We can call this video a “Throwback Thursday” but there is a larger point that I’m trying to make by sharing it more than 2 years after it was recorded. Bear with me, a brief backstory.
First, my favorite subject: Me!
When I was in college, I wanted to work in sports radio. It didn’t really matter what the capacity was. I always assumed that I’d be an on-air personality dissecting the intricacies of every narrative surrounding my team. Stuff like this…
Hey, Jalen Brown hasn’t tweeted about the Marcus Smart trade. That must mean they don’t like each other! Let’s argue about it for two hours!
As it turned out, I actually really enjoyed producing and tried to go that route instead. That ultimately led to TV and 13 years later, I was still in local TV. But, there were some behind the scenes things happening in my last couple years in that career that really helped mold my viewpoint on where I think media is trending longer term. Before COVID/lockdowns, my old company held an innovation summit. What that summit ultimately produced was a team of 6 people who were trying to build an internal podcasting arm at the TV station.
It just made sense. We had a lot of talented people in the building who, though not on air talent, were actually very good at making content and we had several very good ideas. This would have been a locally-owned and operated content arm that lived separately from the news. Many of us felt that it was imperative to build out podcasting and video streaming assets as those were the growth areas in media and linear television is clearly in contraction. But it just didn’t come together. Such is life. Five of the six people on that podcasting team have since left the company. Perhaps necessary context. You be the judge.
The reason I’m telling this story is because I’ve always wanted to be a “content creator” in some way. And working in a media business in production, marketing, and sales capacities over the course of 13 years allowed me to learn quite a bit about what works and what doesn’t work. To be clear, I don’t remember much from my actual college coursework. But I do remember a great deal from what I learned from over a decade in the actual industry. And I still obviously have a passion for content creation. When the lockdowns began, I started playing around with podcasting as a hobby (for the second time). When you put so much time into something, you naturally wind up asking yourself a critical question…
This is fun, can it make me money somehow?
“An Ocean of Free”
When I contemplated how far I was willing to go with some of my older podcasting ideas, I decided I wanted absolutely nothing to do with advertising. And that led to the conversation that I had with Grant Williams in early 2021. That video is attached to this post. I’d really encourage you to watch it. Or listen to it here. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite podcast conversations I’ve ever had across any of my shows. We chatted about media, being offended, and Elon Musk - among other things.
If you’re not familiar with his work, Grant Williams is the co-Founder of Real Vision and I consider him to be one of the OGs of independent financial media. He runs the Things That Make You Go Hmmm… newsletter and has a handful of podcasts that he hosts with financial minds like Steph Pompboy, Bill Fleckenstein, Ben Hunt, and
. It’s a fascinating body of work. One of his recent episodes is the first podcast appearance of - it is an absolute must listen:
Truly, it’s a real joy hearing Rudy’s backstory and what has helped shape his worldview. Of course, the content is paywalled. But if you understand the point about free media that Grant was trying to make in his appearance on my old show, you likely understand why so many creators are moving to the subscription model. For instance, here’s what happened yesterday…
Editorial Independence
Grit Capital is a top 10 financial newsletter on Substack. While I don’t actually subscribe to the publication, I do follow the main contributor on Twitter. Yesterday, a Twitter user pointed out that a company called Hank Payments bought a $200,000 content placement agreement with Grit Capital:
From the Twitter poster on Hank Payments:
This company repriced 1,045,000 stock options from $1.00 to $0.10. I am dying. They also repriced 3,142,500 warrants from $1.00 to $0.075. If this newsletter pump works the management gets a major pay day. This is the related party that management owns. They sold 6.1 million shares of Hank or 2% of the total shares outstanding at the time. Management is using this company as their exit liquidity. Be careful in these Canadian dumpster fires.
Bold my emphasis.
I’m not throwing any shade on Grit Capital for this, I’m just using it as a timely and important example. It’s not a great look. And it clearly illustrates why chasing the ad dollars can be a problem. If I was a subscriber of Grit Capital and I saw all of this, I’d start wondering if other Grit Capital advertisers are doing things that could be seen as shady as well. If I were a different Grit Capital advertiser, I may start second guessing if my brand should be aligned with the newsletter at all. Because after all, my name is my name.
“Wizards of Woo Woo”
I suspect all of this is what
alludes to when he talks about the “reputation economy.” He’s been writing about it lately and his recent piece titled indoctrination, reputation, and evolution is phenomenal.
In the essay, gato details how universities are essentially pumping out government master-loving bootlickers (my words, not his) who swear by the “credentialed class” model largely because they’ve paid to be in it. He shares an anecdote about a Harvard ethics professor - and if you don’t laugh reading this you’ll cry - committing fraud.
His piece shares many common themes that you’ve likely read right here on Heretic Speculator in the past. Specifically, the forthcoming demise of legacy systems and the stunning decline of “expert” competency. Here’s my favorite quote from Gato’s piece though:
these wizards of woo woo ran into a buzz saw of people who had real domain expertise outside the walled gardens of academic endeavor and the pattycake peer review of friendly guild systems. they came from a world where one has to actually be right for a living, not just “socialized and credentialed.” - gato
Again, bold my emphasis. Ahhhh, so good. And it hints at the censorship movement that we’ve seen on places like Twitter over the last several years. Rather than have an honest conversation with people who don’t think the same way, the kneejerk reaction has been to simply silence opposition. But discussion matters:
the level of access and education available to any who seek it and engage with it is almost impossible to overstate and is certainly impossible to compete with. it just takes desire, diligence, and application. 3 years of arguing economics in earnest on twitter probably has more value than most econ degrees. - gato
Can’t cosign that enough. And it is precisely why people like Grant Williams are so important. The era of “what to think” is over. “How to think” is the path forward. And that comes from having real conversations with people who have applicable experience rather than from people who bought paperwork that says they understand things.
This post may have felt convoluted. Here is my larger point by sharing all of these seemingly unconnected things today:
The algo wants you to keep scrolling. It incentivizes quantity and it is designed to keep your attention on the platform and/or device. It knows absolutely everything about you. What makes you happy. What makes you mad. And it presses those levers to keep you engaged. All of this is paid for by companies that want to sell you stuff you probably don’t need.
We should try to be better. And it starts with what we consume and how we create. In the reputation economy, we don’t “drown in the ocean of free.” Mole hills don’t have to become mountains because of some algorithm that necessitates daily engagement. Creators are rewarded rather than punished for silence when there isn’t actually anything to say. Because in the reputation economy our names are our names. And the name is not for sale.
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