There are indeed “weird blogs” they just have to be devoid of capitalist funding.
Corey Doctorow’s Pluralistic seems in many ways to be a natural extension of his BoingBoing days albeit a bit more serious than the lighthearted BoingBoing.
MetaFilter fully became a non-profit and still retains a more a blog-esque format than it’s contemporaries.
Mother Jones has a strong online presence and has avoided the capitalist machine for it’s entire existence.
The thing is (and the more important part of this story is) that submitting to the capitalist machine is to submit to its machinations and unwillingness to adhere to the age-old social contract of a business producing profit to be sufficient enough for a business to exist. Modern capitalism is indeed a shell-game of extracting maximum value, essentially truly squeezing blood from a stone until the stone no longer even exists. Anyone who willingly plays this game will be bitten by this game, unless they themselves become ruthless capitalists and focus all their energy on shell-game chicanery over producing actual products, services, or content. There is no end-game here where the plucky capitalist-minded business-owner can overcome all and become the master of their own domain. The few who have (Valve, for example) had a solid financial footing to begin their more unique forays into profit-driving and they have stayed independent companies instead of publicly owned companies. That alone has saved them, and most of them (again, like Valve) started in an era before the behemoth of VC (Vulture/Vampire Capitalism) took hold, and made their early profits soon enough to not need such outside funding. Starting such a company today? Without outside funding? Get real. You’d have to be someone like Gabe Newell, who exited Microsoft with enough money to take a risk to make a profit of his own without needing outside stake, and the number of Gabe Newell’s exiting industry to make their own goes at new business are exceedingly rare. The ones that actually succeed in making a profitable company are even rarer.
In capitalist America, the “free market” binds you and dictates your future.
Misleading title.
There are indeed “weird blogs” they just have to be devoid of capitalist funding.
Corey Doctorow’s Pluralistic seems in many ways to be a natural extension of his BoingBoing days albeit a bit more serious than the lighthearted BoingBoing.
MetaFilter fully became a non-profit and still retains a more a blog-esque format than it’s contemporaries.
Mother Jones has a strong online presence and has avoided the capitalist machine for it’s entire existence.
The thing is (and the more important part of this story is) that submitting to the capitalist machine is to submit to its machinations and unwillingness to adhere to the age-old social contract of a business producing profit to be sufficient enough for a business to exist. Modern capitalism is indeed a shell-game of extracting maximum value, essentially truly squeezing blood from a stone until the stone no longer even exists. Anyone who willingly plays this game will be bitten by this game, unless they themselves become ruthless capitalists and focus all their energy on shell-game chicanery over producing actual products, services, or content. There is no end-game here where the plucky capitalist-minded business-owner can overcome all and become the master of their own domain. The few who have (Valve, for example) had a solid financial footing to begin their more unique forays into profit-driving and they have stayed independent companies instead of publicly owned companies. That alone has saved them, and most of them (again, like Valve) started in an era before the behemoth of VC (Vulture/Vampire Capitalism) took hold, and made their early profits soon enough to not need such outside funding. Starting such a company today? Without outside funding? Get real. You’d have to be someone like Gabe Newell, who exited Microsoft with enough money to take a risk to make a profit of his own without needing outside stake, and the number of Gabe Newell’s exiting industry to make their own goes at new business are exceedingly rare. The ones that actually succeed in making a profitable company are even rarer.
In capitalist America, the “free market” binds you and dictates your future.