The Hostage Crisis of Cultural Participation

Either contribute profit or go bust.

A couple of months ago, someone flagged that Ticketmaster had added a class action waiver to their checkout requirement in the US. This was likely already buried in the Terms of Service, but we all know that reading that is not top of mind—especially when you just want to go to a show, and you have to approve it by rote.

It’s likely this was put front and centre because of the recent frequent uproar against Ticketmaster—notably from Taylor Swift fans in 2023—but perhaps also because they’ve been slapped on the wrist elsewhere. The Canadian arm of Ticketmaster settled a class action lawsuit over junk service fees at the start of this year.

I didn’t participate in the class action, but as someone who uses Ticketmaster, I was eligible for a credit and managed to use it for 1.5 concerts this year.

Of course, they need to protect themselves from users holding them accountable for their exploitation of customers. Making it an emphasized, front and centre point that has to be read really hammers it home: you have no choice but to waive your rights if you want to attend our shows. We can do whatever we want, and you have no recourse.

It’s bad enough on its own, especially considering Ticketmaster’s monopoly: if you want to attend concerts, or even for artists, if you want to put on concerts, you have to agree to being at the mercy of Ticketmaster’s whims.

This reminded me of how the cost of cultural participation hinges on corporate interest far beyond concerts.

To get personal for a second: the children’s media company I was working at shuttered all its kids channels last month. Not because they weren’t profitable or didn’t have subscribers, the channels generated tens of millions in yearly revenue. But because the two largest television broadcasting distributors in the country decided to drop our channels.

Which meant we lost 90% of our subscribers in one fell swoop. We had spent years avoiding a full pivot to streaming (which we offered) because it risked angering these distributors into dropping us, we did circus tricks to appease them. And yet, here we are.

The worst part is, this is a blueprint for the rest of our cultural ecosystem. Klaus Zynski said in an excellent piece on YouTube,

“Tech conglomerates pay whole departments of people handsome salaries to determine how more value can be extracted from the userbase. That data does not go into the trash. Our for-profit web platforms are constantly rearranging the furniture, changing our screenlives as ones become zeroes.”

YouTube is a particularly egregious example of the heavy hand of corporate steering over content because it’s so algorithmically driven. As I commented on the post, I’ve complained about the uselessness of YouTube’s search function for years. I can look something up that I know exists on the site, yet it won’t show up in the results. Instead of simply allowing me to sort and scroll through the results, it’ll return six results, followed by a “People Also Watched” section, followed by six more results and sometimes a channel thrown in, followed by an “Explore More” section, a “Previously Watched” section and carousels of shorts interrupting the search results over and over. Subscribing doesn’t even guarantee that you’ll see those people’s videos on your feed: you have to actually go to your subscribed landing page for that.

As someone who has fallen prey to the reaction video craze, I follow quite a few YouTubers who on occasion share the difficulty of using the platform. If they cover something that underperforms, their entire channel is penalized and their videos are pushed out to fewer people, so they stop covering that topic. If a video is demonetized, it is likewise penalized, because the entire purpose of watching videos is to provide profit in this economy. Something that exists for free shouldn’t be promoted.

Which brings me to S Peter Davis’ essential piece on Substack itself. As he succinctly summarizes, Substack “are changing their focus away from helping people grow their subscriber lists and more toward improving the ratio of paid subscriptions.”¹

While I appreciate that they admitted this, it is incredibly alarming to me as someone who runs a free newsletter by choice. I, too, noticed my subscriptions plateauing, but as someone who hasn’t monetized the wound is mostly to my ego, not my income. I internalized this as my niche being, well, too niche. Just keep doing the work, I told myself. But learning that this is actually business strategy is frightening. Even more so because, according to Davis, free newsletters have been nuked by the site. Which makes me wonder if my days are numbered because I’m just mooching off their infrastructure without offering cents in return.

Luckily, Substack still allows you to export your subscriber lists, which means I’m able to build myself an escape hatch should I need it—or rather, when. But even when I do, I’ll be subject to a new platform’s policies, unless I return to my millennial roots of owning my own server on which to host my work.

This also reminds me of the marketing system I learned about this year: whop clipping content rewards. Essentially, you clip and repost a brand’s content on your socials and collect money based on views. It’s automated influencer marketing. I learned about this because Drake used this service to promote his music, but it’s something that’s been used by all sorts of brands.

Brett Malinowski interviewed Eddie Cumberbatch, who worked with Drake and Partynextdoor on this strategy. And Malinowski is very gung-ho about this approach,

“I could not be more bullish on this concept of paying people based on the views they receive. And it’s just a cool thing, cause all these creators have a lot of fans, and you can actually pay your fans, who know your content better than anybody, to just, repost your content.”

Forget about #ad or #sponsored disclosures, you see something on socials, you have no idea if the original poster is being paid to promote it. I have a problem with this because it’s invisible payola, but also because it commodifies our digital profiles and lives into nothing but profit machines. I can actually see a future where there are programs and rewards for this type of participation coming from the platforms themselves.

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I keep thinking of Terence McKenna’s infamous “Culture is not your friend,” speech, where he ultimately urges to “Create your own roadshow.” But where? Fans are some of the foremost roadshow runners, and have been very aware of the dangers of relying on platforms, lest they one day nuke all our content. It’s something each generation of fans experiences at least once.

The physical world isn’t immune. First, there’s the physical media renaissance, which I love, but I also recognize that it’s harder to access because of the way CD-drives have been manufactured into obsolescence. I luckily still own a DVD player and a laptop that has a CD drive, but when these go bust, it’ll be difficult to replace them.

Then there’s the experience economy model, which is coming for the rest of our spaces. Joe Pine and James Gilmore coined the term in 1998, and argued for a future where we could be charged for all sorts of things. Entering a store. Going to the park. Going to a particular neighbourhood. These are all experiences that should gather economic value. We see it for luxury experiences all the time, VIP ticketing services that charge hundreds of dollars, securing the best seats in the house and charging even more to provide “preferred entrance,” early entry (after which you’ll have to spend money at the venue, I guess) and help with parking and give you a better experience.

Ticketmaster isn’t an anomaly, if anything, it’s a harbinger in how explicit it is about the cost of cultural participation.

1. Considering Substack doesn’t allow all users to monetize depending on the country they’re based in, this is also a big problem, and means users from those countries are by default being edged out.