On the Cancer of Creation for Others
Last night a brief conversation developed about the pressure to create something good, stemming from PENIS POINTS, a very silly blog post over on The Black Citadel. Mistuh joked, “With all this traction I gotta write an actually good post”. I wanted to expand my thoughts and experiences with this need to create something “good”.
When anything is created and put out into the world for the consumption of others it changes. No one will interpret your creation exactly the way you intended it. The conversation around your work leaves your control, often even your awareness. That isn’t a bad thing, in fact I would argue the sharing and reinterpretation of culture is one of the most fundamentally powerful ways we as humans connect with one another.
Until it becomes content.
The cancer starts the moment you start seeing your work as others might see it. It stops being purely about creation for the joy of it, and that sliver of outside opinion begins to worm its way in. You start thinking about “how will this be received.” You imagine a hypothetical viewer engaging with your work. “How does it make them feel?”
Then, heaven forbid you make something good that people like. Now what poison have you invited into your home?
People liking my stuff isn’t bad, right? Inherently no, but the reality is that most people can not hold the opinions of others apart from their own opinions and the more outside opinions are given, the less clear their own creative voices become.
The second we stop creating for ourselves and start creating for the consumption of others online, we are making “content”. Content stops being about the creative experience and instead is about how others experience what we create. I speak from personal experience. It is so easy to go from receiving a bit of attention, to thinking you can do this for money, to building your life around content creation.
This is a gilded cage. It would be disingenuous for me to ever argue that others should not build their own financial freedom this way. In this day and age, when employment systems are collapsing and content is somehow a more reliable way to feed your family, it’s a logical path to take if you are able. But it's a slow and insidious cancer.
Once you start seeing your work through the lens of an outside observer, it is almost impossible to turn that off.
I have been a professional game designer for 20 years now. My work online pays for my partners and our kid to live. I have been creating content for the purpose of game promotion for essentially my entire adult life. I create content with the intention of making people act a specific way. Broadly, to convince them to give me money.
I do not have a choice. I must view what I create through the lens of the hypothetical consumer. They call it “creating your customer avatar” in business parlance. You invent a pretend person for whom everything you produce is tailored for. It’s not even creation for a real person anymore. Just what will make the biggest return on investment for my time and energy.
I have to make videos for tiktok and youtube so my family doesn’t get deported and broken up. Every one I make feels like I am tearing up my soul, like proverbial bits of bread to be fed to ducks. I have to pretend to be so excited to do this. I have to pour joy into these videos. I have to pour myself into them. I have been pouring from myself for twenty years now.
This is what was too complicated to express in silly fast moving discord posts, to young people who haven't spent their whole lives making content for survival. To put your work online is to risk developing this cancer. It is easy to say “well I don’t do that” when the stakes are low. It is so much harder to create authentically when that creation decides if your kid gets the glasses she needs or not.
I am creatively bankrupt, but I must keep creating content for the consumption of others. If I stop, my family will suffer immensely.
Don’t get me wrong. I have zero regrets about building my business. It has given me a quality of life that would have been really difficult to achieve otherwise as a disabled person. It has given me and my family immense opportunity and privilege. We can all live together, despite varied citizenship. We can do online school for our kid who really needs it. I could take a reduced work load for years when I was so sick I could hardly leave the house.
There is no point in saying, “well it’s because capitalism...”. I don’t have to like capitalism to know that this is the reality of my life. This is the system I must constantly perform under.
When I say it is cancer, this is what I mean. I am drained, but stopping is not an option. Only finding new ways to fill myself, so that once again I will have things to pour out.