
A list of the top recipients on Patreon shows an obsession with the ordinary - atlasunshrugged
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-29/patreon-s-top-50-list-values-the-ordinary-over-the-transcendent
======
nindalf
Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent.
According to him, there is nothing special about folks creating podcasts, but
there is something special about a singer-songwriter. He does not say why.

Take [https://www.patreon.com/sonicether](https://www.patreon.com/sonicether)
who earns $50k a month creating shaders for Minecraft. That _sounds_ mundane
until you realise that he's probably enabling tens of thousands of people to
create transcendent art from the comfort of their homes.

He doesn't think much of the artists creating comics either. Maybe he thinks
only artists that display their work in galleries are "real" artists.
Personally I think artists like Bill Watterson and Randall Munroe have done
more to push the cultural zeitgeist than any artist in the last 30 years.

If you want to appreciate your fine classical works in a museum while
listening to an orchestra and sipping your Pinot Noir, that's fine. But I
think it's incorrect to presume to know what "real" culture is and labeling
everything else "ordinary".

~~~
phoe-krk
> Not sure how the author decides what is ordinary and what is transcendent.

This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find
transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art _are non-transcendent_?

This article is weird and full of stereotypes; it's written from the point as
if art was easily and objectively classifiable. No, art is _not_ classifiable
like that, and something that one man calls everyday trash can be eye-opening
and mind-blowing to another. This fact alone disproves the main assumption
that this article is based on, and breaks the point of the whole article for
me.

~~~
coldtea
> _This. Why should I allow anyone to define what kinds of art should I find
> transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art are non-transcendent?_

Because else you're in an endless loop, where you define what you like by what
you like.

It is (or, perhaps, it has been) generally understood, that being schooled
into things, learning about them, their history, aesthetic rivalries and ideas
abotu them, and appreciating the cultured opinions of people who have studied
them more, helps one appreciate finer things and cultivate their preferences.

The alternative, "because I like it", sounds like a regression to childhood.

~~~
phoe-krk
You misunderstood my question. I asked, "Why should _I_ allow anyone to define
what kinds of art should I find transcendent and, worse, which kinds of art
are non-transcendent?", with a stress on the " _I_ ".

I find it worthwhile to listen to people who describe what touches them and
what they are indifferent to. However, the tone of the article describes the
"mundane" and the "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I
personally find silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective
experience.

~~~
coldtea
> _However, the tone of the article describes the "mundane" and the
> "extraordinary" from an objectivesque point of view, which I personally find
> silly due to the fact that art is an inherently subjective experience._

I don't think that's settled. For that matter, I don't think that's true.

------
jetru
So true. So many people I know and myself included are tired of the "rat
race".

We don't want to keep working for nothing, we don't want to keep hoping for
that next raise, we don't want to pretend to be smarter or cooler or better
than we are. What a horrible way to live in the age of plenty. Maybe, we like
cold pizza.

Bougey is a dirty word. We want to chill. We want fairness. Simplicity is
where Happiness lies. There's nothing bad about that.

What is "grand" anyway? Those 500 people currently living that the rest 7+
billion should aspire to be? Nah. I'd rather be like my grandfather. Smiling
even when I'm old.

It's hearkening back to a simpler time, and this gives me hope that more
people might be "getting it"

edit: typos

~~~
Freak_NL
In case anyone else gets stuck on 'bougey', it is apparently an abbreviation
of _bourgeoisie_.

Is this US slang?

~~~
kipari
Usually it's spelled 'bougie' cf. [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/bougie](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/bougie)

------
colechristensen
Those are some pretty -- to use the author's word -- _transcendent_
conclusions to draw from a top 50 Patreon list.

Even if you were assuming the patrons were all American (obviously false) the
most popular creator would have fewer than 1 in 10,000 people subscribing.

Patreon is an obscure way to fund yourself that a very small number of people
make their living from, it's not a bellwether for the American heart.

