Agreed, Freddie gets it backwards. If anything, low barriers to entry mean more great creative work, partially because artists can more or less immediately start getting validation, rather than having to spend years scribbling alone in their bedrooms with no idea whether what they're doing is any good or not. Their motivation stays higher, and the feedback they get from online communities helps them improve faster.
But, the flip side of this is that we all get to see all the dreck that would previously have remained hidden in people's private notebooks, thus creating the illusion that great art isn't being created anymore.
Basically it's a signal to noise problem. The signal is much higher now but the noise rose much faster than the signal did. That was the main advantage of gatekeeping. You didn't have to see the slush pile yourself; the editor got to suffer through that, he'd pick out the best stuff, and that's what you saw on the shelves at the book store.
It doesn't help that the traditional gatekeepers have completely dropped the ball, though. Walk into a book store these days and its just, intersectional this, gay that, black this, woman that. Boring preachy garbage. Most of the genuinely good stuff is being self-published on Amazon. Problem is, it's hard to pick it out from the noise. So while Freddie is wrong in his diagnosis, he's correct in noting that there is a problem.
That's just it though, we don't have to pick one system or the other. Why not have lots of local local leagues and the hyper competitive league? You could even have scouts who look for talent in the little local teams as a way to find those who would do well in the hyper leagues.
That is the mistake socialists often make, forgetting that competition and markets allow for vastly more variety in the types of things people want, limited by barriers to entry, gatekeepers, and other costs. We don't have to pick between one and the other, and we don't have to worry about wasteful competition. We just let people do what they want and see what comes out.
The trouble with the Da Vinci vs stick figure thing is whether or not all the little people who can only draw stick figures are going to be able to see all that wonderful Da Vinci work. If Da Vinci's (or Shakespeare might be better) work can be mass produced so everyone can enjoy it, great, you have reinvented (slightly pre-)modern mass culture production. If not... are the vast majority of people just looking at stick figures while a handful get to appreciate great art really representative of a better culture? And of course if Da Vinci's successor is a no talent political hack, well now you are screwed. It isn't as though the gatekeeper have historically had a great track record.
Plus, I think Freddie is just dead wrong on how the mechanics work. Barriers to entry don't motivate people to create greater work compared to lower barriers. They just make them think it isn't worth their time.
I don't know about your reason for little interest in playing local non-competitive leagues. Firstly, there is no reason for local leagues to not be competitive, in the sense of games having winners and losers and maybe a ranking. Secondly, if one wonders why there are not more people playing in amateur leagues the first obvious answer is "people don't like playing sports that much." Even the people I know who play competitive sports or other games (table top, board) don't practice or train much if at all, and it can be a huge time commitment when you have kids. "Bye honey, I am off to play for 3-4 hours, have fun with the kids!" doesn't really fly it seems. Organized team sports are hard to work into a schedule, which is presumably why martial arts and other "show up to classes when you can schedule it for an hour or two" are much more common with adults.
Also remember that the local league, much like the non-pro content creator isn't just doing it for the applause and approbation of the crowd, but just because playing a sport or being creative is psychologically enjoyable, along with the approbation of your team mates and friends. The big leagues that offer money and fame are nice, but have different incentives in exchange for different commitments and costs.
I also don't quite get your point about the good players going off to the big leagues being detrimental to the lower leagues. It seems at least as likely that separating out skill levels a bit would help both instead. It might be fun for a bit to have Michael Jordan on your local basketball team and just dominate the crap out of everyone else at the YMCA, but it isn't like you would be contributing much, and so that would likely get old as the game turns into "delay the other team until you get Jordan the ball," and everyone calls the game by half time because you are up by 100 points. It certainly would be extremely unfun for the other teams; why even show up? Now, there might be a lot to learn from Jordan and that would be nice to have access too, but if you are looking for a fun, not too crazy game to unwind with your buddies after work, having him rule the court like you were a peewee team would be less appealing.
Further, if the relaxed teams are a bit of a feeder for the big leagues that might be quite motivating for many players. As it stands now the channel is usually high school -> college -> minors/majors. For people that got hurt in college and missed a few years an option to maybe get scouted from their team might be really fun. They probably wouldn't want to join a casual league, but if there were lots of options maybe they could find the serious amateur whatever. The point is that being discovered, developing a portfolio in artsy terms, would be a big motivator to produce better work.
