Greetings, readers, writers, and thinkers. It’s taken me a while to crawl back into a playful mode for these notes. From now on, the focus will be on creativity, curiosity, and being a proud “amateur” in a world where everything has a price tag attached.
As always, all of your comments will get a response.
When did amateur become a dirty word?
According to the dictionary, ‘amateur’ has two meanings:
1. : a person who takes part in an activity (as a study or sport) for pleasure and not for pay. 2. : a person who engages in something without experience or skill. E.g. “mistakes made only by an amateur”.
When did we forget the first definition in favour of the second? Being an amateur does not mean being untrained or unpolished - the people who run lifeboats or turn up for mountain rescue here in the UK are not paid. Neither are the volunteers for sports, animal shelters, village fetes or social clubs. For example, the parents who run my local Scout troop must be qualified in first aid, safeguarding, mentorship and a host of practical skills, including knots, shooting and starting fires. (If the zombie apocalypse ever happens, run to your nearest Scout camp).
“Amateur” becomes more problematic when it’s applied to the arts. Anyone can type a sentence. Anyone can sing a song (badly). Anyone can dance, bang a drum or act on stage. It’s not essential for life. So, why should we pay for it?
This is where I get annoyed. Anyone sufficiently stubborn, lucky, and talented enough to earn a salary from their art will do so through the love of amateurs. The most ardent theatre-goers are those who take part in weekend clubs. The most voracious book-buyers are those who write themselves (not necessarily as authors). If you go to a concert, you will sing the chorus with your rock star. When you support a sport, it’s often because you have played it yourself - kicking a ball in the back garden counts!
Money is merely an expression of value. It’s not even the most important one. In a world where central banks can create money out of thin air, attention is the only finite resource left on the planet.
So, thank you for reading this from an amateur publisher and writer. I am proud of that label.
Bloody ads
Has anyone noticed the decline in quality on most of our online media channels? Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, and now Netflix. Facebook carpet bombs us with ads (every third post was an ad when I last looked), and Instagram did a really dumb trial run of forcing users to stare at ads before scrolling their feed.
What’s going on with the CEOs? Are they too young to remember the lesson from the 1990s? The minute you thrust ads in our faces, we go elsewhere.
There’s a reason so few websites now have ads on their sidebars or flashing neon headers. People ignored them (literally—it’s called banner blindness), got annoyed, and avoided the site. The golden age of setting up an info site and slapping Google ad banners across it died 30 years ago.
This is going to end just as badly. We get told that Meta, Amazon, etc., see people as their primary product rather than as customers. That implies we are an unthinking, habitual block who will suck up whatever the media moguls deem most profitable. It’s true: until now, people have been addicted to doom-scrolling social media or pressing ‘play’ on the latest movie list. So why, in the name of Plutus1, do you want to kill that dopamine hit with an ad interruption?
Maybe it’s not about profits or market sentiment. Maybe this is a giant global experiment to test people’s commitment to platforms that clearly don’t care about them. After all, if we wanted ads, we could get that experience from terrestrial TV.
I’ve got my tinfoil hat on and the popcorn out. I never thought I would see one of these giants try to commit service hari-kari, let alone five at once.
Take one picture…
For fun, I’ve started collecting pictures and trying to develop short stories about them.
“They’re coming up the street again,” my husband said nervously.
“Again? I thought we went through this last month.”
“That was vampires.”
“And now?”
“Fey. I think.”
I nod and flick through Granny’s HouseHold Remedies. Good old granny. She has the answer for everything, although some of her solutions are technically illegal.
“Facists, Fachen…ah, Fey. Yeah, we need cold iron.”
My husband dives into our kitchen cupboard. I wait.
“Here!”
“That’s stainless steel.”
“OK - this?”
“Enamel.”
“This?”
“When the hell did we get a colander? Never mind, they are nearly here. Pass me that grapefruit.”
My husband looked surprised. “They’re allergic to fruit?”
I pause to swipe a plastic postal bag from the side.
“No. But they leave insane people alone.”
*
See you all next week.
Greek God of Wealth. Feel free to substitute.
Welcome back and happy to declare myself an amateur! (Nite: all Olympic athletes need to be amateur — or that used to be the case