The Extremist Tendencies of Our Audiences
The blurring line between selling and selling out
In our first piece on audience capture, we explored the phenomena of audiences influencing creators through a philosophical lens. This piece considers the dynamic through a pop culture lens.
Artists are inherently incentivized by an audience. We can’t construct an identity nor have any semblance of self without others’ feedback or mere presence. We make for others.
But while artists have tweaked the proportion of audiences’ say and sway over the years, one thing is clear: the role and influence of the audiences and platforms has become too much. A haunting anxiety presides over the creative act. Audience capture is intense and ubiquitous—and when one creates alone–as many do–it’s a confusing sensation. As Austin Robey and Severin Matusek put it in their report, “After the Creator Economy:”
“We want work to be financially valued without compromising our integrity.
We want to make meaningful work that we're proud of, not please an algorithm.
We want to share work in ways that feel right to us, not compete for attention on a feed.
We want to feel seen without our creativity and identities being exploited.”
While these themes have existed for as long as there’s been artists and the internet, why are these dilemmas so much more daunting today?
There's a new cultural context. Social media’s combination of global reach, performance metrics, platform design, content format, and algorithmic interference have changed how creators make for others, and how others perceive and interact with creators' work.
The results are an eternal presence, persistent feedback, an unrealistic expectation of virality, harmful social comparison, creator burnout, multiple “managed” identities, and catering to the black box of an algorithm. Creators are incentivized by meaningless metrics and compelled to keep making. It’s what the platforms need. Peers become competitors, and “the extreme” wins, picked by the algorithm to rise to the top.
What’s more, it’s nearly impossible to afford to be an artist today. Research reveals that the number of working-class actors, musicians, and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s. With ever-increasing costs of living, the starving artist has died. Creators can no longer buck a status quo nor rebel as they once had, and still make ends meet. The financial opportunity to live in a city and “make it” as an artist is slim—a death wish. The competitive playing field is overcrowded. Content is infinite, and the fight for attention is war.
The outcome is a new type of artist performance, one with greater hopes (and needs) of economic financing and traction. The ability to zag and financially succeed was once sufficient. Today it’s impossible. To even fund oneself, there must be a public plea. And that request itself affirms audience capture. They determine your fate—and a new type of power is handed to the audience.
This new social, technological, and economic backdrop affects all creators. New, unknown artists seek traction, a tiny sliver of praise, hoping something sticks. Musicians compose their tracks with TikTok’s length in mind, and then title them exclusively for SEO. The figure and ground have been reversed: artists don’t upload their music for distribution, they make music for distribution.
Meanwhile, middle-class creators try to compound their growth while maintaining their integrity. Writers ask their audiences, “What do you want to see me post more of?” On one hand, it’s an open dialogue, but on the other, it’s relinquished autonomy. Creativity is crowd-sourced, and integrating the hive mind just means hedging risk.
Today’s stars and studios, like those before them, also sell out to an audience—now even more unabashedly. Witness the 14-year-old who campaigned Weezer to cover Toto’s classic song “Africa.” The band did. Or the Paramount Pictures execs who approved the redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog after a mob freaked out over the mammal’s eyes and teeth. “Wow! This is creepy. Redesign this entire film now!” The studio did.
At all tiers, the consumer and producer roles blur. It’s purely collaborative, which is refreshing on the surface. But incubate and time-lapse this behavior, and it turns grim.
What’s most concerning about audience capture is the extremism it often takes on. When an audience is in control, responsibility is diffused. Inevitably, the most extreme manifests.
The unfortunate poster child of audience capture is now Nicholas Perry, once a vlogging, vegan violinist who couldn’t find an audience. But once Perry began uploading mukbang videos (eating for the camera and others), an audience gathered. Over time, the audience he fought for pushed him to eat more and more. He did. The views grew. But ultimately, while Perry found his millions of subscribers by binge-eating, he also became morbidly obese. Perry found his attention, but at what cost? Without a check, audience capture consumed Perry.
This extremist tendency also manifests itself politically. Networks like MSNBC and Fox News are conditioned by audiences seeking out narratives they want to hear. Like Paramount, our news industry also appeases an audience. Perhaps we lost trust in our news institutions because they fell for audience capture—risking democracy for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
Joe Rogan and Elon Musk were also both shaped by right-leaning fanbases. Receiving fervent fanfare and affirmation, they choose not to shun their audience and instead make for them. As a result, they’ve been transformed. It’s a parasitic relationship. The audience controls its host.
