Today’s talk is about the modern creator dilemma, mostly on YouTube, but this applies to any platform.

How the Machine Turns Us Into Machines

The biggest problem with the current setup is that the corporate machine is turning human beings into machines.

Let’s say you want to express yourself and start a channel about two or three different things. You’ll find rapidly that the algorithm doesn’t want that. It wants to put you in a niche and promote you as that niche. That’s fair, in a sense. People search for specific information and the algorithm serves it up. There’s no shortage of choice or videos to watch.

The algorithm isn’t evil. It’s trying to help people find what they want.

But the end result is that you may have started out expressing one thing and ended up becoming someone you never envisioned.

The Boat Painter Analogy

Let me give you an example I use with my students.

You’re a painter who likes landscapes, trees, ponds, paths. One day you think, maybe I’ll paint a boat. It comes out okay. You put it in your studio gallery and decide, “I don’t care about this, I’ll just put $5,000 on it,” even though you don’t normally sell work for that price.

Next day someone walks in. “I’ll have that. I love boats.” $5,000, no problem.

What are you going to do? You’ve got bills. You like money. So you paint another boat. And guess what? That sells too. “Now they like boats. Better paint more boats.”

Five years later, you’re in Boat Painter magazine. They interview you: “You must really love painting boats, huh?” You say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I love them.”

But you wanted to paint landscapes. You ended up painting boats because that’s what the market rewarded you for. You’re now the boat painter. You didn’t set out to be that, but there you are.

The same thing happens on YouTube all the time. You do one video and it goes viral. It’s natural to think, “They like that.” That was genuinely me communicating. So you do more of that, and eventually you end up in a place you didn’t want to be.

That’s how the corporate machine turns us into machines.

How You Start May Not Be How You Finish

Unless you’re careful.

On my painting channel, I’ve endeavored to do that. After 10 years, I’ve got 6,000 subscribers. Look around at oil painting on YouTube and you’ll see that’s not huge numbers. My channel could have been way bigger. I felt the pull. I could see what did well.

I acknowledge that. If it’s within the parameters of what I want to do, I do it. But I often put up paintings I know the channel doesn’t like because I know the trap. And I don’t want to fall into it.

This channel is a response to all of that. This is the anti-algorithm channel and I am the anti-influencer.

Why AI Changes Everything

Why is it good to be an anti-influencer coming up? Two letters: AI.

AI can create all the specific content you want. You ask it to do something and it does it. It scrapes information and brings disparate things together, often in creative ways. It doesn’t care what it creates. It just does what you ask.

I’ve clicked on promising YouTube content and gotten AI voices. I could tell right off it’s AI, so I click away. This isn’t a real person’s point of view.

I can tell now, but will I be able to in two, three, four or five years? A lot of people will be content to consume AI content and they will. YouTube is becoming TV, and TV is becoming AI.

What does this do to all the people who sold their soul to be an influencer?

Here’s the thing. Five years ago, I made decent money on YouTube, enough to buy pizzas and help pay my studio rent. But last year that changed. I don’t think YouTube doesn’t like me. They want me creating content. That’s what they do.

As a human being it’s incumbent on me to decide what I’m going to do and why and for how much.

I had to make a decision. If you were watching carefully, you’d have noticed a falter. I almost decided I don’t need this anymore. But I remembered why I started in the first place, to share what I do. YouTube allows me to do that, so I’m doing it anyway. Except, now I do it because I like it, not because I’m getting paid.

AI is coming. It’s already here. It’s going to have a huge impact on the influencer economy.

No More Reason to Pander

Because of AI, there’s no reason to pander anymore, unless you didn’t have a soul in the first place.

I’m old. I’m not ancient, but I’m not young. I remember a different time when media was limited. There were only so many magazines, radio stations, record stores and artists that record labels would sign. These people became celebrities, rock stars, famous.

Even younger generations are aware of this. For my generation, when you create something awesome, you expect the world will acknowledge it.

The Miracle We Take for Granted

What’s remarkable now is that I can record a video, upload it to YouTube, and one person or a million people could watch it. That’s never happened before in human history. It’s a miracle.

