92 Million Views, German Art Nouns, Internet Arguments, Piano Destruction, and Corporate Shilling
I was pleasantly surprised by the handful of new signups the first Quinque generated and I consider fact that nobody openly cursed me for doing it a win, so I’m gonna run this hunter-gatherer link experiment a little longer.
To recap, I’m a degenerate content junkie and this weekly essay-lite is how I am justifying my addiction moving forward.
Your reward for standing idly by as I spend significant chunks of my limited time on this mortal coil shoving streams of electrons into my brain and converting them into happy chemicals is 5 links & concepts per week that you might not have otherwise found 🫡
1. How Much Money is 92 Million Views Worth?
Only $31K apparently??
Seth Everman, aka the YouTube Bald Guy, has 4.35M subscribers on YouTube. You might be familiar with his work doing deadpan covers of songs like Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy and The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights.
The Bad guy video got over 92 MILLION views and Seth goes deep in this video about how much he actually made from those 92 million views. To be honest, I think he’s pretty salty about it (and reasonably so considering that he generated the equivalent of viewer numbers for the Superbowl from his living room 🤷).
Anyway, it’s a fascinating dive into the economics of Web2 Content Platforms and how Creators get paid (or don’t).
2. Gesamtkunstwerk
Bless me.
This is the concept of a “total artwork” and can be understood as an all-encompassing work of art that crosses all or many different artforms to create a new, uniquely complete work.
Nobody can really agree on what it means, but people have basically narrowed it down to either Wagnerian opera, architecture where the architect picks out the furniture too, or Beyoncé.
One of those three.
3. WordCels vs Shape Rotators
If you were in the Twittersphere last year, you likely heard about the WordCel vs Shape Rotator debate at some point...
Even if you just got offended by something somebody disparagingly said about your internet weapon of choice.
It broadly simplifies to numbers people vs words people, but as with any high quality internet argument, there are infinitesimal ways to misunderstand, misrepresent, and talk past each other in the conversation about who’s ideas on the internet are better.
And since we’re about a year past my favorite internet fight chapter, I think we’re due for another round of it in the Age of ChatGPT.
Here’s the pitch for a ridiculously deep essay about a niche argument from this king
“I will cite several questionable, possibly incorrect factoids about psychometrics, but the methodology doesn’t matter. We’re here to have a good time.” 🥲
4. Baker House Piano Drop
MIT is known for a lot of things.
Aside from marring the best domain name on the internet with subdomain, they’ve graduated a lot of nerds who have built a lot of things that have made a lot of money (although not as much as some other places apparently).
What they are not known for is… wanton destruction of musical instruments.
That is until today!
Apparently back in the day, some students had a broken piano in one of the dorms that they wanted to get rid of.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t just throw it out the window because that was against the school’s rules.
But one enterprising young Charlie Bruno noticed that nothing in the rules forbade rooftop item evacuations!
And so the piano drop was born and the tradition was upheld for the next 50 years (as one does).
5. LoFi Nissan Ariya
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Lofi hiphop girl has helped literally millions of people do work. You’ve almost certainly come across this internet-spawned genre of chill, but driving beats that are aesthetically perfect for working on focus driven tasks.
What you haven’t realized is that you might’ve been listening to a 4-hour-long Nissan (the car lol) advertisement at the start of your Lofi listening sessions.
Wat.
Designed by Titmouse (a “collective of directors, writers, designers and artists”), Nissan dropped this excellent playlist about 2 months ago, set to a v chill driving scene through a rotating series of gorgeous Japanese landscapes including, but not limited to city skylines, tunnels, and countryside (complete with monsters).
It’s an incredible example of genuinely useful creative that audiences are loving and I personally hope its a sign of things to come with the future of advertising and content.
The world of tomorrow might actually be better than today (at least when it comes to corporate shilling).
Oh also I wrote this entire edition boppin’ along to this playlist so its a certified productivity banger 🫡
So anyway that’s five up, five down.
I hope this added value to your day.
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