I don't know what high brow things the author finds missing from the list that
would change his conclusion, but this seems very much like a conclusion
looking for scant evidence for to justify something to write. That page would
have been better left blank.

------
jessaustin
_A recent survey of American values indicates that patriotism, belief in God
and having children all rate much lower than they did 20 years ago._

Gosh, one wonders what could have happened? Maybe two decades of pointless
soul-rotting stupid wars, all supported by the most patriotic and pious among
us? That has certainly sapped _this_ correspondent's patriotism. (His piety,
though, something else sapped that...) Next you'll be telling us that trigger-
happy crowd-murders are more common, and we'll think of all the wedding
parties, funerals, open markets, etc. we've incinerated in the Middle East.
It's as if chickens... come home to roost!

TFA is definitely the most pedestrian, limp, effort-free deposit one has ever
read from Cowen.

~~~
mieseratte
> Maybe twenty years of pointless soul-rotting stupid wars

> Next you'll be telling us that trigger-happy crowd-murders are more common

> It's as if chickens... come home to roost!

I'm a bit confused, are you of the mind that there is some relation between
mass-shooters and the wars in the Middle East? Or just those wars are why
people feel less positive about patriotism?

~~~
jessaustin
I've been around long enough to have seen karma in action. If I pay enough
attention, I often find that "karma" is another name for "obvious
consequences".

The things that we're encouraged to blame for these mass murders: guns, crazy
people, Republicans, white supremacists, etc. we've _always_ had in USA. What
has changed? I submit that over time we've been subjected to ever-increasing
levels of war-media conditioning. We're constantly encouraged to fear, to
hate, to destroy. Right now we're hating on Iranians and Venezuelans, with
plenty of leftover hatred for Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Russians,
Chinese, etc. The idea is that we'll funnel that insanity into voting for, or
at least tolerating, increased payments to armaments manufacturers, and the
contrived wars necessary to "justify" same. Some people just aren't mentally
pliable enough to focus on the desired end goal. If you tell them often enough
to fear and kill, eventually that's what they'll do. Maybe they'll try to kill
mostly "others" on their killing sprees, but maybe they're such loners that
anyone human parses as "other" to them.

It's not a coincidence that the "first" one of these things took place in
1966. The military-media-industrial complex was pulling out all the stops on
their first big project since Korea.

Yes, also, obviously, the wars have killed patriotism among thinking people.
Again, though, it hasn't just been the wars, but also the industrial-strength
war-media war conditioning that was necessary to bring them about.

------
noobermin
It is rather convenient the author defines "mundane" as things he doesn't like
and "grand" as things he does like. It sounds like he's merely upset that a
majority of patrons on patreon don't share his tastes.

~~~
0815test
This, so much. I for one find the vast majority of so-called "high art" and
"high culture" to _be_ frankly depressing and off-putting, rather than "grand"
or "transcendent" in any way. In the best of cases this is _somewhat_ offset
by the HNish intellectual interest and curiosity one can take in the stuff
(and some variant of this is an often-cited point that's supposed to
demonstrate the superiority of "high" culture) but all things considered, I'd
rather explore the hidden intellectual interest of things that are usually
dismissed as mundane, "middlebrow" or even "lowbrow".

------
PavlovsCat
> But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we
> see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the
> result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish
> heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or an electric
> cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, 'How
> beautiful.' _The World is Beautiful_ \- that is the title of the well-known
> picture book by Renger-Patzsch in which we see New Objectivity photography
> at its peak. It has succeeded in turning abject poverty itself, by handling
> it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment. For it
> is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish
> processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption.

\-- Walter Benjamin, lecture at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in
Paris, 27th April 1934

> The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious,
> but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is
> essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for
> self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more
> consumption and more and more entertainment… To believe that such a society
> will become more “cultured” as time goes on and education has done its work,
> is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers’ society cannot
> possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong
> exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central
> attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to
> everything it touches.

\-- Hannah Arendt, "Between Past and Future"

