Stop Trying to Monetize What Isn’t Interesting

It’s a sad truth that’s become a running joke: these days, you can’t attend a seminar, a webinar, a meet-up or a Tweetup without someone asking the all-important question: “How do I monetize?”  (It was the third question anyone asked at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4, and I was amazed people could wait that long.)

The answer to that question usually involves a mix of SEO, “personal branding” and “finding your niche”.  These answers are intended to propagate the notion that anyone can make a living online, because everyone wants to believe that.  What they’re not telling you is something they haven’t quite admitted to themselves:

You have to be interesting.  (And most people aren’t.)

From the moment we realized we could create media and share it online, it (il)logically followed that anyone who can produce media (which is all of us) deserves to make a living from it.  You might see the flaws in that theory, but you’d be in the minority.

Reality TV (and YouTube) has so eroded our perception of fame, success, art and even reality itself — to say nothing of lowering the expectations (and the standards) of “what it takes” to produce media that people will choose to consume — that anyone who’s ever read a book or seen a moving picture now believes not only that “I could do that,” but that “I could do it better.”  (AKA, “If the right guy at CBS would just watch my web tv pilot, I’d be banging Margaret Cho tomorrow!”)

This delusion has driven millions of amateurs to envision themselves as auteurs waiting to be discovered.  In their minds, the only thing stopping them from acquiring fame, fortune and household-name status is… fame and fortune.  What they don’t seem to understand is that fame and fortune require money — our money — and we don’t give that up unless we first surrender our attention. And there’s a lot competing for our attention right now.

But as we’ve seen from the recent fiscal implosion, Americans in particular are deceptively bad at math.  And since logic is a form of math, we can’t fault people for overestimating the value of their own merits.  (Consider it a “subprime self-awareness crisis.”)

So, as a sort of study guide, let’s recap what audiences are actually willing to spend their time and / or money on in 2010:

Grotesque Spectacle

The more uncomfortable or appalling something is, the harder it is to turn away.  Octomom.  Bridezillas.  I Survived. Just about anything on Discovery Health.  These are not feel-good stories; these are exploitations of people with physical, emotional or mental aberrations, celebrations of horrible choices, or brushes with death that convince us that we, by extension, are either lucky or invincible.  Even The Office is predicated on the kind of humor you have to watch through your fingers because you can’t quite bear to see that much obtuse pain demonstrated on a weekly basis.  It’s the emotional equivalent of Jackass with suits.

Extreme Anything

Reality TV and Hollywood blockbusters have destroyed the middle ground of storytelling.  From Transformers 2 to Shark Week, we need our adrenaline rushes maximized.  Plus, we’ve spent so much time and money on our home theater systems, we demand that they be pushed to their limits.

On the other hand, when we feel the urge for drama or comedy, we prefer to watch the world’s greatest professionals (or craziest amateurs) at work, because it fulfills both our voyeuristic tendencies and our need to be reminded that we’re all alike in some capacity — the great human drama, played out in leather by Dog the Bounty Hunter.  Would these shows be as compelling if they were scripted, played by actors and more slickly produced?  Perhaps… but then they’d have to involve giant robots.

Escape

We live in reality, and then we come home to watch it on TV.  When we do go out to the movies, we want to be amazed.  We need giant blue aliens or talking dogs or attractive people who don’t look like our cubiclemates.  But since most web media producers can’t afford to make content that satisfies the same way Pixar or (egad) Michael Bay can, they’re stuck in the aesthetic middle ground between Bravo and Hollywood.  (Hint: No one goes to the middle ground to escape.)

Building Walls and Hiding Behind Them

Nothing brings people together like isolating themselves from someone else.  Mainstream news outlets have been overrun by partisan extremes, and the bestselling books are increasingly histrionic in both their adulation of their own pet causes and their doomsday prophecies of the future — a future in which we’re all at the mercy of “the other.”

Exultant yet?  Or petrified?  Great — now give me a few bucks and I’ll introduce you to some people who think just like you…

Feeling Intelligent

If you watch enough episodes of What Not to Wear, you’ll think you know how to dress yourself.  If you watch enough of Project Runway, you’ll be convinced you can make your own clothing.  And after a few weeks of The First 48, you’ll start thinking you can crack cases faster than the detectives.  Meanwhile, shows like Lost and Bones rely on mankind’s innate desire to solve mysteries before the fictional characters can.  You may not be able to figure out the printer at work, but if you can outwit The Mentalist, you can sleep soundly.

Unchallenging Inspiration

We all want to be better people.  We just don’t want to have to work very hard at it.  Fortunately, the world is plump with experts and gurus reselling your own common sense back to you at a drastic markup.  And if you momentarily become frustrated at having paid for something you already knew, relax: it just validates that you were right.  (And isn’t that worth paying for?)

And that about sums it up.

So if you’re one of the aspiring superstars who’s wondering why you haven’t become rich and famous yet, grab a mirror.  Yes, the Internet has “democratized” the media world, but a democracy doesn’t mean “everybody wins.”  It means “everybody has a chance.”  So stop bitching and start giving me a real reason to pay attention.

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Tags: America, art, audience, Blogging, branding, bullshit, Business, common sense, perception, pop culture, Social Media, Sociology, video