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I worked building content sites pre-youtube stars that the same audience gravitates towards. Primarily, I was one of the main designers on giantbomb and gamespo
by snide 7y ago
I worked building content sites pre-youtube stars that the same audience gravitates towards. Primarily, I was one of the main designers on giantbomb and gamespot over the years.
The publishing industry is kind of terrible, and the line between real journalism and critique died somewhere around 2008. If I were to pick a point, I'd look to when Jeff was fired by CNET after he gave Kane and Lynch an unfavorable review. But you can see it in the degradation of every major gaming news outlet that used to have full-time employees with a platform stable enough to not bow down to PR teams.
That type of blowback would never happen today because any journalistic wall between the PR folks pushing these products and the content creators no longer exists. YouTube has successfully weaponized content. We like to talk a lot today about how great it is that we don't see ads. That's kind of lie. They are certainly there and we see them everyday, it's just now embedded in the content itself. The journos can't compete, because the PR firms block access to coverage unless the story is preconceived. As an example, back in the day we used to boycott Call of Duty "review" events where they'd fly you in a helicopter at a hotel so you could play the game for 6 hours with someone over your shoulder.
Fandom and "fun" content creation was always a loose proposition ("will i still be doing this at 40" was the bar night saying), but now it's just a quick hit slog. I sympathize with these folks to a degree. They're all independent, they all have no idea if this will be a job even next year, so of course they will take on any sort of shilling to keep their dream going. They need to hustle. It's like running a one-person startup.
I'm more worried about the 10s of thousands of other sad bedrooms where this is pushed as a real industry and a way of life. When startups fail, we engineers and designers fall back to jobs with the skills we learned. It's not as easy for people whose skill was trying to be funny on camera. There's a lot of people chasing the dream at the moment, and of course that's no different than trying to be a movie star, but part of me winces when I open up twitch and see that all this awkwardness is so public and often permanent.
If anyone is curious about where some of this could go, I'd recommend reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, a sort of near-future fiction that got a lot of this stuff right before it happened. I consider it the Network (as in the 70s movie) of our age. I fear for the day when the influencers and streamers make their way out of their bedrooms and into our public spaces, and we'll all be part of the show.
- okareaman 7y ago> I fear for the day when the influencers and streamers make their way out of their bedrooms and into our public spaces, and we'll all be part of the show. I read a lot of complaints about Instagram influencers at Burning Man and how people (men) are trying to sabotage their video shoots by wandering behind the shot with no pants on.
- pjc50 7y agoThat's hilarious. The way to privacy is to ... wander around naked, because male nudity is outside the commoditisation zone?
- okareaman 7y agoI don't know why, but there is something really unattractive about an older man wearing a t-shirt and no pants (the recommended sabotage outfit.) I imagine the teen audience of the influencers would feel uncomfortable by this.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoIf you can't deal with naked dudes you've got no reason to be at a burn. Almost a raison d'etre to go, even.
- hindsightbias 7y agoIf there was a patreon performer who would do this behind all the influencers hogging National Park scenic spots, I would love to fund that. Someone was wondering if poopers in front of new condo developments was neighborly gratis or a new subversive campaign.
- eropple 7y agoDave, site's down. ;) For real though, I don't have much to add to what you're saying here, but I did want to say "thank you" for your work; I literally can't guess at the hours of enjoyment I've gotten over the years from Gamespot/GB. And, personally, I've always low-key had an eye on the games and games journalism space and Gamespot/Giant Bomb being what they were and are, while the space changed around it...hit home that while I might've wanted to do what Giant Bomb does, I wouldn't want to do what everybody else does. I think your analysis is pretty spot-on about the constant shilling; I know a couple creators whose endorsements shouldn't mean squat given what they knew about the products when they endorsed it, I don't even mean the NordVPN stuff. But they need to figure out some way, any way, to actually make money off of this stuff. Patreon is a sorta-answer, but Patreon are kinda pricks and they own your patrons instead of you owning your patrons, so you're stuck there, too. Good times. I don't know what the next step forward is. Floatplane is interesting...but Floatplane wants to use YouTube as the minor leagues to pull creators, and I genuinely don't know if there's enough organic lead generation to do that in a sustainable way that doesn't just privilege existing voices. I have no idea what comes next there. I've been writing a "Wordpress for podcast networks" web app as of late ('cause Wordpress is not great for podcasts, though people use it) to help people self-host that stuff, but video is expensive.