One of my biggest disappointments during lockdown was Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin. With a tasty tagline, “How Facebook, Google and Amazon have cornered culture and what it means for all of us”, it promises to expose and explain how the internet dismantled the traditional media system. But it doesn’t quite deliver on this promise.
It was once reasonable for a young musician to dream of earning a decent living as a performer in the music industry. Move Fast and Break Things is set up well to argue how the internet destroyed a creative middle class. But frankly, Taplin misses an open goal with this book in many ways.
Taplin often comes across as nostalgic, hankering for the old days when he was finding success as manager of The Band. As David Runciman says in his review of the book; “It’s hard to feel all that sorry for lucky people when their luck runs out.”
My patience for Taplin’s tiresome tone-of-voice ran out. He’s adamant throughout the book, that creativity itself is worse off in the internet age.
Move Fast and Break Things: Why PewDiePie?
Taplin routinely cites PewDiePie, as if the Swedish Call of Duty enthusiast is completely synonymous with YouTube. In Move Fast and Break Things, He helpfully explains “There are thirteen billion views of his videos, which feature him playing video games.” Taplin clearly takes issue with this when he proclaims, “That is the new talent. I’m sure it has nothing to do with catharsis or any of the roles art has played in our lives throughout history.”
In the same breath, Taplin asks some lofty questions of YouTube creators;
What are we to make of a teenage phenom whose sole talent is playing video games? The famous infinite monkey theorem posits that if you let enough monkeys type for a long enough time they will eventually write Hamlet. Have the four hundred hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute produced the new Scorsese or Coppola? Could it be that the economics of ‘more’ is drowning us in a sea of mediocrity?
I’m not going to validate PewDiePie’s work, but whilst a monkey is yet to come up with Hamlet, other creators, either disregarded or simply unseen by Jonathan Taplin, are doing some pretty impressive work that’s far from Mediocre. Let’s take a look at some creators that may have deserved a mention in Move Fast and Break Things.
Apartment Sessions
Let’s start small with something enjoyable, albeit without PewDiePie’s clout. Apartment Sessions is an extremely ambitious series of performances. The project started by cramming as many pro musicians into a Brooklyn apartment to create awe inspiring covers. Mediocrity is left waiting in the ground floor lobby.
Adam Neely
Sticking with music, one of the most popular music educators on YouTube is Adam Neely. A Berklee graduate, bassist and extremely busy pro musician, Neely has been uploading, informative, ambitious and licc-tastic video essays, Q&As and gig vlogs. The amount of educational content being shared on YouTube is frankly staggering, boosting the creativity of many who could not afford the kind of education Neely (and Taplin also) are fortunate enough to have experienced.
Ctrl Shift Face
If Taplin is worried YouTube creators aren’t doing much to push the boundaries, Ctrl Shift Face would be a good place to look. So called ‘deep fakes’ are starting to arrive online, where visual effects can be used to create footage that never happened. Ctrl Shift Face has created several short, but frighteningly advanced face swaps that show that movie-grade visual effects will soon democratise.
PowerfulJRE
Comedian and Actor, Joe Rogan started the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2009. Over the last decade, he’s gone from giving his friends the giggles to lengthy one-on-one interviews with some of the world’s most influential figures and brightest minds. The fruit of his labour is an exclusive licensing deal with Spotify, reportedly worth $100 million. Surely even Taplin would admit that some of the ideas and discussions that have come up on the podcast over the years has made a worthwhile influence on its viewers.
Perhaps Jonathan Taplin will still insist that none of the above have uploaded the next Apocalypse Now or Goodfellas to YouTube. But until a YouTube video is allocated tens-of-millions of US Dollars for a budget, perhaps it’s reasonable that they never will. Needless to say, Move Fast and Break Things is not a book I’ll be recommending.