I am certain it is extremely frustrating to work your ass off, and then be told: “Ok now sell it by getting on social media and doing a bunch of junk you don’t enjoy.” Bigger starts have tried and failed to re-establish themselves as “an influencer” and failed. I’m sure it is scary.
I’m a software engineer and I feel this way about AI to a certain extent. I assume it is coming for me and i will need to re-diversify my skill set, but i really just want to make music in my free time, not learn a bunch of new math and CS theory.
On the other hand… we all know the music industry is a meat grinder, and for every person who “made it” there are an army of people with hungry eyes and a fork and knife trying to climb onto the pile as well. So they’ve kinda got you over a barrel.
…u’ll never know…but one thing’s for sure…cardi does not know how to spell understatement…
and if she has any manners, i never realized that before…
but loose lips sink spaceships…and fake nails can’t lie…
There is this slight gratification in genuinely not caring about something someone tells you to sound impressive especially when you can tell they are disappointed in not being asked follow-up questions.
That’s just two different approaches to the parasocial!
Imprinting on some sort of ineffable diety
Imprinting on some sort of approachable individual “who’s just like us!”
I see them both as neutral offhand, obviously god genius framing can be abused but the latter is more hustle culture approaches and self-marketing and cultivating “we’re friends” relationships with lonely people and with varying degrees of un-health for fans.
As I’d mentioned earlier a dude I know who’s baaaaasically an empty vessel for people to imprint on likes trying to engage with DJ Twitch streams, getting them to acknowledge his presence by tossing out larger amounts of money. Pretty sure he’s going to end up divorced over blowing up all his (and his wife’s!) relationships with actual, flawed humans to pursue the perfect, untouchable humans he’s lovebombing and creating parasocial relationships with.
I don’t think most creative process streamers necessarily encourage that sort of parasocial, but there are ways that people set up financial relationships with fans that make me personally uncomfortable.
It is good that people are finding alternative revenue and I don’t blame anyone for creating “content” to deal with the now, and that’s not like… findom exactly.
Maybe i’m just a born neurotic conscious of this sort of loneliness AND monetizing creative works but the things people will do to get someone to say their name, respond to them, and how non-Patreon patronage can work is an adaptation to the now, but not necessarily more “real” or less calculated than the ineffable genius god.
Slightly offtopic, but I love that musician/painter/voice actor and Venture Brothers creator Doc Hammer used his Twitter account exclusively to document his poops.
A log blog, if you will.
I will absolutely gush over my friends real qualities, reasons why I love them.
If a person tries to convince me they’re somehow special and thus implicitly better than me, especially by something spoken in confident stupidity… hooooooooo boy I’m going to not respond well.
I won’t ruin it for you but I think I figured out Banksy. Though it is a group of people, there is an individual. But I did think it was interesting that it was once thought to be Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack.
A large part of the power of music when I was growing up is that I knew relatively little about the people who made it. I’d read the music press and pick up what I could but it still left a huge amount to the imagination. I loved that. It encouraged me to obsess, dig deeper, listen harder.
My mates and I were really into Foetus, but there was so little written about Jim Thirwell at the time. Based on little more than the records, we imagined all kinds of stuff, came up with wild theories about what he was like and how he made those recordings. It’s what lead me to want to make music and explore sound.
I have huge respect for the likes of Boards of Canada, Burial and, more recently, Craven Faults for keeping that air of mystery and anonymity. It gives their records space to inhabit in your imagination.
Always cool when musicians can remain anonymous. It’s amazing the residents have managed for something like half a century now. And while there are compelling theories about his identity, buckethead hasn’t been positively identified over the decades, which is quite the feat for someone as tall as an nba player.
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