Sterling Proffer

The industrial economy laid claim to our bodies. The knowledge economy laid claim to our minds. Now the creative economy is laying claim to our souls. Like the farmer with the proverbial pig, we use everything except the squeal. The squeal is when we realize what’s happening to us.

I suggested that Substack’s day of reckoning may still lie ahead. The bigger Substack gets, the more ideologically diverse its author pool becomes, the greater the chances for highly inflammatory, potentially harmful content.

The cycle is dizzying and numbing: The allure of authenticity invites fascination and then, inevitably, skepticism. All along, truth and trust aren’t celebrated; they’re destabilized.

If tiktok makes the music world look and act more banal, it also, in some cases, makes it sound that way too. One fad is songs that take kindergarten-friendly gimmicks—a countdown, a sound effect—and add adult profanity, making for a cocktail of relatability.

So to me, the problem is not with the buying, nor even with the culture-grifting of brands, but with some kind of insufficiency on the part of the companies themselves. If the meanings they have on offer are starved versions of cultural membership, then perhaps, I started to feel, the brands aren’t going far enough. Could we imagine a version of a... See more

5. Create an experience unlocked by NFTs: These experiences can be either digital or physical. Access to a private Discord or to gated content on a website is a simple kind of experience, but there’s a much wider range of possibilities.