Why media is the future:
Medyos— with + me.
A simple thought; media is just sharing yourself with others. I like the idea of being a solo media entrepreneur, that is, you create a cult of yourself, and everything that you do create and publish is all by you, about you, through you. At the end of the day, it is all about you.
Why is everybody so fearful or reticent to talk about themselves, or to just do things themselves?
I have some theories; first and foremost, it seems that it is a moral ethical issue. Moralistically speaking, it is considered a sin or advice to talk about yourself. For example, the common word “selfish“, is akin to the word evil.
For example, if you tell other people to “stop being so selfish“, is that considered a good thing or a bad thing?
The cult of you
Let us consider the most dominant video platform out there, YouTube. Tube as in TV, you as in you. The basic idea and just of YouTube is that it is TV all about you.
Even twitch, was initially known as justin.tv, I believe it was just a live stream of this dude named Justin and all of his mundane life activities. Imagine the Truman show movie.
Why it is good for you to go solo
I don’t like the idea of gate keepers, or anybody holding you back from anything. I like the idea that we can do anything we want without having anybody stop us.
For example, I truly despise the notion of having an editor or a publisher get in your way. If I have a certain idea thought or something, I hate the idea of having anybody have to “approve” it, before publishing it. For me the ultimate freedom is being able to publish whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want. And also how frequently I want.
And this is the ultimate freedom of the Internet, websites and blogging, etc. No more gate keepers.
Yet, the pitfall that we fall into is that it seems that nowadays people don’t really care about freedom, they care more for popularity and “success”, money, fame recognition, followers and likes, etc.
All you need is 300
How many followers, subscribers, is enough? I said 300 is sufficient. Why? Imagine King Leonidas and his elite spartan 300s. That is all you need.
What kind of media should you create?
Anything and everything. For example, just go pro or document your every day Monday in life activities. Whether it be eating, working out, or just share your thoughts on anything.
It seems that in today’s world, more media is better than less media. Simply put, more is better.
Why? With digital media, it seems that people have a voracious appetite, and there is really no limit to how much media a person can consume. Let us consider the average modern-day man, who listens to podcasts, listens to music, watches movies, watches TV shows, watches TV series, etc. Let us also consider the apple AirPods phenomenon; the new frontier of sound, audio things.
Also let us consider the fact that traffic is getting worse and worse. This means, more and more people stuck in a car, wanting to listen to something to entertain them during their hateful commutes and time stuck in traffic. It seems safety wise, audio, podcasts are safer to listen to while driving then having to watch videos while driving.
Just do it all
So the question is, what kind of media should you create?
I said create it all. No limits to your creative expression. I see the best way to think about it is create things in a spirit of fun and experimentation, and just have fun with it. Don’t take it too seriously, don’t get too caught up with editing, etc. Create media that you would like to see.
For example, something that’s really interesting to me is trying to figure out the behind-the-scenes of peoples day to day behaviors and activities. I’m curious about how people eat, and what they eat. Thus, I started to do some GoPro videos of me eating meat, what I call my meat meditation.
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any vlogs on people talking about more philosophical topics, ethics, etc. Thus I started to create more Vlogs of me talking about philosophy, stoicism, etc. as a means to create information and knowledge that I wish I had access to when starting off.
It’s not really a big deal
I am not quite sure why people take what they create so seriously. They strive to make it so nice by editing it so well, maybe it is a byproduct of our K-12 educational system, or even our college education. We strive to make things tiptop perfect, editing it to please some sort of third-party intelligent constipated reader, etc.
Hilariously enough, I make my living from blogging, vlogging, etc. Yet, I have extremely poor grammar, “writing style,” etc. Yet, out of all the people that I know, I am the most successful blogger and vlogger that I personally know. Also the one with the most money in the bank.
The origin of inspiration and motivation
I cannot speak for you, but I could speak for myself. What is the origin and the root of our inspiration and motivation?
For me, it is fun, adventure, play, etc. I am personally driven by curiosity, and I like to be able to delve deeper into ideas which are personally interesting and meaningful to me.
For example, whenever I blog about something that I am interested in, as I’m blogging and while I’m blogging, I gain deeper inside to the topic at hand. Blogging as a form to flesh out my own thoughts for myself, and the upside is I could also share those thoughts with others.
I see blogging as meta-thinking. Same for vlogging.
Therefore, blogging and vlogging is great because you’re killing two birds with one stone. It benefits yourself, and it also benefits others.
Criticism?
You know you’re successful once you have people start criticizing critiquing you etc. Consider it a good sign. For example, nobody ever publicly criticizes or critiques somebody who is boring. Boring people never get talked about.
Also, boring people are never hated on either. Thus, it seems that the root of success is to actually seek to become more hated.
Philosophically speaking, I think hate is just love in disguise, via Nassim Taleb Bed of Procrustes.
