Surviving the Alt-Pocalypse
Are These Really the End Times For Emerging Alt-Media Creators?
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. Lastly here is my Culture and Couture Brief for The Cultural Futurist. Thanks again!A pet peeve of mine is when a writer examines the meaning of a word in an essay or think piece. Typically it is either a lazy padding strategy that let’s the writer spout quasi-stoner philosophy (“First, let’s define what we mean by art”) or it is a way for the writer to backpedal on a major claim he’s trying to pull off (“We should not look at pets as family members. When I say ‘pets’ I don’t mean ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’). Believe me when I say I have absolutely no choice but to examine what “alt-media” means. Up until even December, there was no reason to do this. Mainstream media meant cable TV, newspapers, magazines while alt-media was Instagram, X, YouTube and such.
It is tempting to nod and just say this is still the case, but how? When people watch TV now, they watch YouTube. Whether it’s a news show or a game show hosted by Mr. Beast. X has replaced Fox News as the source of conservative journalism. Instagram replaced Vogue and E Entertainment News. TikTok still maintains its alt-status by offering an alternative to mainstream news, but it is due to be banned on April 5 unless it gets bought by an American minister of propaganda company.
Does alt-media even exist anymore or is it all mainstream and centralized now? Who even benefits from alt-media now?
When you read about how unstable the creator economy is or how creators are having difficulty building fanbases or how even YouTube — at one time the platform that paid creators best — now favors videos with expensive budgets, you may think that’s just how it goes: how long can a gold rush be expected to last?
Which would be understandable unless you consider that mainstream and “alt media” are both cozying up to the New Regime. To wit: Jeff Bezos will not let anyone in The Washington Post write an editorial against free markets; the DOJ gave right-wing influencers binders with government-approved “revelations” of the Epstein files. The future doesn’t look much brighter either. There’s a possibility that Larry Ellison, owner of Oracle, buys TikTok and consolidates it with Paramount Pictures, which he bought for his son David Ellison last year:
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As if it wasn’t hard enough that video content will need higher budgets to get seen, human-generated content is on the verge of obsolescence as AI content increases its dominance in the attention marketplace.
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OK well what about audio? Podcasts are illegible online without corresponding video content. That content has to be created by attractive creators with — you guessed it — a high budget.
The dream of a creative marketplace without gatekeepers now seems like a pipe dream. The marketplace is the gatekeeper — and the marketplace does not like change. Especially when the invisible hand of the market is held by the gossip trap. There has been excitement over how alt media has threatened legacy media. I myself have shouted the gospel in previous posts. But the laws have changed now. Wanting to leave a dent with all this attention economy inflation is like wanting to play the lotto instead of wasting money on college: the amount of money you waste on tickets will be roughly equivalent.
So that’s it? The dream is over? Not necessarily: the dream has changed — or, better, it has reverted to its original, decentralized form. In the ‘00s, before social media centralized everything into three or four major platforms, there was the blogosphere. We’ll do a deep dive on the blogosphere later, but for now we would do well to recognize the parallel between the blogosphere and the newsletter space, or as I call it, the letterverse. I am on Substack and I typically link to other Substack writers, but I have often linked to Garbage Day (even in this piece). Garbage Day is on Beehiv. I have not found any newsletters on Ghost yet that I am fond of, but I — and other Substackers — will link to good Ghost newsletters as soon as they make their presence known. 1 What’s more, none of these publishers blocks outbound links to the competing publishers.
Now I have been critical of Substack for trying to lure in TikTokers to create content here. But considering how YouTube needs higher budgets and TikTok — the only platform left that rewards low-budget iPhone creators — is in danger of going dark less than a month from now, video creators will need a place to monetize videos . Quite a few good TikTokers have had noteworthy Substacks on here, including
, and .TikTokers aren’t the only refugees. More journalists are saying “take this job and shove it,” starting their own newsletters and making more money. Oliver Darcy left CNN to make a cool milli annually on his newsletter.
This is a remarkable shift from how things were in the ‘00s blogosphere, when legacy media institutions laughed off the threat of bloggers, who often joined those institutions minutes after crowing about how they would all crumble at their rebellious fingertips. Sad truth: their work for major publications remained better preserved than their blogs that couldn’t weather the extinction of the blogosphere around 2010.
