaning employees. I am inclined to believe this because of past stories involving the Mozilla CEO and the Occulus CEO and James Damore all being fired for basically not having heterodox views. From the comments that I read across various forum websites whenever this topic comes up, the takeaway seems to be a chilling effect POV of "if you're right-leaning, make sure nobody finds out, and just do your job". Of course it's very difficult to form an opinion sitting in another country based on what you read on the internet, so I was curious to know how true it is.
- dade_ 7y ago
  America is so far right of center, many of the so called dirt bag left are actually center right. However, in my experience extreme right wing social conservatives can be pretty good at self-cleansing by constantly sharing their amazing opinions on superior races, the problem with 'those people' and my favorite, informing people that they are living in sin.
  - fareesh 7y ago
    In the present tense the problem of bigotry seems universal regardless of political affiliation. It is just the category of people who are discriminated against, that changes, depending on the offending party's preferences
david_blitz1 7y ago
"Alas [...] Eight of the top 50 are marked “NSFW” (not safe for work)." This is straight 19th century stuff. I think it's safe to say that western art lost its "safe for work" status like 200 years ago. I suggest the author should grow up and get an education..
aaaaarghZombies 7y ago
What did they expect? Popular and ordinary are essentially synonyms when it comes to taste. Also this: "As today’s young become wealthier [...]" . Where's the evidence fit this assertion?
GoodJokes 7y ago
what a host article. The only ordinary thing is the completely ordinary opinion expressed in it.
ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
“Top 40s are shit”. Obviously. But this has been the case since kingdom come and gone.
HeadsUpHigh 7y ago
Imagine being so butthurt that people don't care about your overpriced high culture.

What a bizarre distinction. I'm not even sure I understand the classification. Art can make the ordinary transcendent - it's the treatment not the subject matter.

xxxpupugo 7y ago
It seems the author believes that American as an identity bares great significance that Americans were and should be destined to greatness, or at least in favor of such ambitious ideals. But let's be honest. The idea of human has mission to achieve greatness by itself is, just a belief. Human life can be any form it needs to be, if the owner him/herself desires so. And the in the age of internet, it is easy to at least observe afar what your desired life would be like by watching others do it. I'd argue people are much aware and resourceful to decide what he/she wants to be, and being ordinary yet full-filling is perfectly fine goal to pursue, and it is arguably not easy still.

patternmaster 7y ago

Very odd article.. When looked to see the name of the author, I was very surprised to see economist Tyler Cowen

chongli 7y ago
If you had read the book The Case Against Education by his George Mason University colleague, Bryan Caplan, then you might not be as surprised. That economics department seems to be a haven for libertarian thought, opera, classical music, and Renaissance paintings.
- patternmaster 7y ago
  I did happen to read that book. Still I don't see what beef a libertarian economist should have with voluntary donations to "ordinary" causes.

PavlovsCat 7y ago

> But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or an electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, 'How beautiful.' The World is Beautiful - that is the title of the well-known picture book by Renger-Patzsch in which we see New Objectivity photography at its peak. It has succeeded in turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment. For it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption. -- Walter Benjamin, lecture at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris, 27th April 1934 > The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment… To believe that such a society will become more “cultured” as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers’ society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches. -- Hannah Arendt, "Between Past and Future"

new2628 7y ago
Nice finds, and both quotes strike me as quite insightful and prescient.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  The article made me think of the first one, then I thought of the second one and added it to explain what might be wrong with turning everything into an object of consumption. To be honest, I don't know a lot about the work of Walter Benjamin, maybe he also had more to say on this. But I do know that Hannah Arendt was on to a lot, and is as timely as ever. I love and recommend her more than I can say. > When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the market cheaply and attain huge sales, this does not affect the nature of the objects in question. But their nature is affected when these objects themselves are changed rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction, or in preparation for the movies. This does not mean that culture spreads to the masses, but that culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment. > The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and those who actively promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley composers but a special kind of intellectuals, often well read and well informed, whose sole function is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to persuade the masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and perhaps educational as well. There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Culture - Its Social and Its Political Significance", http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v2.pdf http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v...

