We’ve learned a few lessons over the past couple of decades in tech. Bubbles begin as actual innovations that quickly get exploited by grifters, liars and con artists to funnel money into their gullets, then burst, leaving the rest of us to rebuild using the scraps. It’s happened so many times that now it’s happening with whole countries.
While the mainstream lives trapped in this machine, those of us who grow weary of this cycle look to other ways of being, outside this toxic treadmill. They do exist, and have always existed, but it does require a fundamental shift in thinking in order to appreciate them. What the Machine wants is Number Go Up. Bigger Number = Better, because that is *supposed* to mean money will follow. But on the fringes it’s different. There just *isn’t* money here, and never will be. Our goals are different. We want to connect to other people for the sake of that connection and nothing more. It’s intrinsically human to want that.
Years ago The Verge ran a piece on streamers who stream to small audiences, and often no audience, exploring why they do it and what they get out of it. It struck a chord with me as I’ve been doing something similar for years. There’s a myriad of factors that go into it, but after a long time trying to “break through” into a wider audience I realized that will never happen. Be it my demographic, particular sensibilities or some unknown factor, what I produce just doesn’t have mass appeal. And yet I still enjoy it and still have gained great value out of it. Learning to be comfortable on camera and keep an entertaining running commentary going are both genuine skills that help me in many other aspects of life. Like many people, I suffer from a huge degree of social anxiety, and I can identify clearly that streaming and making videos has helped me be able to navigate this.
I can even throw podcasting into this mix, as they’re all related skills. My priority for my creative work (I loathe the term “content” as reductive and disposable) is to be entertaining. If someone watches or listens to something I’ve made, I want them to enjoy it and to feel betting for having seen it. And that has meant being able to develop the ability to have a running rapport with the subject at hand, and be able to communicate in a friendly, open and inviting way. You should come to my streams or videos with a sense of visiting the house of someone who welcomes you, makes you feel at home, makes sure you’re comfortable.
The key is, this means the *size* of the audience is immaterial. The point isn’t to “grow engagement” or some other sleazy marketing term, it’s to make something good. As we all know, that’s usually not enough to make something popular. But at the end of the day all that matters is how *I* feel about the work I’ve done; and if my goal is for that work to be entertaining, then mission accomplished.
Thanks to this, I have the mental tools to help me with common, every day anxieties. I no longer dread waiting for an elevator with strangers, or buying something in a shop, or even going to a job interview. I still *feel* the anxiety, but I know I have the ability to rise to the occasion, to be warm and personable even to strangers.
That’s what streaming and video production has done for my mental health — it’s a net gain, and having folks to watch it is a nice little bonus on top. So do it my friends, stream to no one, make your videos, cast your pods, and don’t ever worry about the numbers. We’re past that now. We’re back to small scale, word-of-mouth, and that’s a far healthier place than the Infinite Growth mentality of the commercial web.