Now I wasn’t lying when I said that the Internet has yet to give us a great cultural work — one that is broadly recognized anyway. What I neglected to mention2 was that the ‘00s blogosphere helped cultivate taste for better offline culture. Indie music bloggers sent their readers to vinyl stores for the latest Animal Collective. Comedy bloggers 3 recommended great comedians and alt-comedy shows, many of them going on television. If we maintain that the Internet is more like the radio than any other medium — more of a signal booster for up and coming musicians, comedians, etc. — then 2004-2010 was the golden age of the Internet.
Though it wan’t as strong in the ‘00s as it was in the ‘90s, an anti-populist ethos fueled much of the alt-media blogosphere at this time. The goal back then was to find a thousand true fans. Ignore the people who don’t get you and build a tribe of people that love you. This was easier when the Internet itself was a smaller hangout. When being extremely online still meant being a nerd — back when being a nerd read as adorable, not toxic. In this environment, music geeks would talk not only of contemporary music legends like Modest Mouse and TV on the Radio, but forgotten gods like Serge Gainsbourg and Scott Walker. Message boards discussing Patton Oswalt and Baron Vaughn would discuss classic Albert Brooks albums or post videos of great Nichols and May sketches.
Like anything else, the Internet was always political. But the saturation was surprisingly low, especially considering that the Iraq War was happening throughout the golden age of blogging. While your indie bona fides were always under suspicion, you could just point to your black rimmed glasses and say “Do I look like a Republican?” and that was enough. Purity tests were pretty easy to pass: pro-gay marriage, anti-Iraq War, pro noblem. It was still political of course. The conservatives particularly used the blogosphere as their alt-media refuge away from the lamestream media.
The blogosphere was better than social media, but it was not ideal at all. The few bloggers that made money made it off advertisement. No one paid for a blog subscription. As a result, a blogger’s agency was extremely limited. This could even explain why most hipsters were liberal rather than leftists, referencing NPR broadcasts and Atlantic articles. The far left and the far right were still advertising poison in the ‘00s, which meant less rage bait but also less radical thought. I spent much of the last Substack talking about how social media is fueled by gossip. But many of the biggest blogs of the era, like Gawker and Perez Hilton, peddled celebrity gossip. But in the ‘00s, gossip was a choice. If Brangelina drama bored you, it didn’t spill into your RSS feed.
By 2010, everyone fled the RSS feed — as well as the MySpace wall — for the seemingly greener pastures of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Tumblr played a key transitional role in 2010s alt-media. It was a blogging publisher that behaved like social media, with a central front page feed of all the Tumblr blogs a user followed. By the early 2010s, users could even like posts and comment on them. Tumblr was home to the sensitive feminist and LGBTQ leftist community. Many of these Tumblr bloggers would share their posts and/or their beliefs on Twitter, where the major celebrities and journalists were. This cross-pollination, along with the input of Black Twitter of course, led to the woke media juggernaut of the 2010s.
Journalists had a much easier time tweeting than blogging. Blogging made no sense when you had a major publications as your outlet. Twitter was a key accessory to making journalists “relatable.” One minute, you tweeted a link to your New Yorker piece; the next tweet, you shared which “Girls” character you were. From
‘s Substack:For the professional journalist, jumping into social media discards a supportive audience and a base of respect. It’s like going out into the into the park and standing on a soapbox[…]the beauty of having a professional platform to speak from is that it lets you be more vulnerable. You don’t have to fight for the dominance.
Not only were they fighting for dominance: they inflated the attention economy. The independent tweet accounts that had more followers than major news outlets or celebrities were outliers. Then again, in the 2010s, nothing was bigger than the hashtag. A hashtag lifted all boats on the same tide, leading to the hyperpolitics of the time.
Clearly times are different now. There are many who are fleeing the right-wing cyber-carnival that is modern American social media. But where can they go? Keeping the looming TikTok ban in mind, perhaps physical media can once again be a valuable tool in the alt-media resistance. As I have previously discussed, a consistent pain point of online life is the inability for anything to be preserved. Why trust major corporate media companies to keep anything of ours, let alone our samizdat. Independent bookstores could have an even bigger resurgence now than in the ‘00s.