We’re not immune to this extremism. Wielding “main character energy,” we’re each a protagonist, open and vulnerable. Our loneliness doesn't help us.
Earlier this year, an OnlyFans creator made headlines by “allowing followers to control every decision of her life.” "I'm just trying to create a small community of people willing to share their lives with me. And talk with me,” she said. “I understand that some people can't understand that. And I don't want to try to convince them. What really matters to me is that the subscribers on my account are happy."
This helped her reach the top 0.4% of creators on the platform. While we may not all conduct an open poll nor have monetization plans in place, as creators, we’re on a slippery slope when it comes to the feedback we receive. Each piece of content we publish is a poll.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, audience feedback is increasingly governing what we do next and puts us on an auto-pilot toward extremism. How our content performs twists our dials and knobs. Avatar-less outsiders control us as much as a faceless algorithm. We’re relinquishing autonomy and power. Why are we allowing this?
We’re groomed, but not doomed. Step one in overcoming audience capture is just recognizing the process itself.
Check.
In the next and final piece, we’ll examine audience capture through a personal lens, gleaning insight and strategies to overcome its pull.
Thanks to Gurwinder, Tom Krell, PhD, and Adam Arola, PhD.
Jan 18, 2023
·
6 min read
The Extremist Tendencies of Our Audiences
The blurring line between selling and selling out
In our first piece on audience capture, we explored the phenomena of audiences influencing creators through a philosophical lens. This piece considers the dynamic through a pop culture lens.
Artists are inherently incentivized by an audience. We can’t construct an identity nor have any semblance of self without others’ feedback or mere presence. We make for others.
But while artists have tweaked the proportion of audiences’ say and sway over the years, one thing is clear: the role and influence of the audiences and platforms has become too much. A haunting anxiety presides over the creative act. Audience capture is intense and ubiquitous—and when one creates alone–as many do–it’s a confusing sensation. As Austin Robey and Severin Matusek put it in their report, “After the Creator Economy:”
“We want work to be financially valued without compromising our integrity.
We want to make meaningful work that we're proud of, not please an algorithm.
We want to share work in ways that feel right to us, not compete for attention on a feed.
We want to feel seen without our creativity and identities being exploited.”
While these themes have existed for as long as there’s been artists and the internet, why are these dilemmas so much more daunting today?
There's a new cultural context. Social media’s combination of global reach, performance metrics, platform design, content format, and algorithmic interference have changed how creators make for others, and how others perceive and interact with creators' work.
The results are an eternal presence, persistent feedback, an unrealistic expectation of virality, harmful social comparison, creator burnout, multiple “managed” identities, and catering to the black box of an algorithm. Creators are incentivized by meaningless metrics and compelled to keep making. It’s what the platforms need. Peers become competitors, and “the extreme” wins, picked by the algorithm to rise to the top.
What’s more, it’s nearly impossible to afford to be an artist today. Research reveals that the number of working-class actors, musicians, and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s. With ever-increasing costs of living, the starving artist has died. Creators can no longer buck a status quo nor rebel as they once had, and still make ends meet. The financial opportunity to live in a city and “make it” as an artist is slim—a death wish. The competitive playing field is overcrowded. Content is infinite, and the fight for attention is war.
The outcome is a new type of artist performance, one with greater hopes (and needs) of economic financing and traction. The ability to zag and financially succeed was once sufficient. Today it’s impossible. To even fund oneself, there must be a public plea. And that request itself affirms audience capture. They determine your fate—and a new type of power is handed to the audience.
This new social, technological, and economic backdrop affects all creators. New, unknown artists seek traction, a tiny sliver of praise, hoping something sticks. Musicians compose their tracks with TikTok’s length in mind, and then title them exclusively for SEO. The figure and ground have been reversed: artists don’t upload their music for distribution, they make music for distribution.
Meanwhile, middle-class creators try to compound their growth while maintaining their integrity. Writers ask their audiences, “What do you want to see me post more of?” On one hand, it’s an open dialogue, but on the other, it’s relinquished autonomy. Creativity is crowd-sourced, and integrating the hive mind just means hedging risk.
