We're chatting about Content Vs Art! In the world as it is now we have a distinct content creator economy online, that's changing and maybe going away but for now we still have it. "Content" is anything people produce in order to be consumed by others and its generally used to make money or maintain or increase the popularity of the creator. There's no need for quality, production is the important part. "Art" on the other hand is stuff produced with time, passion, and inspiration by the creator. There is crossover between these two things but also differences.

In the early days of the internet in the 1990s when it first became widely popular by ordinary people, it was mainly pop-culture that people shared. If you wanted to share your own creations it was difficult, you had to learn to hand code websites, pay for hosting, domains etc. In the late 90s and early 2000s "web2.0" came in, which meant you could actually easily upload things to sites and dynamically transform sites without having to hand code them. Drunk Duck comes out of that era from 2002. The "content creators" at this stage were artists: there were no time constraints on the work, it wasn't done for money or popularity (there were exceptions), these were people uploading their creations online for the passion of it, because there was almost no money in it anyway, though we floated the idea of "micro-transactions".

Later websites and apps developed much further down that line, social media was the later evolution of what started with web2.0. Instead of sharing creations people shared aspects of their own lives. That mutated even further and the "influencer" was born- pseudo celebrities who weaponised social media by cleverly manipulating the content they share and people's fascination with the lives of others so they could create fake but fascinating versions of themselves. The popularity they garnered was then monetised by companies who pay hem for advertising and the apps and sites they pay them to continue using them. The dream of "micro-transactions" and creator payments was realised but it mainly goes to those people and not artists…

Actual creators found themselves needing to conform to this same pattern in order to become successful and earn money. They had to produce "content" rather than "art" because the needs of the system requires constant production and that means "art" is harder to make and "content" is easier. The pressure of constant creation has driven people to seek the use of scammy production agencies (podcasters, YouTubers etc, they're out there for everyone). It's even driven people to use generative AI. Finally there are creators who only exist only to manipulate and steal from the systems originally made for creators, they use AI to create fake music, fake videos, fake art and all the rest and even have it consumed by millions of AI bots so they eat up all the advertising revenue and work to destroy the content economy, whether Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, X, Zazzle, OnlyFans or whatever else.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Drunk Duck stays true to its founding- we are not a content mill, we don't have systems to place to encourage that behaviour. We are a REAL creator community online. There is little money in what we do, but it means our people here lean to being the producers of "art" rather than "content".

We go much deeper into this in the Quackcast! And I've finally paid for a Zoom subscription so that our voice quality has improved :)

This week our best-off from Gunwallace is: Tomb Busters - Compelling, regal, atmospheric, steel guitar country rock, this is a triumphant epic that will swallow you whole and leave you gasping for air. This is one of my very favourites! Originally from Quackcast 341, 25th of September, 2017.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic: Scaredy Crow - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2026/may/05/featured-comic-scaredy-crow/

Featured music: Tomb Busters - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tomb_Busters/. - by StorkStudio, rated T

Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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