Sometimes I think the speed running community needs a kick into submission, just to get basic points through. It’s almost as if a community based around never doing anything new or modernizing is resistant to evolution in some way. No, that couldn’t be it, it must be the corruption getting to me.
This is going to be a dossier on the age-old concept of “selling out”. This term is about as dynamic as they come, especially in the digital age. A fair warning that this will be a much more rambling article than the past few. Likely less focused, but I’ve felt recently that I really need to just dump the trove of thoughts I have on this to paper (so to speak).
Let’s dive in, starting with the issues people have coming to terms with what “selling out” actually is and implies.
How Much Has Changed
Two years ago I would have told you that the definition of “selling out” is just making money off of unconventional styles of work, period. Regardless of motive, transparency and method. Even then my definition would be filled with bias as a member of a young emerging community as far as cash flow goes. To me now it’s markedly different.
The internet is and always will be the last Wild West. Anything goes in the most general sense, the struggle for power is never-ending and constantly happening. In 2015 with some creators on the internet borderline being household names, the fight is tougher than ever. Only those with huge perseverance and marketable skills will make it proper. The most harrowing part of all of this is that all it takes is a small chain of missteps to fall back into obscurity. Unless you make it absurdly big, there is absolutely zero job security.
To overcome this, people have started utilizing the simplest and honestly most conspicuous tool to exist in show business. Networking. Whether this be through teaming up with members of a community and pushing each other, or being in contact with advertisers, agents and journalists. You need a place to sell yourself as a product, as a brand. Staying within a small bubble of an audience that you have already won the attention of does zero good for you as a content provider.
Without question I already know some eyes at this point of the article are already thinking “what you just described is selling out”. Did you think critically before that thought came into your head, or is it just a gut reaction? I’m going to presume the latter. To make everything as clear as possible, here is how I see selling out.
Passion Maintenance
Clear and simple, selling out (to me) is when someone monetizes their work, goes into overdrive in creating it to maximize earnings, promptly followed by losing all passion for their work. They become a logical machine that just pumps out sanitized work over and over day in and day out. If you follow someone from their early stages, this is not hard to spot in the slightest. Creativity drops, schedule and formality rises. In a sense it turns them into a unit, as if at a cubicle job. Just doing the rounds, no variance or coloring outside the lines.
Now the discussion about whether playing the creative work of someone else (the developers) is a legitimate route to making money isn’t what I’m focusing on here, that debate has been raging on the internet for almost as long as advertising revenue has been available to the public-at-large. What I’m talking about is loyalty to the community you thrust yourself from into the spotlight. I refer not to people who branch out, that’s basic business. Increase your scope and scale to increase the reach you have as a brand.
There are more underlying factors contained within whether the masses (the informed masses at least) decide to label you as a “sell out”. All personally changeable things, concepts that anyone who is faced with have inadvertently brought upon themselves.
The first is the most malleable and complex, I feel. Denial of responsibility for actions. How many times have you seen someone who adamantly defends themselves against accusations of selling out? Likely more often than not. Hard to blame the majority of them, they are trying to take their passion (arguably art) to a sustainable level so they can do what they love as a job. Some however directly deny that they are trying to do this, as if it saves face. Let’s be clear in that there is nothing wrong with making money from what you love to do. Anyone who claims otherwise is a fool or someone who is outright attempting to gate keep a community they have no rightful control over in the first place.
How do I know denial of responsibility is a huge factor? Because I know runners that embrace the new source of income and are wholly transparent about wanting to do so. These people face little to no resistance, because they have clearly come to terms with wanting to monetize what they do. They don’t visibly dance around their motives. The runners who are hardest hit with these accusations, or at least the most fazed ones, constantly try to drum up an excuse itinerary for wanting to do what they love, which baffles me every time. I understand defending yourself against undue accusations, but denying what everyone can see helps nobody and only damages your own image.