Today’s stars and studios, like those before them, also sell out to an audience—now even more unabashedly. Witness the 14-year-old who campaigned Weezer to cover Toto’s classic song “Africa.” The band did. Or the Paramount Pictures execs who approved the redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog after a mob freaked out over the mammal’s eyes and teeth. “Wow! This is creepy. Redesign this entire film now!” The studio did.
At all tiers, the consumer and producer roles blur. It’s purely collaborative, which is refreshing on the surface. But incubate and time-lapse this behavior, and it turns grim.
What’s most concerning about audience capture is the extremism it often takes on. When an audience is in control, responsibility is diffused. Inevitably, the most extreme manifests.
The unfortunate poster child of audience capture is now Nicholas Perry, once a vlogging, vegan violinist who couldn’t find an audience. But once Perry began uploading mukbang videos (eating for the camera and others), an audience gathered. Over time, the audience he fought for pushed him to eat more and more. He did. The views grew. But ultimately, while Perry found his millions of subscribers by binge-eating, he also became morbidly obese. Perry found his attention, but at what cost? Without a check, audience capture consumed Perry.
This extremist tendency also manifests itself politically. Networks like MSNBC and Fox News are conditioned by audiences seeking out narratives they want to hear. Like Paramount, our news industry also appeases an audience. Perhaps we lost trust in our news institutions because they fell for audience capture—risking democracy for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
Joe Rogan and Elon Musk were also both shaped by right-leaning fanbases. Receiving fervent fanfare and affirmation, they choose not to shun their audience and instead make for them. As a result, they’ve been transformed. It’s a parasitic relationship. The audience controls its host.
We’re not immune to this extremism. Wielding “main character energy,” we’re each a protagonist, open and vulnerable. Our loneliness doesn't help us.
Earlier this year, an OnlyFans creator made headlines by “allowing followers to control every decision of her life.” "I'm just trying to create a small community of people willing to share their lives with me. And talk with me,” she said. “I understand that some people can't understand that. And I don't want to try to convince them. What really matters to me is that the subscribers on my account are happy."
This helped her reach the top 0.4% of creators on the platform. While we may not all conduct an open poll nor have monetization plans in place, as creators, we’re on a slippery slope when it comes to the feedback we receive. Each piece of content we publish is a poll.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, audience feedback is increasingly governing what we do next and puts us on an auto-pilot toward extremism. How our content performs twists our dials and knobs. Avatar-less outsiders control us as much as a faceless algorithm. We’re relinquishing autonomy and power. Why are we allowing this?
We’re groomed, but not doomed. Step one in overcoming audience capture is just recognizing the process itself.
Check.
In the next and final piece, we’ll examine audience capture through a personal lens, gleaning insight and strategies to overcome its pull.
Thanks to Gurwinder, Tom Krell, PhD, and Adam Arola, PhD.
Jan 18, 2023
·
6 min read
The Extremist Tendencies of Our Audiences
The blurring line between selling and selling out
In our first piece on audience capture, we explored the phenomena of audiences influencing creators through a philosophical lens. This piece considers the dynamic through a pop culture lens.
Artists are inherently incentivized by an audience. We can’t construct an identity nor have any semblance of self without others’ feedback or mere presence. We make for others.
But while artists have tweaked the proportion of audiences’ say and sway over the years, one thing is clear: the role and influence of the audiences and platforms has become too much. A haunting anxiety presides over the creative act. Audience capture is intense and ubiquitous—and when one creates alone–as many do–it’s a confusing sensation. As Austin Robey and Severin Matusek put it in their report, “After the Creator Economy:”
“We want work to be financially valued without compromising our integrity.
We want to make meaningful work that we're proud of, not please an algorithm.
We want to share work in ways that feel right to us, not compete for attention on a feed.
We want to feel seen without our creativity and identities being exploited.”
While these themes have existed for as long as there’s been artists and the internet, why are these dilemmas so much more daunting today?
There's a new cultural context. Social media’s combination of global reach, performance metrics, platform design, content format, and algorithmic interference have changed how creators make for others, and how others perceive and interact with creators' work.
The results are an eternal presence, persistent feedback, an unrealistic expectation of virality, harmful social comparison, creator burnout, multiple “managed” identities, and catering to the black box of an algorithm. Creators are incentivized by meaningless metrics and compelled to keep making. It’s what the platforms need. Peers become competitors, and “the extreme” wins, picked by the algorithm to rise to the top.