There seems to be a groundswell of enthusiasm for the growing anti-smartphone movement. From Vita Contemplativa:
Several weeks ago, I had the equally interesting experience of attending the first of what I hope to be many events, held by my new friend August Lamm. I don’t know August that well yet, but I can certainly say she holds a room. The event was the first foray into what she’s termed Archaic Networks, a constellation of ideas which I absolutely love. But what struck me most was the sheer appetite in the place—a pub basement with maybe thirty or forty people of varying ages, coming and going—for some honest-to-god real-life communion with similarly-minded strangers. And a similar appetite for digital de-programming and anti-techifying, for which August is quickly becoming one of our most persuasive evangelists.
As another friend and I agreed, there was something genuine stirring happening there. I watched young people throwing ideas around for low-tech meet-ups, Situationist-style wanderings, magazines, book clubs, etc.[…]It was one of the healthiest things I’ve seen in a long time; it was exciting, kind of sexy (is there anything more sexless than twenty-first politics?). We’ve grown up a bit, I thought, from our adolescence in the trenches of radical politic yearning.
Perhaps a revolution of consciousness is around the corner? We’ll see. It’s certainly more likely to happen in a place that is not run by censorship. When even TikTok — the current center of revolutionary thought — is overrun by algospeak to avoid censors, where can performers speak without walking on eggshells?
says X and Substack are great. I half-agree, but live performance is another great site for uncensored speech.An encouraging NYC nightlife trend: phones are not allowed in many clubs anymore. This is a surprising trend. Was a time when most venues only had Instagram or Facebook pages, with patrons uploading pictures and videos tagging the venue. Seems venues are willing to sacrifice social media attention to deal less with entitled influencers. Also, the idea of a club that maintains privacy away from the all-seeing iPhone camera has its own appeal, potentially allowing patrons to unwind more. Another great example of antimemetic potential.
But let’s not get carried away here. This is not some misguided “touch grass” manifesto. There needs to be a different relationship to online media. An alternative way. The dark forest is where the potential for this fresh thinking lies. One major outgrowth from the dark forest: Perfectly Imperfect. Originally a Substack, PI is now an independent newsletter and platform where users and alt-cool microcelebrities (even a few major ones, like Francis Ford Coppola) share things they like. I use it to hear about musicians that I am too old to hear about, filmmakers that have escaped the Netflix algorithm’s grasp, etc. Because of them, I now listen to Japanese Breakfast.
Hey pal, sorry to break up the retro ‘00s lovefest, but did you forget about AI?
Right. AI. This great post from Posting Nexus discusses two potential applications of AI. The first — the much-discussed AI slop strategy — hinges on fast virality and attention. Make an AI of a celebrity or something topical: boom! You’re ranking on YouTube or TikTok is higher. You’re happy, they’re happy. What could possibly be the second strategy? Making a short film.
From the post:
Last week, I came across an 11-minute short film set within the Star Wars universe. It doesn’t look perfect. By today’s standards, it’s pretty sub-optimal. For anyone who grew up with early gaming consoles and 2000s graphics, however, it’s almost nostalgic. And, like the increase in graphics we’ve seen over the last 30 years, I’m often reminded that this is the worst the technology will ever be.
None of this really matters. The only important detail is that it took Kavan the Kid two weeks and $120.
Consider the relative pros. Storytelling within the video itself is adequate and, for Star Wars fans, it may scratch an itch as they wait for new content. Not to mention that it’s absolutely free to watch. While it’s highly unlikely that the film’s creator, Kavan the Kid, can earn advertising revenue off of this project when uploading to YouTube or X, they could generate more Patreon members and release private screenings of these films to a sizable audience. Even as the internet becomes more centralized, there are always opportunities for content to travel and audiences to consume outside of the easily accessible bubbles.
Avoiding the copyright issue and the potential — or lack thereof — of fan fiction, I am not opposed to the idea of a spunky young filmmaker using AI to bring their vision to the screen. Having AI write a short story is one thing. Film-making remains the most prohibitively expensive creative pursuit ever. I even mentioned this potential back in the spring of 2023, when I was only getting two likes. Imagine: the Internet becomes the medium that makes short film bigger than feature film.
