is life giving us lemons or crap?

I'm having a crisis as to how I should go about changing the world.

Up until this point I've been running with the idea of enshittification. Platforms use a money spicket¹ (large private investors, preexisting businesses, government programs, etc.) to give out free/unsustainable stuff until they capture most users and businesses, then make their platform worse in order to appease c-suites and shareholders. It's a perspective which seems to represent reality reasonably well. More importantly for what I'm talking about today, the solution it describes is simple: Get out. Systems built on the attention economy are inherently predatory and self-destructive, so the only rational choice is to untie yourself from these systems as completely and as quickly as possible. In line with my "be the change you want to see" philosophy, I've been doing my best to live that out in recent years. I've stopped using Gmail, Google Search, and Chrome in my personal life, am building up a private collection of lossless digital music, and have removed most social media from my life.

That being said, over the past couple of days I've been having some second thoughts.

Don't get me wrong, the removal of social media has been an amazing thing for my mental, and the reduction in my consumption of internet "content" has improved my awareness general productivity. My second thoughts mostly revolve around the "change the world" parts of my perspective rather than the "change myself" bits.

It started with a conversation I was having with a friend of mine who's a pretty successful YouTuber². Last time I talked to him, asked me if I've ever seriously considered attempting YouTube. Apparently I have the thought process for it, which I find interesting for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this post. Anywho, my response was something to the tune of "No, because for most my life I was horribly insecure" followed by a brief explanation of my problem with algorithmically motivated content. To my surprise³, he pushed back in an intelligent and persuasive way. His point was that these systems aren't nearly as broken when filled with discerning users, and that they are even capable of creating positive incentive structures in the right situations. More importantly, he argued that ethical and intentional participation in these systems isn't a compromise of one's principles because they are better described as flawed/broken, not predatory. Now, I'm aware there's a bit of conflict of interest here with the YouTuber arguing in favor of YouTube, but biases don't make someone wrong. I respect this person's opinion, even if we disagree on a number of topics. It wasn't a complete alternative framework, but it got me thinking.

Then I stumbled across an article titled "Selling Lemons", which just so happened to be a pretty good base for an alternative framework. The idea stems from a highly influential Economics paper (itself expanding upon the economic principle of "Gresham's Law", which can then be traced back even further) which explains how markets can fail when consumers are unable to determine quality before purchases. When people can't tell how good or bad any given can of beans is, a rational response is to assume they're all average and run with that. That's fantastic for companies selling cheap beans, since their cans will sell for more than they're worth. It's also horrible for companies selling luxury beans, since their cans will sell at a loss. Over time, the cheap beans will start pushing the luxury beans out of the market due to making significantly higher profits, which will lower the average quality and make the entire problem even worse. The entire system will keep spiraling down until either there are no more beans on sale or the only thing left are bottom of the barrel beans. The comparison to internet content is pretty clear, but I'm going to spell it out anyway because it's my blog and it's fun.

If you can't tell the quality of a YouTube video from its title and thumbnail, then you're pretty much going to assume it's an average video. This is great for people making slop, since they get treated as a better video than they are. In the same vein, it's horrible for people who pour their heart and soul into their content, since they get treated the same way as the slop does. This pushes everyone to make slop, and more importantly does so without malice or moustache-twirling greed on anyone's part. No, the problem is far more sinister: Carelessness.

I could probably write more on carelessness as a concept, but I'm going to end it here. I don't want to present a complete thought when I don't have one yet. What I will do is keep thinking, reading, and asking my friends what they think about this topic. Who knows, maybe I'll end up changing my mind, and if I do end up going with the Lemon Market concept there's a good chance I'll make YouTube channel as a companion to this blog.

1. My spellcheck flagged this word as wrong even though I was fairly certain I was correct, so I did some digging. Evidently this is a variant exclusive to specific regions of the United States, and the generally accepted spelling is "spigot". I never expected I would have where I grew up doxxed by my spelling of a random piece of pipe, yet here we are.^
2. If you're reading this, you know who you are. I tried to warn you about how ugly my blog was, but I don't think you quite got it.^
3. And great joy, I love a good debate^