The first part of this essay was published 2weeks ago on 2uesday, Sep 12. If you haven't read it yet or forgot what it was about because I waited too long to send this one, follow this link.

I've been trying to write this email since early May.

For so many weeks, I told myself, This 2uesday, I'm sharing the Creators email!

But every time I sat down to type and comb through the dozens of articles and tweets I've been collecting to reference for this topic, nothing materialized.

I really wanted to say something.

Something meaningful.

Something that would be worth the time you take away from your busy day to read these thoughts.

So I wrote, and things came out.

Lots of things.

You don't always know when something is a hit. When it's right. But you definitely know when it's not. You know when it needs more work, more editing, more thoughts. If you put this out there for people to experience coming from you, they might like it, but that doesn't mean it's everything it could be.

Sometimes you need to separate yourself from everything you're doing and say, "This shit kinda sucks. I can do something better."

That's not always an option when you're a professional Creator. When you have deadlines to meet, thirsty subscribers to satisfy, or when that invoice is sitting in your computer waiting to be sent 📬

That's why people (mostly) no longer share because they created something awesome. They share to get engagement.

We must post to remind the algorithm we are here and we are worthy of being shown to our followers and non-followers (SIDE NOTE: I don't believe when Instagram tells me they showed my post to people outside of my followers. Miss me with that bullshit, Adam.). But when there's no care put into your work, when it's only done for performance metrics, there's no richness to the work.

There is no soul.

There is virality, good hooks, attention-grabbing techniques, and maybe even something interesting enough that you will get people to engage with what you share.

But is any of it actually good? 🤔

So when people talk about being "Creators," I ask myself: What are they really doing?

Sure, they're "creating" in the literal sense of making something 🛠

But are they bringing things into the world that are worthwhile?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some art snob. I don't believe you need to spend 100s of hours on your illustration, video, or even your quirky weekly email newsletter for it to be worthy of artistic praise. You also don’t need to “solve a problem” that you’ve identified in society. Good Art is not required to make you rethink everything you thought you knew about life or provide some existential realization that changes how you view the world. Some of the best, funniest, most creative things I've ever seen were probably throwaway thoughts from the person who posted them.

In case you need the joke explained.

Some of the funniest TikTok videos I've ever seen aren't going to change your life or bring peace to the Middle East. But they're also some of the most unique and original things people create nowadays.

Take 60 seconds to watch this:

@sylvaniandrama

A more apt word to use for much of the content we're bombarded with today is Showing.

People are not as much "creating" as they are "showing" us things 🎪

Here's 37 minutes of me unboxing 20 different items of clothing I purchased for less than $100 made by indentured factory workers in a rural Chinese province designed to look like a suburb of Sacramento.

Congrats…I guess 🫤

Listen, I'm not hating for the sake of hating (although there's nothing wrong with a bit of good ol' fashion hating, it's been clinically proven to prevent wrinkles). I'm sure plenty of people love watching unboxing videos because they learn about products and get the info they need to help their purchasing decisions (everything always goes back to buying and selling, but that's an entirely different email).

If I could make a decent living by going through the dialogue of The Big Bang Theory to explain every joke reference they made I'd definitely think about it. But that doesn't mean I'm being creative; I'm explaining someone else's creativity. Sometimes, people do even less than that.

There's a "Creator" whose entire shtick is recording someone else’s stream and replaying it on his channel while commenting on it as if he did any of the work.

That takes us back to "showing."

The specific genre of Twitch streamers I referenced above is known as "Reaction Streamers." Their content consists of watching viral videos on their stream and reacting like, "Holy shit, that's crazy! The 45-year-old midget in the Buzz Lightyear costume just groped the paraplegic stripper after the dance was over and was tossed out by the bouncer!! 😮😱🤯"

That's it. That's the entire shtick 😐

But you don't need to watch the channel of some loser who spends 38 hours a day at his computer to get good reactions. Black Twitter already exists. If you were there for the Montgomery Dock Fight, you would know what I'm talking about.