Last point: you always find the classics at libraries because they are essentially free and common, much like contemporary trash. More contemporary good stuff was hard to find. A society with a few greats creating culture and a whole lot of nothing besides tends to distribute the long previous greats while the more recent greats are only consumed by the elite. That can lead to a lot of freaky signaling crap getting produced before the commoners realize what the elites are getting up to :P
Aye. It is a little surprising how exactly backwards he got it. I would have thought that he would have picked up on how Hollywood and other media gate keeping sources are selecting for ideological purity, not writing or other creative ability, considering that he seems to detest the woke. Even stranger that much of the good stuff is coming out of exactly those low barrier to entry, gatekeeperless spaces.
Then again, maybe he doesn't share my estimates of what constitutes good stuff :)
The good stuff doesn't get served up on a platter anymore. You have to go hunting for it. Which on the one hand is kinda cool in a countercultural way, and on the other can be very frustrating.
That's true. I suppose there was a similar situation at the height of "100,000 cable channels!... and nothing good to watch," in the 90's. (I don't know personally, my family had 4 channels, 5 if the wind was right, till I left for college, but I am told that was the case.) It has been that way for books pretty much since the 1500's.
Really, there is probably a good market for content curators and recommenders that isn't getting filled competently. Possibly that is a hold over from the legacy media companies that produce and distribute (and so recommend) content, and so are biased towards their products and their proclivities as opposed to what people actually want. I rather like Pandora for listening to music (for all its faults), and if there was a similar service for tv, movies or whatever that actually worked I would be willing to pay a subscription for that.
But hell, what are friends for if not recommending what to read and watch?
Content curation is definitely a market niche that needs a better solution than Amazon recommendations. Upstream Reviews is trying to do that for scifi/fantasy; Declann Finn has a substack with some of their reviews. No idea how successful it is though.
Turning curation into a paying job though. That's the trick.
Many good points made. As a professional photographer rounding out the second decade of my career I can relate to Fred's frustration. Ultimately it's how we view or listen to culture today. Most things are experienced on a phone and resolution and detail only needs to be so good. Producing media for an event, well you are going to be competing with phone people that think they are just as good as you with the real camera and post the unedited media with greater speed. Oh where did the day rates go?
Also you are on point with your commentary on the new gate keepers of Star Trek and Star Wars. They don't care about the soul of the franchise or writing risky new material. Recycle repeat.
Agreed, Freddie gets it backwards. If anything, low barriers to entry mean more great creative work, partially because artists can more or less immediately start getting validation, rather than having to spend years scribbling alone in their bedrooms with no idea whether what they're doing is any good or not. Their motivation stays higher, and the feedback they get from online communities helps them improve faster.
But, the flip side of this is that we all get to see all the dreck that would previously have remained hidden in people's private notebooks, thus creating the illusion that great art isn't being created anymore.
Basically it's a signal to noise problem. The signal is much higher now but the noise rose much faster than the signal did. That was the main advantage of gatekeeping. You didn't have to see the slush pile yourself; the editor got to suffer through that, he'd pick out the best stuff, and that's what you saw on the shelves at the book store.
It doesn't help that the traditional gatekeepers have completely dropped the ball, though. Walk into a book store these days and its just, intersectional this, gay that, black this, woman that. Boring preachy garbage. Most of the genuinely good stuff is being self-published on Amazon. Problem is, it's hard to pick it out from the noise. So while Freddie is wrong in his diagnosis, he's correct in noting that there is a problem.
That's just it though, we don't have to pick one system or the other. Why not have lots of local local leagues and the hyper competitive league? You could even have scouts who look for talent in the little local teams as a way to find those who would do well in the hyper leagues.
That is the mistake socialists often make, forgetting that competition and markets allow for vastly more variety in the types of things people want, limited by barriers to entry, gatekeepers, and other costs. We don't have to pick between one and the other, and we don't have to worry about wasteful competition. We just let people do what they want and see what comes out.
The trouble with the Da Vinci vs stick figure thing is whether or not all the little people who can only draw stick figures are going to be able to see all that wonderful Da Vinci work. If Da Vinci's (or Shakespeare might be better) work can be mass produced so everyone can enjoy it, great, you have reinvented (slightly pre-)modern mass culture production. If not... are the vast majority of people just looking at stick figures while a handful get to appreciate great art really representative of a better culture? And of course if Da Vinci's successor is a no talent political hack, well now you are screwed. It isn't as though the gatekeeper have historically had a great track record.
Plus, I think Freddie is just dead wrong on how the mechanics work. Barriers to entry don't motivate people to create greater work compared to lower barriers. They just make them think it isn't worth their time.
