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Blue Fairy Wren's avatar

I'm not sure how possible it is to build and audience from scratch anymore. Platforms start out very egalitarian. Then, they get bought out by Zuckerberg or whomever and the algorithm starts to fuck with authors and audience alike. Instagram used to be a great place for visual artists to build an audience and sell their work. It used to be possible to steadily build an audience, knowing that everything you posted would be shown to your followers. Since Zuckerberg bought IG and decided that the algorithm should no longer show all your posts to all your followers many artists have seen their income tank. Similarly, youtube used to send an email to all subscribers when someone you followed posted a video. That stopped a couple of years ago, and now I have to scroll through my subscriptions to find if there are new videos from those I have followed for years because they sure as hell aren't showing up in my feed. If they are not showing you posts from people with 100K + subscribers, what hope does the person starting out have? It's just a game of roulette. If you're lucky, you may have a video go viral and they may push your content for a little while, but I know of a lot of previously very successful art youtubers who have seen their income halve in a short space of time. I hope substack is different. I hope for the best, but I fear the worse, because, you know, capitalism.

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Yuri Bezmenov's avatar

We are the media now. One thousand true fans can give you personal sovereignty. Hat tip to Substack for helping us build communities while supporting our families.

PS: What do you think of this late 90s / early 2000s playlist? https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/yuri-summer-mixtape-90s-2000s-millennial

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