If this email is your first notice that "Reaction Streamers" are a thing and you’re wondering if it could get any worse, it's actually worse. One of the most popular reaction streamers in the world, a Canadian dude named xQc, recently signed a $100,000,000 deal to stream exclusively on Kick (a gaming and streaming platform launched less than a year ago) instead of Twitch. A lot of his new content consists of stealing other people's videos and playing them on his stream while he casually surfs the internet. When he's not stealing other streamers' content to use himself, he's streaming TV shows like Breaking Bad for hours while saying nothing. Racking up views and $$$$ in the process. This isn't just an xQc problem. This has been ongoing for some time now with streamers and "Creators" who take content other people have worked hard on and share it with their audience—making money off someone else's work.

There might be some people reading this thinking, "That man is a genius for making so much money so easily." Sure if you think doing as little as possible while siphoning value from someone else’s labor to make millions of dollars is a genius move then I guess you're right. Morals and respect for other humans shouldn't get in the way of your Mediterranean vacation 😎

The internet and social media boom was supposed to democratize the ability of individuals to make a living from their work without needing approval from legacy media institutions. Instead, new institutions have created their own set of arbitrary rules for what is popular and what isn't. We can play the game by their rules or get fucked. But, even when you're playing the game by their rules, they can choose whether you're someone they want to get big by throwing money behind you or changing the algorithm to make sure your content isn’t viewed by many people (aka Shadow Banning).

This means even the people doing engagement bait and creating content with a high potential for going viral according to “content hacks” can put in hundreds of hours of work only to get nothing in return.

Despite everything I said, the "opportunity" to make it big off original content still exists. And if you don't make it big, at least you can get some free products or a free stay at that really cool-looking AirBnB in Tulum built over an ancient native burial ground. Just make sure you use that precious vacation time to create the best content for your influencer audition 🎭

I don't want people who make vacation reels or put together a 60-second recap of their brunch every weekend to think I'm telling them to stop. Do those things if they make you happy. Seriously, life is hard enough without people shitting on us for something that's harmless.

I'm saying someone who typed two sentences into Midjourney and got an extremely detailed and layered illustration should never consider themselves on the same level of artistry as someone who has spent years studying and mastering the craft of drawing/painting 🧑‍🎨

Let's make sure to keep them in the category of Showers instead of Creators. In my humble opinion, Artists do more than make a video for the views. When you decide to do it for the views, engagement, and eventually (hopefully) the money, you're basically clocking into a thankless 9-5 this "Creator Economy" was supposed to free us from.

"Freedom to create" is just an illusion. You're a line worker on the factory floor, except your tool is your smartphone and tripod and your factory floor is wherever you happen to be.

This mindset is a business mindset, and if you've noticed everything going on in 2023 with streaming platforms and the writers/actors strikes, you realize business isn't good for creativity.

Take the Warner Bros. / Discovery merger. When I told a friend they were cutting beloved projects "to save money," they responded, "That's business."

But if everything is business, where's the pleasure?

Where's the fun?

Where's the joy of life?

When you treat everything you do like a business, you treat projects as numbers that only hold value if they return some profit. But some of the world's most famous works of art weren't appreciated in the moment. They weren't even discovered until decades later.

Imagine if some dipshit executive burned all of Van Gogh's paintings after his death to use them as a tax write off 🖼

It might be a little cliché, but it's true.

Do you want to live a life where you crunch numbers all day and come home to only TV shows and movies that return the most profit? Have you not noticed the Marvelization of the movie industry? If a film doesn't make billions of dollars, it's a flop. Say goodbye to those comfort romcoms from your youth that you know aren't masterful works of art, but they're just fun to toss on a random Sunday and let your mind rest for 90 minutes.

