In case this needs explaining: I am an admirer, nay, believer, nay, zealot, in / of / about the creatively lived day. Where you wake up and have the calm to settle on thoughts and ideas I'll be so bold as to call “inspiration.” And spend your undistracted energy following up on them, turning them into a defined thing of some kind. I feel like this process opens up a temporary vacation from the brain’s constant background chorus of ”why am I doing this?” And “can I have a drink?” I want it for myself, I want it for everyone.
But when the guys from Lessons from the Screenplay (literary lessons from big movies) and Wendover Productions (explanations of how airlines plan routes, the logistics of taking the US census, and other taken-for-granted background achievements of industrialized prosperity) and CinemaWins (soothing breakdowns of good bad movies) lead videos with an invitation to sign up for Nebula, a new creator-built video subscription service, I feel a kind of nervous refusal, similar to how you probably feel when you ignore a homeless person asking for change.
By the logic of what must have been Nebula’s investor pitch deck, this doesn’t make sense. I am one of the hundreds of thousands of people who feel a soothing blend of excitement and relief when I see new content from these creators at the top of my feed. I know that these creators need to convert the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of other people like me into money that keeps up with how much things cost in America. I know that YouTube, once a novelty platform for hobbyists to pick up some extra change, has metastasized into a defensive, squinty, tightfisted behemoth that is hard to pry a steady living from. A non-neutral utility, trying to get as rich as possible providing a service the creators absolutely depend on, rigged with nets and booby traps of content regulation. A new network, owned by creators, supported by nominal subscription fees of $3 / month, instead of advertising, sounds like exactly what I want to exist for the sake of the creatively-lived days I want more people to have.
But man, I just love YouTube. The familiar home page, with its array of deep and shallow pockets of curiosity and intrigue and laughter and earnest wishing-well. Try something new, just to help creators and get a sliver of extra content? That part of the mind, which grips me when I’m just looking for a little satisfaction, doesn’t see any extra satisfaction in Nebula, and doesn’t even look up to sniff when offered to try it. What I believe and advocate for is not what chooses to consume. Nebula is begging – not openly, but I know how much YouTube stresses creators out – for me to make a simple, entirely tentative mental step of facing up to a different experience. I’m sorry; I’m just riding this dopamine dog, and there’s nothing I can do.