An absolute banger this, Craig. It all needed to be addressed.
As to this: 'Why the hell have we become programmed to compartmentalise our interests to segment our audiences to make it easier for people to assimilate our personalities into their digital content consumption schedule?' my hunch is that because everything online is geared around an advertising business model (apart from Substack, God love them) things that make demographic data easier to compile will be rewarded. I.e. if your niche creates an audience of fellow 'writing about writing guys' then that is a very particular and easy demographic for grammar app, productivity software, course creators and stationary sellers to market to. It all becomes a self fulfilling loop. Which is very sad.
This is a part of it, indeed. I think a further part of it is that there's just too much information out there on the web, so some marketing techniques have been passed down like Chinese Whispers, getting less and less effective as time goes on.
The only way to battle more information is to differentiate YOUR information. But if what you're making is boring and the same as everyone else, you tend to attempt to differentiate it by just trying to 'niche down'.
I enjoy hearing who you were before you became the "you" you are now. Your writing and ideas also give me such an intriguing peek into a world I know nothing about. When i was addicted to Twitter, it was what became Weird Twitter, thus I have no experience with the Twitter neighborhood you called home.
I too found myself mindlessly nodding along to the trope that niching down is key to building an audience. It’s refreshing to see someone challenge the premise of audience building and the conventional wisdom to get there
It's easy until it becomes a trap. For me personally I need to be able to start a creative venture but also walk away from it when I am done. For example I enjoyed doing film reviews for a while but then I wanted to move on. If I was branded as the film review guy I would've hated it in the end and burned out.
Artists go through phases and periods.
Imagine if Picasso had branded himself as the 'Blue Painting guy' and so ended up stuck in his so called 'Blue Period (1901-04)' for all of his life. He would've quit for sure.
An absolute banger this, Craig. It all needed to be addressed.
As to this: 'Why the hell have we become programmed to compartmentalise our interests to segment our audiences to make it easier for people to assimilate our personalities into their digital content consumption schedule?' my hunch is that because everything online is geared around an advertising business model (apart from Substack, God love them) things that make demographic data easier to compile will be rewarded. I.e. if your niche creates an audience of fellow 'writing about writing guys' then that is a very particular and easy demographic for grammar app, productivity software, course creators and stationary sellers to market to. It all becomes a self fulfilling loop. Which is very sad.
This is a part of it, indeed. I think a further part of it is that there's just too much information out there on the web, so some marketing techniques have been passed down like Chinese Whispers, getting less and less effective as time goes on.
The only way to battle more information is to differentiate YOUR information. But if what you're making is boring and the same as everyone else, you tend to attempt to differentiate it by just trying to 'niche down'.
I enjoy hearing who you were before you became the "you" you are now. Your writing and ideas also give me such an intriguing peek into a world I know nothing about. When i was addicted to Twitter, it was what became Weird Twitter, thus I have no experience with the Twitter neighborhood you called home.
Oh it's a weird world alright. Probably weirder than Weird Twitter.
I too found myself mindlessly nodding along to the trope that niching down is key to building an audience. It’s refreshing to see someone challenge the premise of audience building and the conventional wisdom to get there
It's easy until it becomes a trap. For me personally I need to be able to start a creative venture but also walk away from it when I am done. For example I enjoyed doing film reviews for a while but then I wanted to move on. If I was branded as the film review guy I would've hated it in the end and burned out.
Artists go through phases and periods.
Imagine if Picasso had branded himself as the 'Blue Painting guy' and so ended up stuck in his so called 'Blue Period (1901-04)' for all of his life. He would've quit for sure.