~~~
new2628
Nice finds, and both quotes strike me as quite insightful and prescient.

~~~
PavlovsCat
The article made me think of the first one, then I thought of the second one
and added it to explain what might be wrong with turning everything into an
object of consumption. To be honest, I don't know a lot about the work of
Walter Benjamin, maybe he also had more to say on this. But I do know that
Hannah Arendt was on to a _lot_ , and is as timely as ever. I love and
recommend her more than I can say.

> When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the market cheaply and
> attain huge sales, this does not affect the nature of the objects in
> question. But their nature is affected when these objects themselves are
> changed rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction,
> or in preparation for the movies. This does not mean that culture spreads to
> the masses, but that culture is being destroyed in order to yield
> entertainment.

> The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and those who actively
> promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley composers but a special kind of
> intellectuals, often well read and well informed, whose sole function is to
> organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to persuade the
> masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and perhaps
> educational as well. There are many great authors of the past who have
> survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question
> whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they
> have to say.

\-- Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Culture - Its Social and Its Political
Significance",
[http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v...](http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v2.pdf)

------
bakuninsbart
He mentions Kurzgesagt as a positive example - but ignores other educational
channels like CGP Grey, CrashCourse and ContraPoints. - There's also many more
highly educational podcasts and youtube channels that are very popular.

Entertainment has shifted from TV to the internet in recent years, and as it
grew more popular it also grew more mundane. - But looking at TV entertainment
of previous decades, I think it is hard to claim there has been a reduction in
quality.

~~~
longtom
"ContraPoints" is not an education channel.

~~~
kingbruce90
Political education is education even if it's also propaganda (in the sense of
information designed to persuade). A large number of political YouTube
channels across the political spectrum could be called educational.

~~~
longtom
No, it's something like political satire or political entertainment. If the
category education should mean anything then it certainly does not include a
man pretending to be a woman pushing political agendas in some completely
overblown and sexualized manner. This is ridiculous.

------
parsimo2010
I don't think that examining the breakdown of one funding source is indicative
of a shift in culture. Especially not a funding source like Patreon. Patreon
is especially suited for funding ongoing efforts or something that has a
recurring payoff (weekly podcasts, YouTube videos, or regular releases of
comics). That lends itself to "mundane" things as the author puts it. If you
want to create a magnum opus you need to raise funds for a single big effort,
so something like Kickstarter is a lot more appropriate. I'm sure if the
author perused Kickstarter they would find many "grand" ideas. There is also
traditional funding for established creators looking to do something grand. If
you are a director looking to create the masterpiece to cap your career,
chances are that you're getting a movie studio to pay for it based on your
previous successes. The same goes for successful artists in most fields that
can use their reputation to fund something grand. Looking at Patreon only
gives you a single piece of the puzzle.

------
itemGrey
> As today’s young become wealthier and more philanthropic

Is this correct? My understanding was today's youth in the U.S are taking on
more debt than ever.

~~~
colechristensen
I wouldn't interpret comparing one generation to a previous generation but
against itself as it grows older. (as in, most people earn more money and
become more able to donate money as they get older)

------
raxxorrax
I cannot really understand the perspective of this assesment.

Perhaps these "ordinary ambitions" have become something unachievable by so
many people, that it can highlight the relativity of the statement itself?

Starting "culture wars" about mundane shit isn't my definition of
extraordinary either. If so, Burger King vs. McDonalds could be a culture war.

But compare that content to former reality TV and I can only see improvement
everywhere.

On the other hand, I don't mind the loss of splendor, pomp and royal weddings.
I do like architecture and jazz though.

But yes, I would prefer to have an "ordinary" house first instead of some
abstract effort to build the pyramids 2.0. Does the author work for a bank?

------
andybak
What a bizarre distinction. I'm not even sure I understand the classification.
Art can make the ordinary transcendent - it's the treatment not the subject
matter.

