Nilay Patel talking with Taylor Lorenz and David Pierce on The Vergecast:
Well there’s a part of it that I think is just being in service to your audience. Whether you’re making journalism, or entertainment, or whatever, like, you need to be there because your audience is waiting.
But then there’s the flip side of it, which is, major artists go away, and they use that to their advantage, right? They disappear.
Taylor Swift disappears between albums and tours, and then she comes back with a vengeance. Beyoncé disappears between albums and tours — she’s barely present when she’s on tour. Like, that is a very managed persona. And I feel like that hasn’t permeated yet into online culture. And you can see that more Hollywood style of media. Like, they’ve mastered taking it away, and like, building demand, and then filling the demand with something great (or something expensive, at least).
Online, we — no one has figured out how to do this, and I think that is actually crushing. And I think it sometimes makes us make worse work.
I think the question I’d have for you, Taylor, is I suspect the algorithmic platforms make that a thousand times worse. Right?
Like, you have a big platform at a big newspaper. You can take a break, and you can come back, and your bosses at the newspaper are like: ‘We’re gonna publish your stories again, and promote them. We have our own website. We can just like, put whatever we want on it, and hopefully people read it — but it’s ours.’
Whereas, I feel like every YouTuber and TikToker I know is like, ‘If I stop for 1 second, this robot will forget about me, and I will never return.’
I’ve been waiting to finally see an established YouTuber swipe a play from old school network TV:
- Drop three 13-episode seasons per year — and just take the summer off.
Or the winter, whatever… pick your 3-month period.
When extended time away to travel, think, and rest become the general norm, we’ll see a lot less burn-out and, with it, a renaissance of creative cool on YouTube.
Of course, this will require less dependence on the platform, a reasonable amount of confidence in the value of your output as a creator, and a willingness to chuck deuces to the most fickle and disloyal of the viewers currently padding your subscriber count.
— Tang
Nilay Patel’s owned platform is The Verge.