To me there is another issue in what I perceive as selling out, which ties into what I said about losing passion. Expecting to make money with no personal cost. The most direct example I can give of this is those who go to marathons with the clear intention of gaining exposure and a bigger audience (again, nothing wrong with this) expecting an all-paid holiday to go do so. In what other industry would you expect to make money without spending any? You want to gain a larger fan base, so your default idea is to take money from the one you already have? That’s pretty much a giant neon sign to your audience saying “I want more fans and I will use you [fans] to get there“, signalling that you will be happy to throw them under the bus when the time comes that you gain big exposure. It seems downright deceitful and conniving in my books. If you want to utilize a consumer base you already have to make enough to go get more, save money. You have already clearly obtained a source of income, why spend all of what you get from it and then turn around last minute like a child to a parent saying “hey I need more”? Quick way to alienate people who supported you. Anyway, back on track, this was something I know isn’t a widespread thought, just a personal gripe.
Moving Forward
Maybe the internet just has such an inherent hate of “the man” that they just knee-jerk react to any money changing hands as shady dealings that need to be excommunicated. Communities cannot thrive at their peak without it though. Would the Fighting Game Community be as large as it is without the huge money pots? Would Let’s Plays be as big a phenomenon as they are without the creators within utilizing ad-revenue to continue doing so consistently? Of course they wouldn’t be. Money talks and with money comes interest. Legitimization.
Don’t under any circumstance interpret this article as condemning those who wish to not make money. They are free to do as they wish, but so are the people who want to take the hobby further. Preaching does no good, which I realize seems an odd thing to book end this with considering how much subjective matter is contained within. However, the caveat I will always have with not criticizing people who monetize is the desire for those doing so to not preach down in the power rankings. If you don’t think people should tell others what they can do with their passion, respect that, and don’t tell others they are doing something wrong for acting according to their own desires. Having proper discourse will likely never happen on a larger scale than a few people, because those who decide to discuss properly will usually be drowned out by the hordes on either side yelling “SELL OUT” or “REGRESSIVE” to one another. Remove those people, they have done nothing but harm to the conversation and the community.
Feel free to discuss in the comments and don’t hesitate to hit me up on Twitter at @CrypticJacknife because as long as civility and proper points are involved, I’ll happily discuss this subject out with people.
Glitching Is Art 
So it seems like there’s two major takeaways here, both of which are broadly applicable to just about everything:
1. Taking an extreme position necessarily shuts you down from accepting new ideas
2. The kind of discussions that lead to people taking on new ideas are best done one-on-one
I feel like I’d already come to these conclusions, but it’s nice to have it consciously in your thought patterns. 🙂
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Honestly I’m okay with people taking extreme positions, even if it means closing themselves off. It’s when they try to tell others they aren’t allowed to feel otherwise that it really gets to me. Individualism is great as long as it remains that.
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Monetization is a very simple thing. You create a product (in this case, entertainment), and that product has value. You can choose to give it away for free, or you can sell it at whatever price you see fit subject to economic laws. Many people choose to give it away for free. These people are generous. Some people can make a product with sufficient value that its monetization brings advantages. These people are smart. As with any economic interaction, increasing the price (in this case, from free) will lose customers who are unwilling to pay. This is inescapable. The key is to not care that these people will no longer take part in your product. They are a necessary evil of increasing the price on anything. Some will take the position “Well they are my friends, and I don’t want to alienate them” but this is the cold bath you jump into when you want to make money.
Extending that, you could say that it is a real shame if someone’s product loses its quality, individuality, or whatever in the interest of increasing money. And, yes, it is a shame. But if the technique makes more money as a result, then it doesn’t make a difference. It will have been successful in its aim, although once again alienating some customers. Of course they’re unhappy, the product they enjoyed has shifted to satisfy a different market which nobody likes. But for the people who do enjoy the altered product, are willing to pay for it, that’s the key. You could, as a producer, decide NOT to pursue the most optimal way of making profitable content, but in this case you are (by proxy) donating money to satisfy a specific, smaller market. And that’s fine, it’s your choice to produce what you want. But for all those people who demonize producers going after larger markets as “sellouts” I think it’s just people who are butthurt that a producer has moved away from them because they are not sufficiently profitable.
For example, I dislike EA Games greatly. I characterize them as sellouts. But this opinion is also not worth the pixels it is written on, because this is my way of complaining that they are making sufficient money that my small wallet cannot influence them to create product specifically tailored to me.
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