This newsletter isn't going to be as technical as last week, and it's definitely going to read a bit more subjective.
While watching RedLetterMedia's criticism video of Star Trek: Picard, I was reminded of something that’s crossed my mind a bunch lately: how much of something’s success is dependent on the creator “not knowing what they’re doing?”
I don’t mean this in the incompetence sense, but more related to the blank slate of the creation itself. Since there’s no pressure to “be something” or improve/relate to a prior work, the people making something experience a greater degree of freedom, can explore further, and generally have a better chance (at least in my opinion) of creating something truly great.
While I haven’t watched any “new Star Trek”, Discovery and Picard seem burdened by both the expectation that they will appeal to modern standards of entertainment while wearing the skin of past successes. It feels like not many people win from this kind of arrangement; as described in the video, the desire of the actors, producers and showrunners to “make a modern Star Trek” seems to add unnecessary weight and pretense.
Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t know it was going to be this milestone science-fiction show with societal implications. It was just this show, with actors acting, directors directing, and writers writing. While yes, there was concern and conflict from the fans of the original series, it still was brave enough to step out in a different direction because it felt that it could. There wasn’t a concern of “we have to respect the legacy of decades of Star Trek,” and also make it into a media juggernaut; simply, it was “the next generation.” Of course, there was the expectation for it to do well, but probably not on the scale of Star Wars or Marvel franchises today.
When I played Death Stranding, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Hideo Kojima felt comfort in not having to make a Metal Gear sequel, but also was constrained by his desire to “make a Hideo Kojima game.” How a creator navigates this feeling of obligation can either free or constrain you.
I don’t know; this doesn’t feel like a complete thought, but I’ve become extremely comfortable leaving behind properties that don’t appeal to me any more. New Star Wars and Star Trek is literally “not for me” in the sense of the audience that they’re trying to reach isn’t me. And that’s okay. It’s allowed to be. And I’m allowed to go somewhere else.
Relating it to creating
I bring this up because a common question I get from people is “what advice do you have for someone just starting out?”
I feel this question comes from a desire to both avoid pitfalls and to progress towards “doing numbers” as quickly as possible. For a lot of creators, these numbers (follower counts, engagement numbers, traffic, sales, etc) represent markets of success, and especially if you’re tracking them from Day 0, it can be a good source of motivation or despair.
However, at some point in my career I came to the conclusion that relative anonymity (at least as an antonym to “making it”) can be reframed as a greater degree of freedom. Because there’s relatively no expectation from your audience, your product can be formless, and it can make a series of changes until you find the one that fits best for yourself.
For instance, last week’s newsletter was an experiment in both form and function. I asked myself a couple questions while making it:
What am I able to do with GIFs in this medium?
Would it be useful for my audience to have a straight tutorial, rather than something speculative?
Am I an expert enough to offer concrete advice? What can I fill my gaps in knowledge with?
Is there a space limit for how many GIFs are too much for people to download? Is the length too much?
Would I be able to convey concepts like Gain and Exposure into words that non-techies could understand?
Each one of these things are different ways of looking at a project, just like the ones I ask myself when I’m tackling this newsletter, that you’re reading now. Will you, the reader, respond well to something a bit more abstract?
If not, hey, there’s only 30 of you at the moment. I’m sure you’ll forgive me, and if you really don’t like it, you’ll let me know.
See? Even the decision to be a bit more natural, leading into a call-to-action like a button, is a conscious decision I’m experimenting with. Normally, my brain tells me to have these buttons at the end of the article, because leaving mid-way would disrupt the flow.
But who cares, right? Let’s throw something to the wall and see what sticks.
The other side
So, what happens when this newsletter blows up? What happens when I as a person becomes inundated by expectation, format, and cliche?
I guess it’s up to me to decide how much I want to sacrifice stability for personal enjoyment, and how much I can balance chaos with a changing amount of value. If the experiments I make become “part of the deal,” it becomes a lot easier for my audience to buy into them happening.
If my format becomes so rigid that it can be defined and obvious to the person consuming my work, that brings both a sense of comfort and expectation; both of those things can be good or bad. From both my personal experience and in my personal opinion, stagnation means death, inauthenticity is poison, and ignorance is your own fault.
The inability to adapt to the growing needs of your audience and the refusal to adopt new platforms means that you are losing the infernal arms race that is attention to your content on the Internet. While I would believe it’s okay to make principled decisions (for instance, I don’t have a TikTok or I don’t do react videos, despite those being viable avenues to success), you still should understand them.
You can do this by nuanced observation of success stories (and well, not-so-success stories), but I find the faster method is to just try to emulate the facets of these things that you’re interested in, and see if they resonate with you as a person. The whole “great artists steal” sentiment works, but the point of art is still to fulfill your vision.
While I realize this might go against the more methodical and scientific sentiment of “play the numbers! Go where your audience is! Be efficient!” that I talked about above, I’ve seen creators essentially obsolete themselves by being too hard-headed and refusing to reinvent themselves.
I guess that you can’t reinvent yourself if your audience won’t support it, but you won’t get an audience at all if you’re content to play it overly safe. Merely being someone else isn’t going to work as people get more picky; you have to be you, and be okay with what that entails.
Like with Star Trek and Star Wars, it’s okay to be fine with a platform or method “not being for you.” You still should make an effort to understand why, though, and that’s easier when there isn’t so much pressure to maintain the status quo.
What I’m up to
Instead of doing housekeeping at the beginning, I figured I’d do it at the end, this week.
My podcast with Will Cho, Good Morning, Good Night, has been moved to a YouTube playlist with its final episode. This was a fun project, and taught me a lot about Libsyn as a host. If you’re looking to podcast, I can’t recommend it enough.
My Patreon has been revamped a little with some new benefits for different tiers, and some public sample posts for an idea of what you can expect if you support me.
I’ve been reading Berserk, catching up on Aoashi, and looking forward to a planned media fast/disconnect that I’ll be doing in mid-November. I’ll fill you in on it more later.
Otherwise, thank you for the swell of support that happens around each newsletter. It means the world to me. If you’d like to, leave a comment, or share this newsletter to help me out even more.
‘Till next week.