~~~
xxxpupugo
It seems the author believes that American as an identity bares great
significance that Americans were and should be destined to greatness, or at
least in favor of such ambitious ideals.

But let's be honest. The idea of human has mission to achieve greatness by
itself is, just a belief. Human life can be any form it needs to be, if the
owner him/herself desires so. And the in the age of internet, it is easy to at
least observe afar what your desired life would be like by watching others do
it. I'd argue people are much aware and resourceful to decide what he/she
wants to be, and being ordinary yet full-filling is perfectly fine goal to
pursue, and it is arguably not easy still.

------
fareesh
For those who work there - I am curious, I occasionally come across complaints
online that much of Silicon Valley and tech companies have a large "dirtbag
left" (not my term, I am referencing what is written in the article)
contingent of employees, who actively "cleanse" their ranks of all right-
leaning employees.

I am inclined to believe this because of past stories involving the Mozilla
CEO and the Occulus CEO and James Damore all being fired for basically not
having heterodox views.

From the comments that I read across various forum websites whenever this
topic comes up, the takeaway seems to be a chilling effect POV of "if you're
right-leaning, make sure nobody finds out, and just do your job".

Of course it's very difficult to form an opinion sitting in another country
based on what you read on the internet, so I was curious to know how true it
is.

~~~
dade_
America is so far right of center, many of the so called dirt bag left are
actually center right.

However, in my experience extreme right wing social conservatives can be
pretty good at self-cleansing by constantly sharing their amazing opinions on
superior races, the problem with 'those people' and my favorite, informing
people that they are living in sin.

~~~
fareesh
In the present tense the problem of bigotry seems universal regardless of
political affiliation. It is just the category of people who are discriminated
against, that changes, depending on the offending party's preferences

------
mcv
The article identifies a culture war between the ordinary and the
transcendent, and sees in the Patreon top 50 that the ordinary has won, but it
doesn't do a great job of how it determines how it classifies the entries.

Apparently a political podcast is ordinary, things that are NSFW or dealing
with history are ordinary, and photos of New Yorkers are ordinary. The only
things it considers transcendent are educational videos and Amanda Palmer.

As examples of what he means by transcendent, he mentions ancient Greeks,
Christianity, Enlightenment, classical music, the US Constitution and
scientific revolutions.

But honestly, hasn't the ordinary always outnumbered the transcendent? There
first needs to be an 'ordinary' to transcend. Even during the height of
enlightenment, the world was filled with the ordinary. We remember the
transcendent because it is what changes things.

~~~
zrobotics
Especially as there are creators like 3blue1brown on that list. The videos
3blue1brown does should certainly be considered transcendent in the classical
sense, those are easily the highest quality math education videos I've ever
seen. The linear algebra series definitely expanded my appreciation for the
subject in a way no textbook has ever done.

Sure, there is crap like MxR Mods on the list, but there is also stuff like
crash course & clickspring. I don't know if I'd call clickspring's videos
themselves art, but what he is producing in his shop is certainly art and the
opportunity to view the process is just magnificent; this is certainly a
channel that shows how great online video can be.

And Contrapoints; while very much political, does an excellent job of engaging
with topics much more deeply than what one normally reads in publications like
Bloomberg. I honestly found reading this list encouraging; most of the top 50
creators definitely deserve that place and I'm glad that the people benefiting
most from Patreon deserve it. Aside from MxR, he's a cancer on the Bethesda
modding scene.

------
david_blitz1
"Alas [...] Eight of the top 50 are marked “NSFW” (not safe for work)." This
is straight 19th century stuff. I think it's safe to say that western art lost
its "safe for work" status like 200 years ago. I suggest the author should
grow up and get an education..

------
inflatableDodo
_' Ninety percent of everything is crap'_ \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)

~~~
AlexDragusin
Hey, _the_ Internet called, it wants its tagline back!