SturgeonsLaw 7y ago

Culture evolves, and people increasingly question tradition for tradition's sake. Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world, the decision to have children or not has many contributing factors (economic, for one), and it's hard to be patriotic when every country has so many skeletons in the closet you'd think it's perpetually Halloween.

superqwert 7y ago
> Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world No, it's not. > it's hard to be patriotic when every country has so many skeletons in the closet you'd think it's perpetually Halloween When did nations not have skeletons in their closets?
baud147258 7y ago
> Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world I'd say both are orthogonal to each other. The religious view of the world explain the "why do we exist?" and the scientific view the "how do we exist?".
- krapp 7y ago
  Religion lays claim to both the why and the how. The belief that "religion explains why and science explains how" is entirely modern. For most of human history (until secular science arose as a concept,) every aspect of the material world was seen as having been created and controlled by divine powers. Even when "natural laws" were discovered, those laws were divine in origin, and thus could conceivably be arbitrarily suspended or changed under divine will. God created the heavens and the earth, created man from the dust of the earth, and woman from man's rib. There's no room in that for the big bang, modern cosmology or evolution - one cannot accept the latter while believing the former to be anything but prose, which would make it no longer religion. Thus religion can only coexist with science as long as religion isn't taken seriously.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Sure, if you define religion as literal interpretation of the Bible, stuck in the 9th century, while allowing science the full benefit of modern understanding. For example, you probably didn't have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism in mind when you said religion. > Even when "natural laws" were discovered, those laws were divine in origin, and thus could conceivably be arbitrarily suspended or changed under divine will. We still don't know the origin of natural laws. It's very probable that such knowledge is unattainable.

jetru 7y ago

So true. So many people I know and myself included are tired of the "rat race". We don't want to keep working for nothing, we don't want to keep hoping for that next raise, we don't want to pretend to be smarter or cooler or better than we are. What a horrible way to live in the age of plenty. Maybe, we like cold pizza. Bougey is a dirty word. We want to chill. We want fairness. Simplicity is where Happiness lies. There's nothing bad about that. What is "grand" anyway? Those 500 people currently living that the rest 7+ billion should aspire to be? Nah. I'd rather be like my grandfather. Smiling even when I'm old. It's hearkening back to a simpler time, and this gives me hope that more people might be "getting it" edit: typos

Freak_NL 7y ago
In case anyone else gets stuck on 'bougey', it is apparently an abbreviation of bourgeoisie. Is this US slang?
- palebluedot 7y ago
  Yes, and as far as I can tell, relatively new. I learned it from my middle school child last year.
- LogicX 7y ago
  Yes, I think it's actually out of vogue now, but a few years ago it was trendy to describe things as bougey: bougey (pronounced: boo-G) a condensed version of the word bourgeoise, used to refer to capitalists, the upper class, gaudiness, and profit-oriented viewpoints http://bougey.urbanup.com/4157958 http://bougey.urbanup.com/4157958
- kipari 7y ago
  Usually it's spelled 'bougie' cf. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bougie https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bougie
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Unfortunately the slang tends to refer to acts or items that are expensive, rather than, y'know, class relations or members of the French Third Estate.

nindalf 7y ago

Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. According to him, there is nothing special about folks creating podcasts, but there is something special about a singer-songwriter. He does not say why. Take https://www.patreon.com/sonicether https://www.patreon.com/sonicether who earns $50k a month creating shaders for Minecraft. That sounds mundane until you realise that he's probably enabling tens of thousands of people to create transcendent art from the comfort of their homes. He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists. Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years. If you want to appreciate your fine classical works in a museum while listening to an orchestra and sipping your Pinot Noir, that's fine. But I think it's incorrect to presume to know what "real" culture is and labeling everything else "ordinary".

phoe-krk 7y ago
> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent. This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent? This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is not classifiable like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for me.
- justanothersys 7y ago
  Art’s subjectivity has been debated since forever. It’s not a fact. That being said, I also didn’t enjoy the point of view in the article very much and I mostly agree with your sentiment.
- scrdhrt 7y ago
  Art is whatever you get away with.

dbcooper 7y ago

Anyone who can't recognise the genius of Nick Mullen and Cum Town deserves to find disappointment.

_--___-___ 7y ago
my man laughing cause he know

noobermin 7y ago

It is rather convenient the author defines "mundane" as things he doesn't like and "grand" as things he does like. It sounds like he's merely upset that a majority of patrons on patreon don't share his tastes.

0815test 7y ago
This, so much. I for one find the vast majority of so-called "high art" and "high culture" to be frankly depressing and off-putting, rather than "grand" or "transcendent" in any way. In the best of cases this is somewhat offset by the HNish intellectual interest and curiosity one can take in the stuff (and some variant of this is an often-cited point that's supposed to demonstrate the superiority of "high" culture) but all things considered, I'd rather explore the hidden intellectual interest of things that are usually dismissed as mundane, "middlebrow" or even "lowbrow".

itemGrey 7y ago

> As today’s young become wealthier and more philanthropic Is this correct? My understanding was today's youth in the U.S are taking on more debt than ever.