I don't know about your reason for little interest in playing local non-competitive leagues. Firstly, there is no reason for local leagues to not be competitive, in the sense of games having winners and losers and maybe a ranking. Secondly, if one wonders why there are not more people playing in amateur leagues the first obvious answer is "people don't like playing sports that much." Even the people I know who play competitive sports or other games (table top, board) don't practice or train much if at all, and it can be a huge time commitment when you have kids. "Bye honey, I am off to play for 3-4 hours, have fun with the kids!" doesn't really fly it seems. Organized team sports are hard to work into a schedule, which is presumably why martial arts and other "show up to classes when you can schedule it for an hour or two" are much more common with adults.
Also remember that the local league, much like the non-pro content creator isn't just doing it for the applause and approbation of the crowd, but just because playing a sport or being creative is psychologically enjoyable, along with the approbation of your team mates and friends. The big leagues that offer money and fame are nice, but have different incentives in exchange for different commitments and costs.
I also don't quite get your point about the good players going off to the big leagues being detrimental to the lower leagues. It seems at least as likely that separating out skill levels a bit would help both instead. It might be fun for a bit to have Michael Jordan on your local basketball team and just dominate the crap out of everyone else at the YMCA, but it isn't like you would be contributing much, and so that would likely get old as the game turns into "delay the other team until you get Jordan the ball," and everyone calls the game by half time because you are up by 100 points. It certainly would be extremely unfun for the other teams; why even show up? Now, there might be a lot to learn from Jordan and that would be nice to have access too, but if you are looking for a fun, not too crazy game to unwind with your buddies after work, having him rule the court like you were a peewee team would be less appealing.
Further, if the relaxed teams are a bit of a feeder for the big leagues that might be quite motivating for many players. As it stands now the channel is usually high school -> college -> minors/majors. For people that got hurt in college and missed a few years an option to maybe get scouted from their team might be really fun. They probably wouldn't want to join a casual league, but if there were lots of options maybe they could find the serious amateur whatever. The point is that being discovered, developing a portfolio in artsy terms, would be a big motivator to produce better work.
Last point: you always find the classics at libraries because they are essentially free and common, much like contemporary trash. More contemporary good stuff was hard to find. A society with a few greats creating culture and a whole lot of nothing besides tends to distribute the long previous greats while the more recent greats are only consumed by the elite. That can lead to a lot of freaky signaling crap getting produced before the commoners realize what the elites are getting up to :P
Aye. It is a little surprising how exactly backwards he got it. I would have thought that he would have picked up on how Hollywood and other media gate keeping sources are selecting for ideological purity, not writing or other creative ability, considering that he seems to detest the woke. Even stranger that much of the good stuff is coming out of exactly those low barrier to entry, gatekeeperless spaces.
Then again, maybe he doesn't share my estimates of what constitutes good stuff :)
The good stuff doesn't get served up on a platter anymore. You have to go hunting for it. Which on the one hand is kinda cool in a countercultural way, and on the other can be very frustrating.
That's true. I suppose there was a similar situation at the height of "100,000 cable channels!... and nothing good to watch," in the 90's. (I don't know personally, my family had 4 channels, 5 if the wind was right, till I left for college, but I am told that was the case.) It has been that way for books pretty much since the 1500's.
Really, there is probably a good market for content curators and recommenders that isn't getting filled competently. Possibly that is a hold over from the legacy media companies that produce and distribute (and so recommend) content, and so are biased towards their products and their proclivities as opposed to what people actually want. I rather like Pandora for listening to music (for all its faults), and if there was a similar service for tv, movies or whatever that actually worked I would be willing to pay a subscription for that.
But hell, what are friends for if not recommending what to read and watch?
Content curation is definitely a market niche that needs a better solution than Amazon recommendations. Upstream Reviews is trying to do that for scifi/fantasy; Declann Finn has a substack with some of their reviews. No idea how successful it is though.
Turning curation into a paying job though. That's the trick.
Many good points made. As a professional photographer rounding out the second decade of my career I can relate to Fred's frustration. Ultimately it's how we view or listen to culture today. Most things are experienced on a phone and resolution and detail only needs to be so good. Producing media for an event, well you are going to be competing with phone people that think they are just as good as you with the real camera and post the unedited media with greater speed. Oh where did the day rates go?
Also you are on point with your commentary on the new gate keepers of Star Trek and Star Wars. They don't care about the soul of the franchise or writing risky new material. Recycle repeat.