Content Cremation

The motif of my recent writing has tackling the idea of "maturing" and what that means for ambition, interests, etc.

I turned 37 a few weeks ago. Some men have a mid-life crisis, and purchase a sports car. I restarted a newsletter. When examining at what point I'm supposed to evolve beyond my past, I've wrestled with the idea of legacy. What left behind will survive? For most os us, the answer is "Nothing." We are weaker than our fathers, and will be forgotten quicker.

I have never entertained the idea that I'm important enough to remember. I feel that is a Boomer ideal. They plant themselves in the ground—making yet another 20 ft² of this planet unusable—and install a marble participation trophy to remind all future generations, "it me." It is why I, and many other Millenials, have elected to be be cremated. Invest now in columbariums.

However, it still feels good to have recognition. Or, at the least, the distant memory of recognition. To be able to point to something you've done and say, "See?" To remind yourself "Oh, yes. I did some things I'm proud of." To remind others of your pedigree.

What happens when you can't even do that?

Rap Genius

KPIs

can anybody tell me how I’m doing and why

Surreally Out HereJustin Roberson

When I randomly lucked into becoming a "founding moderator" at Rap Genius, I would devote untold cubicle hours to transcribing new songs that just landed on blogs and explain the lyrics. This is where I got my first opportunity to be paid for writing. I would get $500 a month to produce four articles (with no editorial oversight or assistance). These would range from general topics to glorified listsicles. When Steve Jobs died I stayed up until 4am on a Work Night writing "Return of the Mac: Top 10 Steve Jobs-Inspired Rap Lyrics" at the behest of the paycheck writers. I was happy to because I was getting paid.

I ended up writing dozens of articles and generating millions of impressions and dollars for Genius. Also, within all of that was a smattering of poor writing, and regrettable, laughable opinions (Big Sean is good.)

None of that exists anymore.

MostlyJunkFood

From there it was MostlyJunkFood. I wrote some of my favorite stuff here with a lovely bunch of buffoons... like seeing Future at FaderFort (something that changed my personal and "professional" life), but also stupid articles like "Things Theophilus London Could Name Himself Instead" where I listed a bunch of rhyming puns and Bad Anagram Solver Answers—Pre-Posthumous Bunion. It got me through a particularly awful day at work. Being able to have a historical timestamp to point to to say, "I was telling people about Young Thug in December of 2011. I used to be able to trust my instincts." would sure be nice. But, alas.

None of that exists anymore.

Four Pins

Same story. Wonderful, stupid ideas brought to life $100 at a time. When Four Pins was no more, Complex folded it into their Style vertical. The content is still there, but not in its original form. I'm assuming at some point the Media Libraries didn't get brought over to the proper CDN, and whenever the Blog software was updated it interpreted shortcodes differently. It all looks like shit, and all SEO juice was squandered.

Fun Fact: To this day all of fourpins.com 507 redirects, which is supposed to be used for temporary redirects. Let's go, Rich Antonello. It's time to bring it back.

The tweet that inspired me to think about this isn't available anymore so the only way for me to confirm it wasn't a fever dream is to remember I QTed it with this exact example.

None of that exists anymore.

Vine

Vine holds a special place in my heart, because I was in an awful place emotionally. Vine came around at the beginning of my alcohol abuse. There was a derelict underground parking garage a quarter mile from my job, and the gas station nearby sold PBR Tallboys for $0.79, which is cheaper than water. I would go there and drink with another coworker. This was right before I took a new job in a new city.

I was the loneliest I had ever been. But Vine helped me through it. It was helpful to put creative energy into doing high-brow art like "I am on the Bojangles roof" where I climbed intoxicated onto the roof of a Bojangles. I would eventually even get paid to do a bunch of them for Noisey. Twitter stopped hosting the Vine Archive 2019. You can still navigate to a user's profile and scroll infinitely down until you maybe find what you're looking for or visit a vine using its direct URL. However, embeds don't work, and a lot user content is gone. My favorite vine of all time is Rob Wisman's A Goofy Movie Cam'ron freestyle. If someone can help me revive it, I will pay you handsomely.

None of that exists anymore.

Everyday we are betrayed by the notion that The Internet is Forever. I see my children play video games, and when I tell them to stop they think they have to "finish what they're doing," which is false. Everything is autosaved. You can simply close the game. They have no concept of leaving an SNES on for 8 hours because you couldn't beat Vega in Street Fighter II, and now you have to go to church then lunch after church then run errands after lunch... praying there is no power outage.

The real issue is how important the now is. You need to say something about The Thing so there is evidence that you cared. If there is no online record, then how can you possibly hope to prove to strangers what your actual beliefs are? I mean, it's not like anyone has ever tweeted something that turned out to be hypocritical. There is a daily Protagonist of Reality to lambaste then we advance the queue. Everything exists...now, in the moment; it will not in the future. Have you tried to use Google recently? Every SEO exploit has been implemented so that the thing you actually want will not be what is presented to you.

It becomes impossible to find ancient content... racking your brain for the words you think were included. God forbid there's no accompanying caption. Websites are lost. Accounts get suspended. Tombrodude forever.

Even a small, careless change can severely impact posterity.

And to a lesser degree, changes that can be made to songs/albums on streaming platforms after uploading (or like how "Spiteful Chant" is not even acknowledged on Section .80,), or watching a movie and it's the TV edited version for some reason?

All this lost work makes me lament that I have no laurels to rest on. But, I'm relieved the embarrassing shit cannot be used against me. It made me think about how difficult the opposite is. Of how everything is documented, sitting on hard drives waiting until it can do the most damage, or to be quickly posted for the most engagement. We love context collapse, don't we folks?

TikToks are downloaded. YouTube videos are saved for posteriority. Streams are clipped. Screenshots are forever. Godspeed to every person who cannot harmlessly make a mistake in this future we have created. I wish you could become invincible to the "This You?"s.

Did I fuck up? Yes, a few times. The biggest was probably when I ran afoul of the entire west coast when I talked about Rap Squats with Noisey. Online has only gotten more dire now than in 2016. I have to imagine people are afraid to put themselves out there knowing the very catastrophic possibilities of a mistake—usually due to just being a teenage/adolescent idiot. I'm wary of my own daughter starting to explore the Internet. Even an innocuous comment made by an 11-year-old on a YouTube video got two replies by mean strangers.

While I would love to woe is me... what is worse? Having the freedom to fuck up and being forgotten, or not having the freedom to fuck up and being remembered?

1 Corinthians 3:12-15
¹² Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

¹³ their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 

¹⁴ If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.

¹⁵ If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

With everything slashed and everything burned. I am left with an empty, fertile landscape and the peace of mind that none of that exists anymore.