colechristensen 7y ago
I wouldn't interpret comparing one generation to a previous generation but against itself as it grows older. (as in, most people earn more money and become more able to donate money as they get older)

raxxorrax 7y ago

I cannot really understand the perspective of this assesment. Perhaps these "ordinary ambitions" have become something unachievable by so many people, that it can highlight the relativity of the statement itself? Starting "culture wars" about mundane shit isn't my definition of extraordinary either. If so, Burger King vs. McDonalds could be a culture war. But compare that content to former reality TV and I can only see improvement everywhere. On the other hand, I don't mind the loss of splendor, pomp and royal weddings. I do like architecture and jazz though. But yes, I would prefer to have an "ordinary" house first instead of some abstract effort to build the pyramids 2.0. Does the author work for a bank?

colechristensen 7y ago

Those are some pretty -- to use the author's word -- transcendent conclusions to draw from a top 50 Patreon list. Even if you were assuming the patrons were all American (obviously false) the most popular creator would have fewer than 1 in 10,000 people subscribing. Patreon is an obscure way to fund yourself that a very small number of people make their living from, it's not a bellwether for the American heart. I don't know what high brow things the author finds missing from the list that would change his conclusion, but this seems very much like a conclusion looking for scant evidence for to justify something to write. That page would have been better left blank.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

'Ninety percent of everything is crap' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

AlexDragusin 7y ago
Hey, the Internet called, it wants its tagline back!

deleted 7y ago

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jessaustin 7y ago

A recent survey of American values indicates that patriotism, belief in God and having children all rate much lower than they did 20 years ago. Gosh, one wonders what could have happened? Maybe two decades of pointless soul-rotting stupid wars, all supported by the most patriotic and pious among us? That has certainly sapped this correspondent's patriotism. (His piety, though, something else sapped that...) Next you'll be telling us that trigger-happy crowd-murders are more common, and we'll think of all the wedding parties, funerals, open markets, etc. we've incinerated in the Middle East. It's as if chickens... come home to roost! TFA is definitely the most pedestrian, limp, effort-free deposit one has ever read from Cowen.

mieseratte 7y ago
> Maybe twenty years of pointless soul-rotting stupid wars > Next you'll be telling us that trigger-happy crowd-murders are more common > It's as if chickens... come home to roost! I'm a bit confused, are you of the mind that there is some relation between mass-shooters and the wars in the Middle East? Or just those wars are why people feel less positive about patriotism?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I've been around long enough to have seen karma in action. If I pay enough attention, I often find that "karma" is another name for "obvious consequences". The things that we're encouraged to blame for these mass murders: guns, crazy people, Republicans, white supremacists, etc. we've always had in USA. What has changed? I submit that over time we've been subjected to ever-increasing levels of war-media conditioning. We're constantly encouraged to fear, to hate, to destroy. Right now we're hating on Iranians and Venezuelans, with plenty of leftover hatred for Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, etc. The idea is that we'll funnel that insanity into voting for, or at least tolerating, increased payments to armaments manufacturers, and the contrived wars necessary to "justify" same. Some people just aren't mentally pliable enough to focus on the desired end goal. If you tell them often enough to fear and kill, eventually that's what they'll do. Maybe they'll try to kill mostly "others" on their killing sprees, but maybe they're such loners that anyone human parses as "other" to them. It's not a coincidence that the "first" one of these things took place in 1966. The military-media-industrial complex was pulling out all the stops on their first big project since Korea. Yes, also, obviously, the wars have killed patriotism among thinking people. Again, though, it hasn't just been the wars, but also the industrial-strength war-media war conditioning that was necessary to bring them about.

bakuninsbart 7y ago

He mentions Kurzgesagt as a positive example - but ignores other educational channels like CGP Grey, CrashCourse and ContraPoints. - There's also many more highly educational podcasts and youtube channels that are very popular. Entertainment has shifted from TV to the internet in recent years, and as it grew more popular it also grew more mundane. - But looking at TV entertainment of previous decades, I think it is hard to claim there has been a reduction in quality.