We should acknowledge and respect that, not take it for granted. I point this out to people on my painting channel: you can see a whole painting come together stroke by stroke. I would have loved that when I was young.

This channel isn’t scripted. People polish their scripts and make wonderful content. I’m not criticizing that. But we have a malaise, a bit of a cancer. I’m trying to address it. It’s time to be a human being expressing themselves, and that’s worthwhile whether one person or one million people are paying attention.

Express Something That Matters

It’s important now that we have this ability to express ourselves and communicate with people all over the world that you care about what you’re expressing. It should be something worthwhile, something that means something to you.

You shouldn’t do it for surface reasons or to make money. If you are doing that, I’m not here to judge.

I’m talking to people like me.

One Person or One Million

I put up one of my songs and got two comments from one person. That song affected them. That gets back to my one person or one million modality.

The fact that one person was moved by my song, moved enough to comment, means I’ve succeeded.

Will it change me dramatically if a million more do? It may get me money or inflate my ego. But not really because I’ve created something I think is great, something that stands up with anything anyone else has ever done musically. I can’t help but want more attention for my music.

Is it going to happen? Probably not. And that’s probably not a bad thing, because if you get one million views, it’s natural to want two million, three million, four million.

Where does it end?

The Future is Personal AI Content

AI is coming. Everyone’s going to be making their own AI thing. “AI, make me a classic Star Trek episode,” and it will. It won’t be bad. Probably pretty good. But this will also be just an internal loop.

Now’s the time to put your real stuff out there. Think about what’s in you that you need to express and express it. If it only gets to one or two people, great. Move on to the next thing and keep expressing.

The Universe Invested in You

This is how I think reality works. The universe split itself into seven billion individualized units and invested itself in each one. It has a plan. Maybe it’s evolution of consciousness. Maybe it’s everything becoming love again. I don’t know.

But here we are.

I don’t think the universe wants to drive your life or steer it. That’s incumbent on you. You decide what direction you want to go and how far and fast.

I believe that if you’re doing the right thing you’ll get some support. It might be a good feeling. It might not be a paycheck or hundreds or thousands or millions of people acknowledging you. That’s something we all have to face.

This Channel Reflects That

This is the anti-algorithm channel. We’re going to have a talk one day, a song the next, a painting after that, some photography. Why not? I’m just going to express myself.

The algorithm won’t like that variety. It won’t make me famous.

Maybe this talk will get views because I’ve seen a lot of this ‘content creator blues’ stuff in my feed. Creators saying, “I used to make money, I used to get views and now it’s half. I can’t afford to live anywhere! I’ve got to get a real job.”

It’s tough.

Legacy and Why I Paint

Not everyone cares about legacy. I do. Maybe that’s vanity, but if you create something worthwhile, you’ve got to believe someone will care someday.

That’s why I put most of my energy into painting. Unlike music, if you don’t have the electronic means to play a song, it’s meaningless. But with a painting, yes, you can photograph it and make copies. But if the means isn’t there, you’ll always have the painting.

Someone will value it if it’s beautiful.

The Shaman at the Edge of the Village

This is the anti-algorithm channel and I am the anti-influencer.

Not far back in human history, I would have been living in a hut at the edge of the village, aware of what’s going on but not quite part of it.

This was valuable because people would come to me like they go to the medicine man or the wise man, seeking advice from somebody who understands the community but has the ability to see outside of it.

That is who and what I am. That’s one of many things I am and it’s being expressed here. Will it be valuable to some people? I think it will. I can’t be attached to that though.

I hope you check out my music and look at my paintings when I start showing them here. But you may not and I can’t really care too much.

Your Job as a Creator

The last thing I want to say: I believe our creator has invested us with the ability to create. This message is for those of you who do want to create.

If you do, you should create something meaningful, something beautiful, something people will care about.

However, once you do that job, your job is essentially done. Put it out there. You owe it to your work. And if you get one comment, one acknowledgement, that’s as good as one million.

Create like your life depends on it.

Create, create, create. Get better and better at it.

That’s my message for you today. Take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones, and stay out of trouble.

Michael Francis McCarthy

The Anti-Influencer