If everything is about business or numbers, nothing is done for passion. We're just going to be a bunch of suits going back and forth from work complaining about the 87th Game of Thrones show or the 546th Star Wars spinoff that Star Wars fandom didn't appreciate because iT iSn'T TrUE tO ThE CanNoN bEcAuSe Of ThE BlAcK ChArAcTeR or that casual fans can’t enjoy because it was too much work keeping up with the 93 books and 65 movies you need to watch to understand what the fuck is going on (I'm looking at you, Ahsoka).

"Content" is like the reality TV of social media. It's the thing that fills the void when actually good stuff isn't available. And because actually good stuff isn't easy to make, and it costs money, and talented people, and talented people who make it should be paid accordingly, it's so much easier to pump out reality TV than it is to give us a second season of The Society (I'm still bitter).

"Content," as we speak about it today is the lowest hanging fruit on the lowest hanging branch on the tree of creative expression.

Actually, it would be an insult to classify it as fruit hanging on a branch. It's a piece of bird shit that hit a leaf and plucked it from the branch it was growing on. As the leaf floated to the ground, a gust of wind pushed it into the tree trunk and the gooeyness from the avian excrement fashioned it into place. Its proximity to the tree's foundation makes it believe it's doing something creative like it's actually supposed to be there. But it's only hanging on for dear life through the sheer magnitude of its immense grift.

There might be people reading this who consider themselves "Content Creators" and might take offense to what I'm saying. Listen, you definitely make some cool stuff, and there is art and creativity in the things you post and how you make them come to life. I'm not criticizing anyone for creating content as a profession. We all need to survive. I've done it and currently do it myself, too!

But I guess if your shit is good and artistically creative, you shouldn't be offended by anything I write, right?

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

If you made it all the way down here, THANK YOU. Seriously, it means so much to me (david not david) that you would take any time whatsoever to read what I write. I’ll cut straight to the chase:

2UESDAY 

IS GOING 

PREMIUM

I love writing this email, but it isn’t always easy. It takes a lot of research, writing, re-writing, editing, proofreading, and removing as many curse words as possible before hitting send so my mom doesn’t have to read them every week. All of that takes a lot of time, the most precious thing we have that we tend to waste. I want to make every email bigger and better. That doesn’t necessarily mean more graphics or videos, but it means having more time to craft the best essays and stories possible.

Here’s how it will work: we’ll have 2 tiers of premium.

Tier 1: My week starts on 2UESDAY

Cost: $6.99 a month

Benefits: You’ll receive access to 1 original short story a month. If you’re wondering what those are like, read them here, here, and here.

Tier 2: 🤍 FRIENDS of 2UESDAY 🤍

Cost: $222.22 a year

Benefits: You’ll receive access to 1 original short story a month. In addition to the short stories you’ll also receive

• A one-of-a-kind handwritten letter by David mailed directly to you describing something to smile about (this will count as your endorsement for my future presidential campaign under the platform of EVERYBODYSMILES2024😀)

• A 2UESDAY-themed holiday gift basket with several items of exclusive personalized 2UESDAY merch you can’t get anywhere else 🎁

• The peace of mind knowing you’re helping me pay back my student loans, survive the Miami rent apocalypse, and pursue my dream of becoming a full-time creative writer 🤠

• You’re a FRIENDof2UESDAY forever and will always be included in future drops, launches, announcements, special events, and anything ever 2UESDAY related 📈

Basically, I’m trying to make a living off this and need more money. If you want to support my endeavors, you can give me a lump sum amount that will really help. It tells me you really believe in me 🫂 The extra gifts and merch are my way of showing you I’m thankful and you’re investing in something worthwhile.

If the annual subscription is too much, that’s totally reasonable. You can still show your love for 2UESDAY with $7 a month. Whether you choose to pay for a subscription or not, you’ll still get at least three emails a month of me talking about random things.

That’s it, that’s the email, that’s the pitch. If you have any questions you can always respond to this email and I’ll write directly back to you. Follow any of the buttons below to upgrade your subscription.

I love you

I hope you have a beautiful 2UESDAY

Thank you, thank you, thank you always for reading 🤠🙏🏽2️⃣