November 16, 2022 | Read Online

Money follows art

Understanding the economics of social media.

Cole Schafer
November 16, 2022

Money follows art. It always has and it always will.

Once upon a time, Nashville was a singer-songwriter's paradise. The rent was cheap, the living was good and there was so much raw, God-given talent walking up and down its empty streets that magic seemed to happen every time somebody strummed a guitar or spoke into a mic.

Artists made Nashville Nashville. They gave Nashville its culture. They built Nashville into the place where everybody wanted to be––where everybody still wants to be.

And, as more and more people flocked to its streets to join the party that was raging, deep-pocketed investors from all around the country sniffed the opportunity wafting into the air and swooped in like hungry vultures.

I can't pretend to have been a part of old Nashville––I made my way down here a decade after this town had changed hands––but I've been here long enough to witness the extinction of the $10 lunch and rent climb as high as the tall and skinnies that hover awkwardly over its streets.

When I first moved to Nashville, my brother and I rented a three-bedroom, one-bath home the color of a sun-faded Bluebird's egg that ran us each a whopping $600/ month.

At the time, I thought we were paying out the ass but today, it's not uncommon for folks to pay $2,000 for a studio apartment the size of a one-car garage.

A few days ago, it was announced that Emma's Flowers––a vibey, slightly tacky pink relic of Old Nashville––was mowed down like a Dandelion that looked out of place, in order to make room for yet another high rise.

I'm not anti-capitalist but I do believe that one of the greatest tragedies we commit as humans, is pricing artists out of the cities they create.

This phenomenon doesn't just happen offline––in places like Portland, San Francisco, Austin, Nashville and Asheville––but online, too.

Artists made Instagram cool. Money ruined it. Artists made Spotify cool. Money ruined it. Artists made Twitter cool. Money––ehem, Musk––ruined it. Artists made TikTok cool. Give it a few years, money will ruin it.

And while it's easy to blame these ruinings on the investors writing the checks, we have to be just as readily prepared to blame ourselves, the customers ensuring that those investors see a gargantuan return on their checks.

There's a scene in the hit series Yellowstone, where Kayce Dutton is eating ice cream with his son, Tate, in a trendy part of Downtown Bozeman that appears to be very recently developed.

The father and son are seated on a bench right outside an ice cream shop called "Churn" people-watching while nipping away at their ice cream.

Kayce, born and raised in Bozeman, makes a smart-ass comment to himself about all the "transplants" in town.

Tate, unaware of the terminology, asks his father what a transplant is, to which Kayce tells him that just about everybody he sees is a "transplant".

After a brief moment of silence Kayce then comments, "The transplants make good ice cream, though."

An internal conflict I deal with is that I'm both the artist and the money.

While I'm not swinging the wrecking ball into Emma's Flowers, I'm eating the ice cream.

My sheer existence in Nashville––my willingness to pay $20 for a fucking salad at lunch––is what is promising returns to all the deep-pocketed investors.

And, just like I'm part of the problem in Nashville, I'm also part of the problem online too.

I'm afraid we all are.

We've managed to fuck up what could have been a really good situation––a situation where deeper connections are made, culture is shared and conversations flourish between people living entire continents apart from one another––by turning social media into yet another investment opportunity to build brands, grow audiences and cash the fuck in.

Like everything else in this world, social media and everything happening online have become a place where the bottom 99% support the top 1%.

It promised us better opportunities for our work to get noticed. So, why is it that it feels harder than ever before to get people's attention?

I'm sick of the ice cream. It's all starting to taste the same.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. I have more to say on this topic––hold tight while I gather my thoughts.

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