The 2020 election is drawing to a close and since the early voting started I've been avoiding exit poles, speculation, and commentary. The closest I've come has been watching the PBS news hour and largely tuning out the opinions and try to pick up on the debate points to keep an ear open for in my other news peeking during this election.
So I ran this year, first year I was able.
Kind of.
I kind of hired a campaign manger.
Kind of advertised.
Kind of talked to people about it.
Kind of participated in the debates.
But at the end of it I did my best to stay out of it while still participating.
Why?
Even if I did garner media attention I feel like it would have distracted to much from the main issues.
Do I agree that choosing between two old white dudes represents the country right now...maybe a little...I mean we are trying to teach old white dudes and their cohort that people are people and we need an example of that.
However, if the Democratic party had really gone for the throat on this, they would have had Pelosi or Harris at the head of their ticket and Warren as the V.P. pick.
The Republican party...I guess you have to credit them for going down with the ship?
I don't know, like I said, I've been trying to avoid "spoilers".
Am I going to to try this thing again in 2024.
Maybe.
I honestly don't know at this juncture. Mostly I need to focus on pulling my shit together and figure out a more stable living situation. Or an acceptable mobile one that can accommodate my work needs.
What did I learn this election cycle?
Well, for starters, I've spent almost the entirety of it on Tic Tok.
At first, the app was a fun little distraction during breaks at work as another excuse to avoid talking to my coworkers. Then I started posting. Mostly as a short vlog/blog sort of thing. Then I found...my tribe?
Cosplayers, socially awkward, and other folks with similar backgrounds/professional trajectories.
Though, because of how I outlined my probably candidacy back in 2016 Tik Tock was the perfect platform.
New, shiny, viral, video based, and...almost like I designed the app.
Regardless, it brought to fore front one of the biggest issues with the current digital world.
How to create content, provide a legal database of videos and sound bites for students to play with and provide a monetization option for the creators of the video and sound clips.
Tik Tock, by design, is a good platform for that. The only thing it's really missing is analogue content flagging efforts to take down uncredited or un licensed reproductions of sounds or videos.
If it were my app? I'd make that a work from home job with the added bonus of finding a legitimate sample of the audio or similar clip for the creator to work with while putting the hard ban hammer down on efforts to flood the app with bootleg sounds.
The only other consideration would be age/troll quarantining.
Users under a certain age being server locked from adult content. And if it's found that an account being used by a minor has falsified their age to access the adult content, banning said accounts.
Tik Tok, arguably, has become the perfect model for finding, and filling, loopholes in copy wright law. Both from a misuse stand point and from an over regulation standpoint.
Take You Tube for example.
When money started to flood into the platform and larger businesses began exerting their legal leverage over smaller creators much of the smaller experimental channels disappeared and were overshadowed by offerings by major networks and media outlets.
Yes, You Tube had it's issues with copywrite violations and something did need to be done about it. But much like the "kill it with fire approach" the record industry took to Napster, we ended up with many quality creators abandoning the platform out of frustration. But, that does give us a good model for the "cable company" of the future, or rather, "Public Access Cable of the future" Where a platform like Tick Tok would be the "Community Theater of the Future" and Instagram would be the "Club district of the future"
I dunno, never messed with Insta, I got off the social media FOMO train a few years ago.
Just thoughts.
Regardless.
Back to the Scroll and trying to figure out which flippin' application to fill out to be able to pay back my debt and figure out how to generate income from my writing and teaching.
