Every Wednesday, I send out a piece of writing. Topics include: creators, internet culture, digital economies, Web3, & social media
You can subscribe here. Below are 10 of my favorite recent Digital Native pieces 👇 digitalnative.substack.com
📹 What People Misunderstand About The Creator Economy 📹
5 reasons it's important:
• It's about self-expression
• It's horizontal, not vertical
• It enables diverse voices
• It lets workers reclaim agency
• It breaks down outdated power structures digitalnative.substack.com/p/what-people-…
🏛️ The Memeification of American Capitalism 🏛️
There are common threads between r/WallStreetBets and NFT mania. Both are emblematic of a growing backlash to institutions.
There's been a rapid shift from aspiration to authenticity online. Kylie Jenner quickly gave way to Charli D'Amelio. Gen Zs are behind this shift. digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-rejectio…
🧱 Memes and the Atomic Units of Culture 🧱
Simply put, a meme is a unit of culture transfer. Memes are our most underrated form of communication.
🌍 We’re All Social Distancing on the Internet Too 🌍
Just as we're all isolated in the real world, we're in our proverbial quarantine bubbles online. The internet is niche and mass media has given way to deeply-engaged but more insular communities. digitalnative.substack.com/p/were-all-soc…
NFTs and social tokens are forming the foundation of a new architecture for creative industries. They finally fulfill the internet's promise of removing gatekeepers. digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-digital-…
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This is Miko. She's a virtual streamer who is controlled by a real-life woman known only as The Technician.
The Technician uses the Unreal Engine and a $30,000 motion-capture suit to create Miko.
Thread 👇
The Technician's story starts like that of many other creators:
At the beginning of the pandemic, The Technician was laid off from the animation studio she worked at, just weeks after moving to Los Angeles.
She found herself unemployed and stuck with a $2,000-a-month lease.
In her words: “I thought, you know what would be the good thing to do right now isn’t to try to look for work. Let me put down $20K and try to make it on Twitch.”
The early days were slow-going. She made $300 a month and was thousands of dollars in debt from expensive equipment.
OnlyFans 2020 numbers:
• Revenue grew +553% to $391 million
• Users grew 5x from 20 million to 120 million
• Over 300 creators made more than $1 million
OnlyFans' success is a fascinating combination of business model innovation & the desire for online belonging.
👇👇👇
OnlyFans' business model lets creators stitch together subscriptions, tipping, & microtransactions.
Creators can send out locked DMs that look like personal messages, but are sent en masse to thousands of subscribers. One message can earn a creator thousands of dollars.
Locked DMs are a way for creators to earn income at scale and for subscribers to feel personally connected to the creator.
@lucymort_ calls this “the commodification of intimacy.” Online relationships with OnlyFans creators can become replacements for real-life intimacy.
1/ It's 1995. Netscape is the dominant browser. Your laptop costs $6,000. The World Wide Web has 16M users.
And GeoCities is the 3rd-most-popular website in the world.
"Community" is again becoming the defining word of the internet. In many ways, community began with Geocities.
2/ GeoCities helped people discover the internet & find like-minded people online with "Neighborhoods"
GeoCities had 28 neighborhoods built around interests, like Area51 for sci-fi & fantasy and Hot Springs for health & wellness.
Early web users found community & belonging.
3/ In 1995, Bill Gates said: "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow."
Before Google & search, GeoCities helped people understand online community through the familiar paradigms of neighborhoods and, within neighborhoods, blocks.
1/ Survey of Gen Zs—66% prioritize financial stability over doing something they enjoy. This is a pretty stunning reversal from the Millennial mindset.
We're seeing the ripple effects of a generation that grew up during the financial crisis.
(Source: XYZ University)
2/ In David Brooks' words:
“Children can now expect to have a lower quality of life than their parents, the pandemic rages, climate change looms, & social media is vicious. Their worldview is predicated on threat, not safety.”
3/ This worldview built on threat instead of on safety is clearest in young people's distrust of institutions & companies.
Many watched their parents work within “the system” and be promised good lives and stable jobs—only to be laid off during the recession or pandemic.