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longtom 7y ago
"ContraPoints" is not an education channel.
- kingbruce90 7y ago
  Political education is education even if it's also propaganda (in the sense of information designed to persuade). A large number of political YouTube channels across the political spectrum could be called educational.
  - longtom 7y ago
    No, it's something like political satire or political entertainment. If the category education should mean anything then it certainly does not include a man pretending to be a woman pushing political agendas in some completely overblown and sexualized manner. This is ridiculous.

parsimo2010 7y ago

I don't think that examining the breakdown of one funding source is indicative of a shift in culture. Especially not a funding source like Patreon. Patreon is especially suited for funding ongoing efforts or something that has a recurring payoff (weekly podcasts, YouTube videos, or regular releases of comics). That lends itself to "mundane" things as the author puts it. If you want to create a magnum opus you need to raise funds for a single big effort, so something like Kickstarter is a lot more appropriate. I'm sure if the author perused Kickstarter they would find many "grand" ideas. There is also traditional funding for established creators looking to do something grand. If you are a director looking to create the masterpiece to cap your career, chances are that you're getting a movie studio to pay for it based on your previous successes. The same goes for successful artists in most fields that can use their reputation to fund something grand. Looking at Patreon only gives you a single piece of the puzzle.

glangdale 7y ago

It's amusing that the only sign of a "culture war" here is the author's tendentious carping about, of all things, the Patreon Top 50 list. Why? Very possibly, if you are doing things that random economics professors consider "transcendent", you are probably extremely well served by the far more lucrative network of grants and funding that exists outside Patreon. He nods briefly to this idea before rejecting it and just plain making some shit up: "Maybe, but there is another possibility: that Patreon is the tip of an ever-growing iceberg." Awful.

jamisteven 7y ago

How exactly, is this "culture war"?

mcv 7y ago

The article identifies a culture war between the ordinary and the transcendent, and sees in the Patreon top 50 that the ordinary has won, but it doesn't do a great job of how it determines how it classifies the entries. Apparently a political podcast is ordinary, things that are NSFW or dealing with history are ordinary, and photos of New Yorkers are ordinary. The only things it considers transcendent are educational videos and Amanda Palmer. As examples of what he means by transcendent, he mentions ancient Greeks, Christianity, Enlightenment, classical music, the US Constitution and scientific revolutions. But honestly, hasn't the ordinary always outnumbered the transcendent? There first needs to be an 'ordinary' to transcend. Even during the height of enlightenment, the world was filled with the ordinary. We remember the transcendent because it is what changes things.

zrobotics 7y ago
Especially as there are creators like 3blue1brown on that list. The videos 3blue1brown does should certainly be considered transcendent in the classical sense, those are easily the highest quality math education videos I've ever seen. The linear algebra series definitely expanded my appreciation for the subject in a way no textbook has ever done. Sure, there is crap like MxR Mods on the list, but there is also stuff like crash course & clickspring. I don't know if I'd call clickspring's videos themselves art, but what he is producing in his shop is certainly art and the opportunity to view the process is just magnificent; this is certainly a channel that shows how great online video can be. And Contrapoints; while very much political, does an excellent job of engaging with topics much more deeply than what one normally reads in publications like Bloomberg. I honestly found reading this list encouraging; most of the top 50 creators definitely deserve that place and I'm glad that the people benefiting most from Patreon deserve it. Aside from MxR, he's a cancer on the Bethesda modding scene.

fareesh 7y ago

For those who work there - I am curious, I occasionally come across complaints online that much of Silicon Valley and tech companies have a large "dirtbag left" (not my term, I am referencing what is written in the article) contingent of employees, who actively "cleanse" their ranks of all right-leaning employees. I am inclined to believe this because of past stories involving the Mozilla CEO and the Occulus CEO and James Damore all being fired for basically not having heterodox views. From the comments that I read across various forum websites whenever this topic comes up, the takeaway seems to be a chilling effect POV of "if you're right-leaning, make sure nobody finds out, and just do your job". Of course it's very difficult to form an opinion sitting in another country based on what you read on the internet, so I was curious to know how true it is.

dade_ 7y ago
America is so far right of center, many of the so called dirt bag left are actually center right. However, in my experience extreme right wing social conservatives can be pretty good at self-cleansing by constantly sharing their amazing opinions on superior races, the problem with 'those people' and my favorite, informing people that they are living in sin.
- fareesh 7y ago
  In the present tense the problem of bigotry seems universal regardless of political affiliation. It is just the category of people who are discriminated against, that changes, depending on the offending party's preferences

david_blitz1 7y ago

"Alas [...] Eight of the top 50 are marked “NSFW” (not safe for work)." This is straight 19th century stuff. I think it's safe to say that western art lost its "safe for work" status like 200 years ago. I suggest the author should grow up and get an education..

aaaaarghZombies 7y ago

What did they expect? Popular and ordinary are essentially synonyms when it comes to taste. Also this: "As today’s young become wealthier [...]" . Where's the evidence fit this assertion?

GoodJokes 7y ago

what a host article. The only ordinary thing is the completely ordinary opinion expressed in it.

ulisesrmzroche 7y ago

“Top 40s are shit”. Obviously. But this has been the case since kingdom come and gone.

HeadsUpHigh 7y ago

Imagine being so butthurt that people don't care about your overpriced high culture.