Hey friends!
I've checked off 4 of the 7 on my deliverables for my 90 day plan, so far.
The goal is, in 76 days, to be able to make videos in a few hours that people will happily pay thousands of dollars for.
Granted, the first 4 were the easy deliverables (learn + generate ideas). But, nonetheless, it's momentum! We love momentum here.
Now comes the fun (but long) part: making the videos.
Procrastination is starting to set in for 3 reasons:
It's going to be a lot of effort, and when things need a lot of effort, I find myself wondering: wait, is this worth it?
OpenAI just announced Sora, and damn, it's really good at generating videos from prompts. It's got me wondering: no, really, is AI going to take my job?
Typical shiny object syndrome. Other things are also capturing my interest right now, so some of my attention is devoted to keeping my attention on videos. Whoa, inception.
As part of that procrastination, I spent most of this newsletter rambling about taste and its relationship to trying too hard:
who spends thousands of dollars on videos?
taste: the most important skill that can't be automated
what is taste: the 3 components
taste and trying too hard
taste and AI
some changes to the plan and why
I hope you enjoy it!
who spends thousands of dollars on videos?
The short and unhelpful answer is: lots of people.
I know that a market exists. In fact, there are many clusters of people that pay lots of money for animated videos. For example,
Big companies that pay for high production value product launch announcements
High-profile business people that want to build their brand
Agencies that make advertisements or video sales letters
I see tweets about it almost every day:
The question I'm currently trying to articulate an answer to is: why?
Why is it so valuable?
And, given that it's valuable, it must be rare and hard to do. Why is it rare and hard to do?
It's rare partially because the skill of using software (e.g. After Effects) to make animations takes time to learn.
But I think taste and strategy are the real lynch pins. They're the rarest and most valuable. And the least automate-able.
taste: the most important skill that can't be automated
what is taste: the 3 components
I just thought of this a few minutes ago so I'm not confident about it yet, but it Feels Right:
Taste is the ability to make people feel what you want them to feel with your art.
Taste has 3 sub-abilities:
the ability to model reality accurately
the ability to model feelings accurately
the ability to understand which parts of reality invoke those feelings
For example, let's say you're making a "happy song" playlist.
You need to know
what's a song and what isn't (easy)
what's a "happy" feeling and what isn't (hmm, not actually that straight forward)
which songs make people feel happy (not trivial, but if you've defined "happy" clearly, it's easier)
If you can do that for many songs and feelings, including niche feelings like nostalgia, I would say you have good "music tastes".
Let's say you're trying to make money.
You need to know
what the actual problem you're trying to solve is (modeling reality)
what pain the problem causes (modeling feelings), and
what a solution looks like (understanding what reality would produce the desired feeling)
If you can do that successfully, I would say you have good "business taste".
If you're good at communicating, that means you know lots of words and which combinations produce which feelings. You have good "communication taste".
It's the same 3 skillsets in any medium: perceiving reality, feelings, and the map between them.
Good taste is behind what makes people engage, like, comment, retweet, laugh, buy things, etc.
It's what allows us to create meaningful art, relationships, and communities. It's the ability to transfer meaning and feelings through reality as a medium.
taste and trying too hard
The fundamental principle I believe is that you can't make people feelings. You can only figure out what makes people feel things, do your version of those things, and hope for the best.
For example, marketing. You can't be good at marketing. You can only have good marketing taste.
The distinction matters. Here's why.
Being good at something implies the existence of a measurement for how good it is.
A useful measurement is consistent. If you measure something twice, you get the same result twice. You can rely on it. You can use it to make arguments.
A human will never reliably feel the same feeling from the same circumstances. For many reasons:
Something can only be new once. The lack of novelty changes the feeling. Usually by decreasing its intensity.
We are constantly changing. Aging. Experiencing. Wiring and rewiring.
We rewrite our memories each time we recall them. Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
We are constantly in flux. Moods, cycles, biology, circadian rhythms, diet, energy levels - it's all hard to control for.
Hence measuring feelings is noisy, hence any measurement for how good someone is at making people feel things will be noisy.
To be clear, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to measure them, and it doesn't mean the measurements can't be useful.
I just think it's the wrong way of looking at things. Here's the metaphor:
"being good" vs "having good taste" is analogous to "trying too hard" vs "being good"
If you try to "be good" you won't be good. You'll just copy "what's good" as though it's repeatable, as though it's not heavily contextual.
If you try to cultivate your taste (e.g. see reality clearly, understand feelings, map feelings to reality), you'll get good.
But it's also tricky because the first step to cultivating your taste IS the same as trying to be good: attempting to copy what's good.
The difference is the intention. If you copy to "be good" you're fighting a losing battle against diminishing returns, entropy, etc.
If you copy to model reality, to model feelings, and to make a map, then you will eventually develop good tastes and be what is known as "good".
Not to get woo-woo or mystical, but you have to honor the process.
If you copy to be good with the wrong intentions (e.g. your awareness is shrunk around either the goal itself or the fear of not accomplishing it), it'll get worse.
It'll be a negative feedback loop. You'll become more focused on the goal or the fear or the anxiety. Your awareness will collapse. You'll be less responsive and receptive to information in the environment.
At least, that's what happened to me. YMMV.
The vibes of your output will be "out of touch" or "off". You'll be ungrounded. People won't want to root for you. Trying too hard is a version of this.
It's not about increasing the intensity of your attempt. It's about building a better model of reality, feelings, and the map between them so that you "just know" what to do.
That's what people mean when they say "it has to be natural".
Sophistication for sophistication's sake is a let down. It's unfounded. It's not cohesive. Anyone can tell. It's a turn off.
Sophistication emergent from good taste is amazing. Novel yet understandable. Informed and innovative.
And it doesn't even have to be sophisticated. It just has to emerge from having good taste.
I believe that, when "unfiltered" or "raw" content succeeds or goes viral, that's why it does. It was made by someone who observed and thought a lot about something. The scrappiness didn't make it successful. The taste did.
taste and AI
I think that, if you understand what I wrote in the previous section, you understand why I believe AI isn't a threat to creators.
AI is only as powerful as the taste of the person using it.
AI can reproduce art that was made by people with good taste. And you can probably use that on people who haven't already experienced the original art.
But the market will saturate, and quickly. If you want to consistently make people feel things, you have to have good taste.
some changes to the plan and why
I still obviously need the technical skills, but I think the most important thing is that I have good taste.
To repeat the 3 sub-abilities of taste:
the ability to model reality accurately
the ability to model feelings accurately
the ability to understand which parts of reality invoke those feelings
I think that, for the most part, my plan will help me develop those sub-abilities.
But I think I could also have a competitive advantage if I worked on my ability to model reality and feelings.
What does that look like?
I'll know that I can model reality successfully if I can describe "everyday things" in such a way that it resonates with others.
If I can encode my experience in words such that others can relive that experience in as high fidelity as possible.
Like, if I wrote about brushing my teeth and someone read it and thought, "Yeah wow that is true, that is totally my experience too."
I'll know that I can model feelings successfully if I can describe meaningful experiences in such a way that others get "secondhand smoke" of my feelings.
Like, if I wrote about why a piece of art made an impact on me and someone read it and thought, "oh wow I can see how you'd feel that way."
Sidenote: I think that a great story or a parody is evidence of one's ability to model reality and feelings successfully. I believe shitposting is one of the highest forms of consciousness.
So, while I'm making videos, at some point I'm going to make two lists:
100 everyday things and how I experience them (to practice modeling reality)
100 things that are meaningful to me (to practice articulating feelings)