Content Cadence
One of my many failings is that I am a completist. When I read an article or tweet I want to read all the comments too. When I subscribe to a podcast I want to listen to all the episodes. Thus I have to limit the number of entertainment options I consume, or I will have no time for anything else.
It astonishes me that some content creators feel obligated to produce content so frequently. Some people stream 40+ hours a week on Twitch. Some Youtube content creators release videos every single day. Some bloggers similarly feel obligated to post every day. Content creators say they can never take breaks, because the Algorithms punish those who do not pump out content reliably. I can see how firehoses of content might be good for the content platforms, but I don't see how it can be good for the content creators. They burn out from the scheduling, and all too often the quality of their content drops.
This is also bad for content consumers, I feel. They get lower quality but higher volume content. Does it really benefit consumers to have such firehoses of content from single creators? There is so much content being created every single day that nobody could consume it all.
I remain convinced that there is enough free entertainment in existence that any person could find enough to keep them occupied for the rest of their lives. People might not be able to consume all the content they are told to crave (the latest movies, popular songs, TV shows on streaming sites), but there is plenty of content and plenty of variety to keep anybody occupied no matter their interests.
I feel stressed when content producers publish too frequently, and often I stop following that content creator for that reason. Once in a while I will dip in and out of that creator's content, but as a completist this is a dangerous exercise.
I would much prefer that people produce high-quality content less frequently than mediocre content every single day, but the Algorithms disagree and so does the content creator cash flow. So I guess we are stuck with this bad situation.
Here are the limits I am comfortable with:
Blog posts: there are a handful (maybe 10?) daily blogs I follow, but those blogs tend to be short slice-of-life affairs. I would not be able to follow somebody who posts deep thinkpieces so regularly. I feel the ideal cadence for a blog is no more than three pieces a week, and lower (sometimes much lower) is fine. It is a delight to find that Mimi Smartypants has released something in my feed, and she only posts a couple of times a month. The Pinboard guy at Idle Words posts even less frequently, and thank goodness: he writes big long novels of posts. These are blogs to look forward to.
Podcasts: Nobody needs a daily podcast. There are several podcasts I avoid because they are daily. I do listen to Ideas and The Agenda, which both publish every weekday, and even that is overwhelming. I feel a podcast should not publish more frequently than once a week; once every two weeks is a fine cadence. The Memory Palace publishes about once every two weeks and it is fine.
Videos: I do not follow many Youtube channels, but daily content publishing is rampant there. I far prefer channels that produce really good content infrequently, such as Climate Town. There are a few comedy videos that publish weekly like Julie Nolke, but even there I will tend to let several weeks of videos pile up and then binge.
Microblogging: I don't know what to say here. I think following somebody who posts 2-3 times a day is manageable, but all too often I read accounts from people who repost all the latest outrage bait every day. When I fall into those rabbitholes they can suck up hours of my time at a sitting.
I wish I had better self control and that I was not a completist. There are several podcasts I subscribe to that are piling up unlistened, and hundreds of megabytes worth of blogposts I will probably never read in my RSS reader. I think I would enjoy these entertainment options more if they were less frequent.
Part of the reason I am so out of step with others is that I try to avoid the Algorithms to decide what I watch. I would rather subscribe to specific creators in an RSS reader or similar. This dramatically changes how I consume content; even if somebody has not published for months and months I won't miss their next post so long as their RSS feed still works. That is good for consumers but bad for creators, because creators depend on things like Patreon and Twitch subscribers to keep them employed, and the customers who use these services demand regular content for their money.
I used to think the creator economy mirrored the open source economy. People would produce content free for all to consume, and then they would receive enough subscriptions to maintain their livelihoods. This is an incorrect view for both the creator economy and open source. Vanishingly few people earn a living via strict free software without charging for some proprietary component, and the same is true for content creators. The latest trend is to provide some (often second-rate) content for free, and then put up the rest behind a paywall. This is awful for creators, because they need to double their output in order to keep both freeloaders and paid subscribers happy. No wonder so many of them burn out.
I am a freeloader. I do not have any recurring subscriptions to any content creator, although there are many who produce compelling content. If I subscribed to all the worthy content who wanted my subscriptions, I would be paying hundreds of dollars a month. If I was a better person I would take a middle ground and spend some money each month on subscriptions, but I am not and I don't, so I am voting that all my favorite content creators should burn out. For the time being that is fine: there are plenty of other content creators to parasitize. As a long-term strategy it is unwise, because it means that the only free content that will become available will be that which is (a) produced by the idle rich, or (b) has some ulterior motive.