OK enough daydreaming. Let’s not forget we still have a war to fight. Reminder: the fight is not man vs. machine. It’s the users (or the used) vs. Big Tech. In the battle to plant the flag for human greatness, alt-media will be our battleground. Losing is beside the point. Going down fighting is the only way.
This is my hope, but there is a terrifying and far more likely possibility of us all doom scrolling AI slop and sludge, witnessing our own extinction in slack jawed awe. All those Terminator movies either prepared us to fight the robots or to watch them destroy humans.
Alt-media creators will need a lot of ammo for this fight. And soldiers.
sees collective action as the only option: either get acquired by legacy media or make/join a collective. I write for and plan on doing so as long as they can tolerate my crazy hard-headed Egyptian ass. A benefit of this approach: it frees creatives from the creative entrepreneur trap. Now someone else can count the beans and you are free to do what you do best. A second benefit: yes you would make more money as a solo creator, but as we have discussed, this is like winning the lottery. Getting a paycheck from a smaller entity — let alone a larger one — might mean less money, but it is a more practical goal.With the state of alt-media being so dire, being practical in general would be wise. Much as I would hope for a revolution above and beyond politics, that might need to wait. Right now, the upcoming TikTok ban could potentially leave thousands of pro-Gaza supporters in the lurch. Where will they go? X? Instagram? No major platform will want them. Where will they watch footage of the massacres? How about leftists? As if evidence was needed that TikTok was a central weapon for the alt-left, Germany’s left party had major gains because of TikTok. Where will the American alt-left go after the ban?
TikTok will not be replaced by one platform. Though online media is hypercentralized by legacy tech, people don’t seem happy about it. According to Verge’s research, “smaller, purpose-driven communities are the future.” This hunger for niche circles might be TikTok’s greatest legacy. So many microscenes and aesthetics were nurtured by the hyperfocused TikTok algorithm. It may sound like defeat that the rebels of TikTok have to scatter like squirrels during a cold snap. But this is how decentralization works. In the ‘00s, centralization seemed like such a failed concept online. The AOL walled garden was widely mocked. The blogosphere was not on one platform. A band like Grizzly Bear didn’t get big on TikTok or any one platform or website. One blogger’s opinion was not enough. Several blogs kept the buzz going, like kindling for a fire. Then a site like Pitchfork would write a glowing review, acting like the log that sustained the fire. It might have been a longer road to recognition, but we still talk about Grizzly Bear today. Are we still talking about “ABCDEFU”?
Folk singer Welles is an example of a current artist who doesn’t owe his success to one platform only. Videos of him singing his protest songs in nature, in the NYC subway and, recently, at Bowery Ballroom, went viral on TikTok as well as Instagram. His songs are not being cut up into viral audio samples or sped-up remixes with lip syncing either. The visual nature of the performance is as important as the song itself. Remember back around New Year’s, when I said this year might bring this decade its Bob Dylan? Several in the comments of this video are saying Welles is that man.
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One more note we can take from the ‘00s in our current alt-media war against Big Tech: learning from the hipsters who loved vinyl. Towards the beginning of the vinyl craze, record collectors seemed precious. Why act like you’re better than someone who likes CDs or MP3s? In time, vinyl rocketed out of obsolescence and began to match, if not outsell digital sales. In a recent diary post he put online,
imagines a future where liking sex with humans is a hipster fetish, similar to fetishizing vinyl. We can expand this Ballardian conceit to enjoying content — or, if we can dream big enough, art — from humans. Or if we can expand it even further, human-created content that is low-budget might have the charm that lo-fi indie rock vinyl records had in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Yes, human created content is less accessible than AI’s lowest-common denominator content. Yes, a human-generated novel on Substack by someone like might require effort from the reader. But there is a warmth, a richness to human creation. Give it a chance, you may get so absorbed by it, you feel there is no alternative.Boom!
I would have mentioned it but it was already a long piece.
Yes I was a comedy blogger in the ‘00s. No I am not one anymore. Yes I am still not getting laid.
You quoted W. David Marx in your last post. His newsletter is on Ghost, and it's quite good.
https://culture.ghost.io
Concurred and thanks for the shout-out, Mo!