The Circus That Killed All Its Performers
but still kept doing packed shows - A Unicorn Growth Story
One way 'creative professionals' have benefited from social media is to turn into 'teachers'. Give away your knowledge for free so that people would value what you make and buy it once they know you. Create awareness and demand for one thing (learning, self-improvement), sell other things once your done (art). There’s a disconnect there.
It’s the same disconnect that gave e-commerce their current boom. Both their products are virtually similar (save for exclusives) and they drive demand for ‘their’ platform through a race-to-the-bottom in terms of prices through absurd discounts and sales. The answer to the question of why do people buy things became: because ‘it’s cheap’ instead of: because they ‘need them’. But that’s for another day. It isn’t interesting.
What the e-commerce websites for sellers, social media platforms for creative professionals, restaurant and delivery aggregators for delivery people have in common is that they all experienced massive growth but a massive decline in the quality of life for most of the people they were supposed to help. Turns out it was never about them.
E-Commerce websites make it difficult for non-traditional sellers to sell through unreasonable discounts and delivery times, social media platforms create teachers out of artists on a platform where attention spans are so short you can hardly, truly learn anything and Restaurant and Delivery Aggregators have made life for restaurants and delivery people impossible with similar unreasonable discount incentives and flash sale schemes for their customers (And cashback whatever that is).
Who are these customers then becomes the question: People like you and me. Me and you. But we aren’t bad people. We’ve just been playing the wrong game. I say wrong game because I don’t think we truly want the cheapest prices or fastest delivery at the cost of the death of the business and real people on the other end. The advertisers of these companies and corporations have made us think we want one thing when, in fact, we’d be more than happy with the other if enough context was set. But the companies wouldn’t have a ‘business model’ then to give them their unicorn valuations. Do you see the disconnect? You’re a passive target and so your happiness will never be a part of the equation. The vendor is an active weapon of their supply chain. There’s no Series A Round for an Aggregator that has nothing to aggregate. No-thing not No-one. Of course, why aggregate in the first place is the next logical question: because this was the best use of the centralized internet according to these dinosaurs. To digitize, algorithmy and appify directories and phone books. They never moved past that intensely basic view of the world. And it’s sad. They’re uninventive, cowardly people who have made a business model out of Listicles with a Payment Gateway tacked on and have dared, probably because they’re mostly men, to call themselves Gods.
One of these men even went to space recently. I hear he was shown some good properties on the moon but they need to wait for legislation for off-world escrow to come through.
Forget all this.
This isn’t interesting.
These business models will fall sooner or later. The problem that is interesting is this: the Model can be done by anyone. It isn’t the Model that’s ‘innovative’, it’s how these radical’ entrepreneurs generate demand.
I mentioned advertisers before and how they’re giving people the perception of needs that are out of sync with the productive, joyful human experience we all call utopia... but forget advertisers. Look at Demand. The ‘Need For Something’. It’s always generated for you and can hardly be taken for granted like they’d want you to think.
This is the last bastion of the unimaginative corporation. The ability to generate demand. The current demand created by the Aggregator seems to always have a necrotic effect on the aggregated. Essentially, it devours and destroys them.
A creator wants to connect to a consumer. They don’t want to become a machine-gun of advertisements in the hope that alongside patronizing and appreciating their art the consumer might also buy the product. It is, obviously, quite the opposite. The promise of the platform is only as a means to serve advertising and that is fundamentally opposed to two or more human beings connecting over a shared interest.
In short: Creative Professionals teaching on Video-Sharing Platforms becoming so freely available despite the inverse-correlation to dipping attention spans kills the Creative and leaves the Professional, a mere carcass. What was the point?
Do you see the disconnect?
The Disconnect proves that it was never possible for the Aggregator to support the Creator, Vendor, Restaurant or Delivery Person, etc. and will continue to diminish and consume the very thing that apparently made it so valuable and profitable.
Find more ways to generate Demand. The right kind of Demand.
Not for low-prices or lightning fast service but for kindness. How can you generate Demand for people to want to be kind, to want to perform empathy and love and then give them a product of yours that allows them to do just that?
That’s the question that will unmask these CEO-Entrepreneurs as the irrelevant Ghosts of Diwali-Sale Past that they really are.