What Works

Our podcast feeds and streaming services are full of real stories of real people. And not all of those stories feel... true. I mean, even if the facts are accurate, the way something is edited, packaged, and marketed can dramatically alter a story's impact.

Artist and audio producer Jess Shane wanted to create a project that would expose some of the problematic elements of this booming (and highly profitable) industry. The result is a podcast series for Radiotopia Presents called Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative. Listening to it made me deeply uncomfortable, so I knew I needed to have her on What Works to discuss it!

In this episode, you'll get the behind-the-scenes on this project. And you'll learn what happens when attention becomes a fetish.

Footnotes:

• Listen to Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative from Radiotopia Presents
• Find out more about Jess Shane
• Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling by Sujatha Fernandes
• The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han

• (00:00) - Edited for maximum shock value

Okay, this isn't really an episode about speculative investing. Well, it is. But I'm not talking about crypto or meme stocks. I'm talking about the challenges of living and working as a speculative investment.

Today's episode is a brief reflection on self-speculation, the "anticipatory, speculative self," and why the second person is so ubiquitous on social media.

Footnotes:

• "Verified: Self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data" by Alison Hearn in Self-(Re)presentation Now
• "The Truth About Influence" by Alison Hearn in Re-thinking Mediations of Post-Truth Politics and Trust
• Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han
• "What 'You' and 'We' Say About Me" by Ariana Orvell

As always, find an essay version of today's episode at whatworks.fyi

What would happen if you archived all of your Instagram content, announced that you had taken a job at a fictional wellness company, and then got fired for disclosing your experience with company-mandated colonic hydrotherapy? Well, Leigh Stein did exactly that.

Leigh wears many hats—novelist, poet, cultural critic, book coach, publishing expert. And when she realized that she wasn't wearing the hat she wanted to wear on Instagram, she decided to have some fun with a satirical performance art project.

Listen for the whole story and a provocation to embrace your own social media use as a project of identity performance!

Footnotes:

• Leigh Stein's books and cultural criticism
• Leigh Stein on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
• Judith Butler on Why Is This Happening with Chris Hayes
• Sarah Urist Green on performance art for The Art Assignment
• Performance by RoseLee Goldberg
• "From Work to Text" by Roland Barthes
• RuPaul explaining drag on The Preachers

Also in this series:

• Organizing Indie Labor with Chiarra Lohr of the Indie Sellers Guild
• Figuring Out the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson
• Building Solidarity in the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson
• Rethinking Creativity: An Interlude

Find an essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi

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I'm teaching a new workshop on May 15 & 16, 2024! It's called World-Building for Business Owners, and it's based on a process I've been honing for more than a decade. I'll help you apply creative, even playful thinking to your business strategy—and help you create an internally consistent business that causes fewer headaches, meets your needs more efficiently, plays to your strengths, and creates satisfying work.

Click here for all the details or go to explorewhatworks.com/world

• (00:00) - Digital performance art?

Good luck going anywhere today without running into a message about creativity.

I was going to say, "anywhere online," but really, it's just about anywhere. We get creative in the kitchen. Creative in our workouts. Creative in bed. And of course, creative at work. Creativity is somewhat of a "cult object," as Samuel Franklin put it in his cultural history of creativity.

Today, I want to get uncomfortably close to that cult object and ask, "What is our fascination with creativity hiding?" So join me as I venture onto the third rail of the 21st-century economy.

Footnotes:

• The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History by Samuel W. Franklin
• "The Surprising Origins of Our Obsession with Creativity" by Samuel W. Franklin in Behavioral Scientist
• "The Origins of Creativity" by Louis Menard (book review) in The New Yorker
• Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

Also in this series:

• Organizing Indie Labor with Chiarra Lohr of the Indie Sellers Guild
• Figuring Out the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson
• Building Solidarity in the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson

Find an essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi

***

I'm teaching a new workshop on May 15 & 16, 2024! It's called World-Building for Business Owners, and it's based on a process I've been honing for more than a decade. I'll help you apply creative, even playful thinking to your business strategy—and help you create an internally consistent business that causes fewer headaches, meets your needs more efficiently, plays to your strengths, and creates satisfying work.

Click here for all the details or go to explorewhatworks.com/world

***

If you enjoy What Works, please consider supporting this work by becoming a premium subscriber for just $7 per month.

• (00:00) -

I'm teaching a new workshop on May 15 & 16, 2024! It's called World-Building for Business Owners, and it's based on a process I've been honing for more than a decade. I'll help you apply creative, even playful thinking to your business strategy—and help you create an internally consistent business that causes fewer headaches, meets your needs more efficiently, plays to your strengths, and creates satisfying work.

Click here for all the details or go to explorewhatworks.com/world

"How do I want to live?" Philosopher Rahel Jaeggi says this question is bound up in the concept of alienation. Our disconnection and dissatisfaction keep us from answering that question—but they also keep us from asking it in the first place.

So in this episode, Kate, Charlie, and I ask that question—and five more. We examine how work in the creator economy can reinforce competition and individualism when what we really need is solidarity and collective action. If you're curious what you can do to join with others for your own success and theirs, this episode has some ideas.

