I Won’t Be A Niche
It may have taken this challenge to do it, but I think I know what’s been hanging me up about content creation for these platforms lately. It’s the unbearable influence of marketers and influencers telling us that what we do has to be about something, and it really doesn’t.
I mean, of course, I can unload a bunch of articles about podcasting and creativity and find a niche to inundate you with tons of posts, but that’s not the whole of who I am. I’m a goddamn human being, not a marketing machine, and I have other stories to tell. You may even find one of them interesting.
It was like that back in the early days of podcasting, when none of us had a clue what we were doing. We just did it. Dave Winer drank his coffee. Adam Curry made a show basically out of user-generated content. Keith and the Girl had a decent talk show. One guy read the news while taking a morning dump. It was the Wild West, and it was fucking beautiful.
Then someone figured out how to make a dime off podcasting, and the marketers and celebrities descended on the place and gentrified it — industrialized it. Frankly, I hate it. Yet I find myself asking, is it really necessary to compete with all of that? The answer is no. I do not.
I’m not going to be a marketing jukebox; I’m going to be me. If that’s enough for you, fantastic. I hope so because I have a face made for this platform. So wit and talent will have to do.
