LOS ANGELES — Beyond revolutionizing content creation, delivery and consumption, digital media has had a profoundly transformative effect on many aspects of society — bringing people closer together, while providing vast new opportunities for countless creators around the world.
It is this “countlessness” that is creating problems, however, as easy access to digital media tools flipped an early equation that saw few providers serving many consumers, to where today, thanks in large part to social media and smartphones, everyone is a producer, making a glut of content, far beyond the ability of anyone to consume in a lifetime. Add in the emergence of big brands calling the shots; a consumer reluctance to pay for digital media; and rampant piracy; and it is easy to see why it is increasingly difficult for artists and visionaries to share their creativity for profit.
While this is a problem that is certainly not limited to porn, one need not look further than headlines, insider forums and community sites such as XBIZ.net, to see there is an increased level of agitation and stress within the adult entertainment and broader digital media industry today, which may manifest itself in a variety of ways, including passionate political debates, shady shenanigans — or in the most extreme cases, the premature passing of promising performers or a vicious assault on a corporate center.
Affiliates, independent service providers, smaller site operators, and many more have all weathered the same “Walmartization” of the industry, where capital, consolidation, and economies of scale continue to distance the big boys from the also-rans — and where even the winners have been bloodied. While numerous factors have contributed to this condition, the prolonged plateauing, and for many, deep decline, in digital media revenues, coupled with vastly increased competition, problematic policy protocols, and regulatory concerns, is pushing some folks to the edge.
In most cases, a change of career, scenery, or “move to mainstream” provides the panacea they are seeking — but the mainstream offers no safe harbor from adult’s stormy seas. Indeed, mainstream operators do not face the same policy and regulatory concerns of their adult counterparts, but the level of competition can be much more extreme, leading to similar stressors for stakeholders.
For example, although the details are not yet fully known, and no inference to a connection with adult is implied, it is coming out that yesterday’s tragic shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters was carried out by a disgruntled content creator whose videos were demonetized by the popular video sharing platform — a problem being faced by many YouTubers who have protested policy changes that punish personal publishers.
What is known is that before killing herself, Nasim Najafi Aghdam shot three random employees she apparently didn’t know, simply because they represented YouTube. Police report the attractive young woman practiced shooting her Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun at a local range earlier in the day before attacking the peaceful San Bruno campus over what she considered censorship of her various videos, because the company’s age verification warning appeared on at least some titles, resulting in reduced views and revenues from her clips.
According to authorities, Aghdam’s father called to inform them his daughter “made a series of vegan videos for her channel on YouTube, and that the company had recently done something to her videos that had caused her to become upset.” She drove 500 miles from San Diego to exact her ruthless revenge on Silicon Valley — and was even found by police sleeping in her car hours before the attack. They didn’t detain her because she wasn’t acting suspiciously…
There is no excusing her actions, especially since this was not a spur-of-the-moment reflex, but when we put so much faith in “the digital economy” and how clean, tidy, and full of promise it is supposed to be, it’s important to remember that it is not only built on machines but on the people that input their thoughts, hopes, and dreams in as data points. And today, some of those people are struggling to make a living and facing stress over it.
One shouldn’t fall into the trap of generalizing evil based on one person’s selfish actions but something bigger is going on and lives are being affected in the real world — and some of those triggers (now literally) are in the corporate boardroom — something that Apple, Facebook, Google, and countless more need to consider.
There is also a lesson here for content creators and marketers, with a saying I’ve used many times: Don’t build your house on another man’s land.
If your business becomes a matter of life and death because of a decision in a corporate boardroom far removed from any influence you may have, you may want to rethink your line of work. It’s a simple matter of evolution.
So much emphasis is put on the opportunity that digital media offers, but not enough on the cost of that opportunity. Perhaps yesterday’s actions, and the unheeded cries for help from the past and present, will put “people” back in the spotlight and restore technology to its role as the servant, not the master of man — and as an industry built on “personality” this is one more arena where adult should lead the way.