------
dbcooper
Anyone who can't recognise the genius of Nick Mullen and Cum Town deserves to
find disappointment.

~~~
_--___-___
my man laughing cause he know

------
patternmaster
Very odd article..

When looked to see the name of the author, I was very surprised to see
economist Tyler Cowen

~~~
chongli
If you had read the book _The Case Against Education_ by his George Mason
University colleague, Bryan Caplan, then you might not be as surprised. That
economics department seems to be a haven for libertarian thought, opera,
classical music, and Renaissance paintings.

~~~
patternmaster
I did happen to read that book.

Still I don't see what beef a libertarian economist should have with voluntary
donations to "ordinary" causes.

------
glangdale
It's amusing that the only sign of a "culture war" here is the author's
tendentious carping about, of all things, the Patreon Top 50 list. Why?

Very possibly, if you are doing things that random economics professors
consider "transcendent", you are probably _extremely_ well served by the far
more lucrative network of grants and funding that exists outside Patreon. He
nods briefly to this idea before rejecting it and just plain making some shit
up:

"Maybe, but there is another possibility: that Patreon is the tip of an ever-
growing iceberg."

Awful.

------
aaaaarghZombies
What did they expect? Popular and ordinary are essentially synonyms when it
comes to taste.

Also this: "As today’s young become wealthier [...]" . Where's the evidence
fit this assertion?

------
SturgeonsLaw
Culture evolves, and people increasingly question tradition for tradition's
sake. Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world, the
decision to have children or not has many contributing factors (economic, for
one), and it's hard to be patriotic when every country has so many skeletons
in the closet you'd think it's perpetually Halloween.

~~~
baud147258
> Belief in God is at odds with a scientific view of the world

I'd say both are orthogonal to each other. The religious view of the world
explain the "why do we exist?" and the scientific view the "how do we exist?".

~~~
Intermernet
Most religions purport to explain both, and science has little interest in the
former, as it has traditionally been impossible to come up with falsifiable
experiments as to "why do we exist".

This is, like your comment, taking strict definitions for both "why" and
"how".

"why" we exist can have answers ranging from "we're the current latest bunch
of mutants resulting from this whole evolution thing" all the way to "as self-
realized, intelligent beings, we inevitably ask this question, and asking this
question is the only predictable outcome of being intelligent and self-
realized."

"how" we exist can be answered anywhere from "with a whole lot of luck" to
"badly".

You need to specify what you mean by "why" and "how" for your distinction to
have any debatable qualities.

~~~
baud147258
> "why" we exist can have answers ranging from "we're the current latest bunch
> of mutants resulting from this whole evolution thing" all the way to "as
> self-realized, intelligent beings, we inevitably ask this question, and
> asking this question is the only predictable outcome of being intelligent
> and self-realized."

To this range of answers, I'd add "because God created us (because of reasons
outside the scope of this answer)"

"how we exist" is how does the universe works, which is explored and explained
by the various scientific fields

~~~
Intermernet
> To this range of answers, I'd add "because God created us (because of
> reasons outside the scope of this answer)"

Yes, but which god, and why does this explanation get any greater credence
than Douglas Adams' writing "the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe
that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called
the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of
the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue
creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being
the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the
wheel."

The religions of the world disagree with each other on the "why", and none of
them seem to be interested in demonstrating the veracity of their theory. This
is why science generally ignores the "why". No-one has come up with a
reasonable way to show, one way or another, which theory may be truer (or more
aptly, falser) than any other, and therefore the question currently has no
meaningful answer. If this changes, it will show that all, some, one, or none
of the current religions are correct, but thousands of years of discussion
haven't produced anything close to solving this problem, and this discussion
has been going on since before Akhenaten.

------
jamisteven
How exactly, is this "culture war"?

------
HeadsUpHigh
Imagine being so butthurt that people don't care about your overpriced high
culture.

------
ulisesrmzroche
“Top 40s are shit”. Obviously. But this has been the case since kingdom come
and gone.