What’s more, it’s nearly impossible to afford to be an artist today. Research reveals that the number of working-class actors, musicians, and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s. With ever-increasing costs of living, the starving artist has died. Creators can no longer buck a status quo nor rebel as they once had, and still make ends meet. The financial opportunity to live in a city and “make it” as an artist is slim—a death wish. The competitive playing field is overcrowded. Content is infinite, and the fight for attention is war.
The outcome is a new type of artist performance, one with greater hopes (and needs) of economic financing and traction. The ability to zag and financially succeed was once sufficient. Today it’s impossible. To even fund oneself, there must be a public plea. And that request itself affirms audience capture. They determine your fate—and a new type of power is handed to the audience.
This new social, technological, and economic backdrop affects all creators. New, unknown artists seek traction, a tiny sliver of praise, hoping something sticks. Musicians compose their tracks with TikTok’s length in mind, and then title them exclusively for SEO. The figure and ground have been reversed: artists don’t upload their music for distribution, they make music for distribution.
Meanwhile, middle-class creators try to compound their growth while maintaining their integrity. Writers ask their audiences, “What do you want to see me post more of?” On one hand, it’s an open dialogue, but on the other, it’s relinquished autonomy. Creativity is crowd-sourced, and integrating the hive mind just means hedging risk.
Today’s stars and studios, like those before them, also sell out to an audience—now even more unabashedly. Witness the 14-year-old who campaigned Weezer to cover Toto’s classic song “Africa.” The band did. Or the Paramount Pictures execs who approved the redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog after a mob freaked out over the mammal’s eyes and teeth. “Wow! This is creepy. Redesign this entire film now!” The studio did.
At all tiers, the consumer and producer roles blur. It’s purely collaborative, which is refreshing on the surface. But incubate and time-lapse this behavior, and it turns grim.
What’s most concerning about audience capture is the extremism it often takes on. When an audience is in control, responsibility is diffused. Inevitably, the most extreme manifests.
The unfortunate poster child of audience capture is now Nicholas Perry, once a vlogging, vegan violinist who couldn’t find an audience. But once Perry began uploading mukbang videos (eating for the camera and others), an audience gathered. Over time, the audience he fought for pushed him to eat more and more. He did. The views grew. But ultimately, while Perry found his millions of subscribers by binge-eating, he also became morbidly obese. Perry found his attention, but at what cost? Without a check, audience capture consumed Perry.
This extremist tendency also manifests itself politically. Networks like MSNBC and Fox News are conditioned by audiences seeking out narratives they want to hear. Like Paramount, our news industry also appeases an audience. Perhaps we lost trust in our news institutions because they fell for audience capture—risking democracy for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
Joe Rogan and Elon Musk were also both shaped by right-leaning fanbases. Receiving fervent fanfare and affirmation, they choose not to shun their audience and instead make for them. As a result, they’ve been transformed. It’s a parasitic relationship. The audience controls its host.
We’re not immune to this extremism. Wielding “main character energy,” we’re each a protagonist, open and vulnerable. Our loneliness doesn't help us.
Earlier this year, an OnlyFans creator made headlines by “allowing followers to control every decision of her life.” "I'm just trying to create a small community of people willing to share their lives with me. And talk with me,” she said. “I understand that some people can't understand that. And I don't want to try to convince them. What really matters to me is that the subscribers on my account are happy."
This helped her reach the top 0.4% of creators on the platform. While we may not all conduct an open poll nor have monetization plans in place, as creators, we’re on a slippery slope when it comes to the feedback we receive. Each piece of content we publish is a poll.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, audience feedback is increasingly governing what we do next and puts us on an auto-pilot toward extremism. How our content performs twists our dials and knobs. Avatar-less outsiders control us as much as a faceless algorithm. We’re relinquishing autonomy and power. Why are we allowing this?
We’re groomed, but not doomed. Step one in overcoming audience capture is just recognizing the process itself.
Check.
In the next and final piece, we’ll examine audience capture through a personal lens, gleaning insight and strategies to overcome its pull.
Thanks to Gurwinder, Tom Krell, PhD, and Adam Arola, PhD.
Jan 18, 2023
·
6 min read
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you never miss a story.
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you never miss a story.
