The Content Maxxers

Take the word creator out of your mouth.

You too can earn BIG money. Create from your parents basement. The democracy of making meaning, the economics of virality, the power of capturing attention from humankind—the new content creators arise. The latest issue of the NYTimes magazine is devoted to AI and in this article Can You Get Rich Quick Off A.I. Slop? We are introduced to some of the brilliant minds behind this renaissance in visual content.

If you believe any of this I have some swampland in Florida you may be interested in. First, words matter—-nobody in this article is a content creator, they are content generators. But even that has an air of utility to it, I would say they are content maxxing, unless you are prepared to call the teenager removing your McDonald’s burger from a clamshell grill—chef—using creator is an insult to human culture.

This is another example of journalistic malpractice, all we hear from is 2 successful maxxers—out of the 200,000 that have answered their make money from views scheme, the owner of the slopshop Affiliate Network, and a young employee who offers this… “A 15-year-old can directly compete with the biggest ad agency in New York. And it’s kind of beautiful.”

Beautiful is not the word I would use, because at the heart of this is something very ugly— lottery economics. The journalist doesn’t interview the folks that make little to no money—-the reality of the slop shop as content churn and all the time and human capital consumed for what—attention slop. Yes, let’s tear down ad agencies, film companies, animation studios, obliterate the value of photography, music, and art ==for whose benefit? The platform owners, the slop merchants, the owners of the channels.

Content serfs is the future they are offering. Yes, the gatekeepers of media had problems, but I knew artists across the planet that could make a good living working for magazines and newspapers, let alone art directors, designers, editors, journalists—an entire ecosystem of creative work. What is this bright, happy future we are offered? Where is the abundance, the freedom from drudgery so that we can create meaningful art? Spend a month making 296 stupid videos in the hope that something goes viral? This is a casino culture of subsistence income, with few winners and the house—the owners —always win. The article ends with a tear jerker ad for joining this new future. What is on offer? What is the product? All of us are the product, this entire slopocalypse is our own undoing.

I think we are still worth fighting for and we can fight back. We can reclaim ownership over our attention, we can punish the companies that extract our culture to sell their products. More people are searching for meaning and connection, and the real content creators need to step up and build communities that center human flourishing—-make that a viral idea.