emotional vs financial investment

 or

an oral history of YouTube from someone who lived through it and was vaguely aware of what was happening

PICTURE THIS!

The year is 2005 or so. YouTube is a relatively new video hosting site that's seeing organic growth of a community of creators who like making videos. Nobody really knew how to make money off of the internet at this point. You could sell merch? Maybe But anyway the central argument is that the people who made Youtube into a platform where people would go to watch videos largely weren't interested in making money from it. They liked making videos that people watched and they were able to connect with fans and other content creators. Anything was possible and new discoveries were being made all the time.

But eventually a critical mass was reached where Youtube was purchased by Google in 2006 and Youtube primarily became a vehicle to generate ad revenue. And at that point Youtube had to change its relationship to people who made videos. My impression was that before any money was being made, Youtube the company was very much of the attitude that we're all one big happy family and this is a community and everyone is sharing. The moment ad money came in it very quickly became, 'we own what you upload to YouTube and this is our cut and we can run ads on anything we dang well please.' More or less. I'm painting in really broad strokes but I think it is true to say that at some point Youtube felt like a pretty small place and there wasn't that much of a difference between popular creators and the people who ran the company. 

And I remember seeing reactions of people who were upset by this change-- arguing that the only reason Youtube could sell ads was because of the audience brought in by those creators. And they were happy to do that work BUT if money is going to be involved it's kind of insulting to set up an arrangement where they're just getting pennies and lose out on the autonomy they had. 

It seems like a trend that repeats itself again and again in different ways all over all the time. People who love doing something will do it and grow a community until there's a profit to be made and then everyone has to answer to the dollar. And like, a true die-hard enthusiast and business minded people often have opposing interests. 

I think it can be fought. I think it's a fight worth fighting. Fighting the idea of 'constant growth'. What about culture and enrichment  and freaking charm? You wanna know something about charm? People who like charm, love charm. And people who don't find something charming, they don't. But the kind of lowest common denominator, mass appeal, inoffensive as possible, design by committee, constant growth, malaise. Nobody loves that. I guess people can't really hate it either but if you don't have active love and charm and personality then what's even the point?! 

The carcass will blow away into a fine dust instead of thickening into a rich slime that nourishes the dense green hedges of flowers and thorns.