Anti-comments, anti-stats
I have never gotten a useful comment in my whole life, whether positive or negative. For example, certainly nobody likes getting negative comments, but also, the funny thing is that positive comments can actually hurt you more. Why? If somebody gives you a positive comment on some thing, it trains you to create more things that will get you more positive comments. Thus the road to mediocrity.
The most robust way to deal with things is either disable comments on your blog or website, disable comments on your YouTube channel, etc., or, if the platform doesn’t allow to disable comments, just don’t read them.
Also stats. Statistics are depressing, they are not motivating. Thus, disable stats on your own website, and also, refuse to look at them.
What is the point of media?
The bias in modern day society is that people just want to do things in order to make a lot of money. If that were really the case, better to be a plumber, they can easily make $200,000 a year. But do you want to be cleaning somebody’s poop for a living? Probably not.
For me, creating media is my passion and my soul project. It is what I am best at, which is effortless to me, and also fun and interesting. I never need to be motivated to create something, because I just create what I’m interested in. If you live a life full of inner motivation for yourself, isn’t this the best life?
A formula
Spend 90% of yourself blogging, writing things out in text, or just using iA Writer and markdown to voice dictate your thoughts. Why? Text has better longevity than video, is much more easily indexable, searchable, and accessible. Video is great, but video has many downsides. For example, Even with modern day algorithms, to decipher all of the words that occur in a video is still a difficult task, even for YouTube and Google text and sound recognition.
Also, lightness. A text file is a few kilobytes, whereas even the smallest video is hundreds of megabytes. Even in today’s modern world, Internet speeds, download speeds, upload speeds, and bandwidth is still a huge problem. Even the promise of 5G is weak; 5G is not real, it is fake 5G. You almost never get 5G anywhere, maybe the only place you get it is in South Korea. But in America, I feel like we are just restrained to either 3G or 4G.
1 billion blog posts, 1 billion photos, 1000,000,000 videos?
There are some things in life you can control, and some things you cannot. One thing you cannot control is how rich you will become. For example, even if I used all of my effort, heart and soul, to become a trillionaire, I may never attain it. However, focusing to create a lot, this is actually something which is attainable.
But isn’t quality more important than quantity?
I think the thought that “quality” is more important than quantity is a weak modern notion. Even in ancient Greece, I think Epicurus actually wrote at least 300 or 400 books in his lifetime. That is a lot.
My personal thought is there are academic and scholarly types who are unproductive, and they look at productive creators with petty resentment and envy. They wish that they could be productive, and prolific, and therefore, they have created that aphorism that quality is better than quantity. That they believe that their quality is superior than the other person’s quantity.
However, even in show business, there is the saying, “Your best film is the last one you’ve produced.” or, “You’re only good as your last book.” This means, you always want to be modern and recent. That, you always want to keep producing, creating, publishing.
For example, even Google search: they prioritize freshness. That is, they prioritize the information which was created most recently. There is a recency bias.
Now what?
Start your own solo media empire today.
Go solo.
Own your own platform. This means, you must pay for it. The rule of thumb is this; if it is free, you don’t own it.
If you use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc., you are partaking in digital sharecropping. You are an Instaslave.
Even, don’t put faith in YouTube. Sooner or later, your account will probably either be removed, banned, or inaccessible, etc. Even with my Facebook and Facebook Fan page, I have long forgotten the credentials for it, and I can no longer access it. Access denied.
Instead videopress.com — via the WordPress.com premium jetpack plugin plan. The simple thought is this:
Could you upload sexually explicit videos without having it flagged or removed?
This is the secret to platform freedom.
Web platform
Bluehost.com and WordPress.org — this is the key.
To create your own open source media empire, own your own digital domain, and also your own digital tools.
Make more media, consume less.
I like the idea that you could spend 99% of your effort, time and energy creating media, and only spending 1% of your time energy and force consuming media. Certainly we must have inspiration from somewhere else, however, we should limit it. Better to draw upon instead from your own life experiences, your own lived experiences, etc.
Now what?
- Just write something, and post it to your blog.
- Just record something, and upload it to YouTube.
- Start your own podcast with anchor.fm — insanely easy.
- Create your own platform. For example, Arsbeta.com as my brain child.
Make more, be more
MAKE WITH EK:
More thoughts
More in EK SHOP
Sources of inspiration
- Ancient Greek philosophy. The best philosophers to read are the ones who came before Socrates, the “pre-Socratic‘s.” This includes Heraclitus, Democritus, etc.
- The Iliad
- Nietzsche — The Will to Power as one of my favorite books.
- Movies and cinema: the matrix, the movie 300, John Wick, fight club, etc.
Or anything on EK BLOG
Thrive on!
If this sparked even one interesting thought within yourself, forward it to a friend!