The Double-Edged Sword of Being a Creator

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I was having a conversation with a singer in Second Life yesterday, and it quickly went down the road of parasocial relationships, expectations, and suddenly, money-traps. We talked about the ways in which artists, writers, or creators in-general are taken from, at all angles, with the promise of a boost, or fame, or an income. And I’m still thinking about it.

It really feels like the AI that scrapes the web for everything ever made by a human being, in order to create amalgamations that look like nightmarish gloss-puke is the endgame to all of this. But I’ve jumped into the epilogue before we explore the content of the text.

For decades, creative work has always been demanded by those who don’t create, to be free. It got to the point that these things were so devalued by the general public, that it spawned music streaming services that pay fractions on the fraction of another fraction of a penny. It spawned entitled attitudes that get slung at artists doing commissions, that they should not dare charge a fair hourly rate for their work, that they should be grateful for exposure. It spawned endless compendiums of amateur, indie-fiction, because getting into a publishing house is more like a whole scam nowadays.

And, eventually, it spawned the full and total pillaging of all of this work, funneled straight to those who believe an idea is worth more than work.

But I wanted to talk more about another side to all of this.

As a person who creates, how do you get the word out to people? Do you post on social media and pray that people don’t demonize you for “advertising?” Do you pay for a blue checkmark on Threads in the hopes that it translates into the work that you do actually being seen and appreciated by people?

Have you seen the playlisters in online music scenes who charge artists money to have their music placed on thousand-listener lists? Have you been a store creator in Second Life whose only avenue to advertising their work, is by paying hundreds of dollars to land owners who host store events (this example is a little niche, but directly related to things I personally do)? Have you paid social media coaches to tell you how to post online to draw in the most engagement possible? Queue the random trash-question-posting and rage-bait.

Or, maybe, as an author, or indie author, you’ve spent years querying, only to have your work potentially stolen by a narcissistic agent who posts on Twitter about how she thinks someone else should have your idea, and do it better.

In our society, it really seems like the artist, the writer, the maker, the doer, is constantly in a web of traps, laid out by the grifters. Everyone wants to make money off of you, off of your ideas, off of your work, while you squabble in debt, and minimum wage. And the most infuriating part is, they do.

“Pay me, and I’ll make sure you see that success you’ve been grasping for.”

Pay, pay, pay!

One of the reasons my next novel has been basically frozen in time, is because sometimes I really feel like it’s pointless to put something out there. Especially now, that … as soon as you do, it’ll be gobbled up by the plagiarism machines.

I’ve seen so much of this in all that I do, because I’ve been doing these things my whole life. And the scammers, the grifters … they all have the louder voice, the largest influence, and it makes no sense to me.

It makes no sense that these types of people and this type of behavior really receives no pushback, whatsoever.

But then I remember the decades past, the squawking about how all of the things you spend hours, days, weeks, months on, should be free, and if you have to sell it, it should be dirt cheap.

It creates the condition where you start to feel as though you have no choice but to cough up cash to those who believe any money made from the things that you do, belongs to them.

And then the cycle repeats, ad infinitum.

Do you wanna know how much I make from streaming without any advertising on the part of paid services, monthly?

But we don’t currently live in a society that enables any kind of environment where this can be fixed. We live in the society that will make this worse. And you’re only option in the creation of dreams, art, prose, and more, is to do it for the love of it, and nothing else. Because if you don’t have even that, then what’s the point of anything?