Footnotes:

• Kate Tyson: Whiskey Fridays (podcast), Wanderings (on Substack) and Wanderwell Consulting
• Charlie Gilkey: Productive Flourishing and Better Team Habits
• "What the creator economy promises and what it actually does" by Kyla Chayka in The New Yorker
• "Surplus populations are all around us" by Tara McMullin
• Alienation by Rahel Jaeggi
• "Metrics, Incentives, and the Seduction of Clarity" by Tara McMullin
• Casey Newton on Decoder with Nilay Patel
• "Algorithms at Work" (algoactivism) by Katherine Kellogg, Melissa Valentine, and Angéle Christin

As always, find an essay version of today's episode at whatworks.fyi

And speaking of the creator economy, if you appreciate the work I do, I'd be so grateful if you became a premium subscriber of What Works for just $7/month. Your support makes a world of difference when it comes to my ability to do this work.

• (00:00) - The promise of the creator economy

It seems the creator economy is booming. Or is it?

And what even is the creator economy??

Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TechTalk are quite happy to advertise the ways they support creators with features and advice. Their aspirational creator hubs give the distinct impression that becoming a creator is akin to getting paid to be yourself.

But that said, when Kate Tyson told me that she doesn’t think the creator economy should exist but that she couldn’t put that in writing, I told her she was wrong—about not being able to put that in writing. Turns out, our mutual friend Charlie Gilkey had told her the same thing. So I arranged a meeting of the minds.

Today's episode is Part 1 of 2 of that conversation. We get into who a creator is, how the creator economy really works, why we value what we value, and how platforms distort the market for our creative work.

Footnotes:

• Kate Tyson: Whiskey Fridays (podcast), Wanderings (on Substack) and Wanderwell Consulting
• Charlie Gilkey: Productive Flourishing and Better Team Habits
• "Millions work as content creators. In official records, they barely exist." by Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harwell on The Washington Post
• "Digital sharecropping" by Nicholas Carr
• "Preferential attachment" via Wikipedia
• "You Gotta Be in it to Win It" by Collin Brooke
• Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? by McKenzie Wark
• "'Wait, I think you're platform-pilled'" by Tara McMullin
• Cory Doctorow on 'enshittification' and platforms being 'too big to care'
• The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

• (00:00) - Welcome to the unwieldy conversation hour

The labor market has undergone a sea change in the last 20 years. A full third of US workers are part of the independent workforce, including gig workers, contract workers, freelancers, and sole proprietors. And yet, key provisions in our labor regulations do not cover independent workers.

What's more, platform companies have further changed our idea of work. If you sell your labor on a platform, you're not an employee of the platform—you're an entrepreneur.

Well, those entrepreneurs are starting to ask questions. I am, too.

Today's episode examines one organization's attempt to organize the indie workforce. The Indie Sellers Guild formed in the wake of a strike action in April 2022 by 30,000 Etsy sellers. I spoke with executive director Chiarra Lohr about what they've been up to, the challenges they face, and the victories they've already celebrated.

Plus, you'll learn a bit about the history of working women's organizing in the US—starting back in the 1830s!

Footnotes:

• Learn more about the Indie Sellers Guild
• What Works Ep 385: "Who do you work for?"
• The Lowell Offering by Benita Eisler
• The Voice of Industry digital archive
• "History & Culture" — Lowell National Historical Park
• Platform Capitalism by Nick Srincek
• Monopsony 101 via Investopedia
• National Labor Relations Act of 1935
• Check out the Indie Sellers Guild Convention

• (00:00) - April 2022 Etsy Strike

The Center for Nonviolent Communication describes what they teach as "empathy in action." And so it seems fitting to close out this series on Decoding Empathy with a look at nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication, and making social spaces at work & beyond that work for more people.

I talked with Leonie Smith, founder of The Thoughtful Workplace, about how she uses the tools and practices of nonviolence to help individuals and teams feel more seen and understood.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Leonie Smith and The Thoughtful Workplace
• Watch the Ask Leonie video series
• The Expulsion of the Other by Byung-Chul Han
• "Ahimsa" on Wikipedia
• The Center for Nonviolent Communication
• "The 'Magic' of Meeting in Person" by Devon Price
• The Notebooks of Simone Weil edited and translated by Arthur Wills

Related:

• My conversation with Mara Glatzel on the economics of "neediness"
• My conversation with Charlie Gilkey about implied rules and better team habits

Check out the full Decoding Empathy series!

Every episode of What Works is also released in essay form at whatworks.fyi!

• (00:00) - What if meetings came with instructions?

I have learned a lot about cognitive empathy by learning copywriting. After all, copywriting is a puzzle—the puzzle of figuring out what someone is thinking or feeling and how you can connect your idea to that thought or feeling.

So, it seemed only fitting that I would invite a copywriter to this series on decoding empathy to share her process and give you a behind-the-scenes look at cognitive empathy in practical application. In this episode, I get real nerdy with Samantha Pollack, a positioning strategist and copywriter, and think about how the digital doppelgangers we create via our personal brands might help us get curious about who is behind others' digital doppelgangers.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Samantha Pollack and Cult of Personality
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• "The Politics of Recognition" by Charles Taylor in Multiculturalism

Find every essay and episode in the Decoding Empathy series.

Every episode of What Works is also released in essay form at whatworks.fyi!

• (00:00) - Introduction