A Penny for My Thoughts
A nation of buskers faces financial ruin, along with everybody else.
“My future plans involve standing at traffic junctions with a cardboard sign, begging for money.”
― Steven Magee
I knew this guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who decided to put an ad in the newspaper asking people to send him $1.00. He included a post office address and then sat back to wait. After about a week he went to the post office and found that he had made $500.00. This is anecdotally one of the first iterations of crowdfunding. It’s very possible that this guy went on to create Patreon.
My friend in San Francisco used to bake a batch of cookies each night and then wrap them up with a little poem and go out and sell “a cookie and a poem for $1.00.” She did okay and managed to pay her rent each month with this strategy.
As society, the environment and the economy collapse, there appear to be more and more people who are trying to make money through the many platforms that are currently available. The sheer numbers of people from NPR to online news magazines, down to some guy with a cheap phone and a YouTube channel in a one-room apartment somewhere in the Midwest, are overwhelming. I have begun to wonder when it’s going to reach a tipping point; when will the people asking for money outnumber the people with money to give? There are, of course, people with lots of money who would never run out, but it seems as though most of these platforms are directed towards friends, followers, and other regular folks who at some point might have to, of necessity, shut off the taps.
I’m not sure how long this house of cards can hold up.
People who last year volunteered at food lines are now standing in them. The number of homeless people is increasing and with all that’s going on something has to break. There may not be enough people left with the resources to support all the causes that are asking for their help.
Monetization seems to be the word of the day, but that depends on the availability of money. I don’t know anyone who makes a living from any of these sources. Things are going downhill pretty fast, and that means there may be a lot more folks looking for money and a lot fewer folks with money to give.
Sooner or later the well will run dry, and my money is on sooner.
What do you suppose will happen to all of our “citizen journalists” if there is no one left to support them?
Maybe a street corner, a guitar, and a hat for donations.
It makes sense to me to spend the bulk of my time trying to connect with real people who are in my neighborhood. I don’t think anyone needs any more commentators, reading stories from websites written by commentators. There are more than enough talking heads and not enough walking heads. I would love to see people who invest their time and money in producing content to take some of that time and money and put it into their community. This probably won’t happen because most of them believe they are doing some good, and they may well be, but it is not what we need right now.
There is not much chance of me convincing anyone to dump their online presence and social media stuff and all that goes with it but if there is one less channel, one less podcast, or one less online magazine I don’t think anyone will notice. What someone might notice is the really nice person who volunteered some time, or put in some sort of effort to help out, or started a community garden, or formed a neighborhood group to talk about how the community will survive through a disaster or worse.
I have advocated for getting off computers and getting outside for a long time. I think that time has run out, and we need small groups of people to get together, and we need to start waking up to the danger inherent in the current predicament.
I imagine that things will grind to a slow, noisy halt kind of like a car engine if you forget to put oil in it. In that sense, I guess my desire for less online noise and more people-to-people interaction will happen by default as stuff just stops working.
I don’t think it’s mean but (correct me if I am wrong) a collapse wouldn’t be a horrible thing, at least not in the short term. It will, of course, turn horrible very quickly as the phones and computers and streetlights and water and electricity and everything else stops. But right out of the gate, I think it might be kind of fun.
We could play games like “Pretend it’s the 1700s” or start classes like cooking over an open fire or how to trap, kill, and eat a squirrel.
None of that will happen though.
I guess people being people, things will just get ugly, mean, and violent straight away.
…and that will be no fun at all.
Although I don't see my neighbors doing a big cum baya, there are a couple of them who take care of one another. I try to look out for a couple of widow ladies next to me but on a very limited basis. One is fiercely independent and the other is a near shut in, MAGA cultist. The others all live in their own little worlds as if life will always remain the same for them in what little life they have left (most of them are in their eighties or more).
As for the larger community, once again I say, no one is thinking much beyond tomorrow. Most of the people I encounter all think that today is supposed to be like yesterday, and tomorrow will be like today. They live in a bubble and they like it that way. They get mad if you try to break it.
I will admit to being another one of the internet talking heads. Another voice in the ether trying to make a point. I'm not gaining any ground but it makes me feel better. I don't do it for them (all of the ghostly listeners out there), I do it for myself. It's my way of screaming to the world at large that bad things are happening and more bad things are coming. Whether anyone listens, is irrelevant. If I can get one person to listen, I will call it good.
Someday I will give it up, probably once the modern world finally collapses. Once I start running out of electricity, water and food, I will have more important things to worry about. Given what the climatologists are telling anyone who will listen, most of us only have about another twenty years at best before it all comes apart. For those who are less fortunate, they're already running out of time.
These heat waves were experiencing this summer are the new normal. Along with these deluge storms like they're experiencing in Texas and New Mexico. I'm getting my share of tropical heat and big thunderstorms right now on the mid-east coast. This is probably my new normal. For parts of Europe, a lot more people are going to die of heat related issues now as the temps they're experiencing become their new normal.
All of which will accelerate the eventual collapse likely within our lifetimes. Yet, very few want to listen to the talking heads who are yelling, 'The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling.'
I don't think that it's so much "people being people" but rather people in a 10,000 year old misogynistic, nature despising system".
That and I am finding it nearly impossible to plan and prepare for a future that everyone around me is in denial of.
Sigh.....