This is Normal

When I went to my interview in Lincoln (comic 608), one of the things I mentioned was that I wanted to get work in TV animation, Saturday morning cartoons, that sort of thing. The interviewer asked me, “why do you want to do that? You can be completely independent on the internet.” At the time, I didn’t really have an answer. Or at least, not a logical one.

But the recent purchase of Instagram by Facebook has given me a real world reason. One that isn’t “I think I’m too lazy to consistently produce something that’ll generate an income by myself”. No, the reason I’m looking at TV animation for my future career is because I think the internet bubble is going to burst again within the next 5-10 years. See, now that not just technology companies, but things like social networks and individual websites are stepping up to the great lottery that is the stock exchange and making huge risky purchases, the stakes are only going to get higher. With Facebook confident enough to place a billion dollar investment, the way I see it, more of these purchases are likely to happen, and the new dotcom corporations will try to outdo each other for the biggest and the best takeovers and purchases.

And sooner or later, someone is going to mess up. They’re going to pay too much for a flop, or takeover a company with a hidden debt black hole, and the giants will begin to fall. It won’t have a far reaching effect outside of the internet, but online, I would expect to see a domino effect coming into play. Investors will pull out of online companies, meaning that websites reliant on venture capitalist cash will suddenly have no money to keep going, and advertisers will get nervous about whether the net is still a reliable way of getting a marketing message out, striking a blow to the rest.

It happened before in 2001, and I’m not aware of any safeguards in place to stop it happening again. History repeats itself. It has to, no one listens.

With that just over the horizon, why would I chose to try and go it alone online, feeling like there’s an axe hanging over my head waiting to fall, when I could chose to work as part of a team on a studio that won’t fall apart when the internet goes through its next turbulent phase?

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You’re probably thinking I’m being a bit doom and gloom about the whole thing. Actually, another bubble burst might be a good thing for the internet. Not for business. Not for jobs. But for the internet itself. Look at your other media. TV, radio, newspapers, magazines. Notice anything about them? They’re all owned by less than a dozen corporate supergiants, and it’s impossible for anyone independent to really make a mark on the market.

Now look at the internet. Newgrounds built itself up from a 13-year-old’s hobby into a powerhouse of independent creativity. YouTube, while in itself is owned by Google, provides a platform by which people can speak and be heard, can create and be seen, and the best stuff will get seen because the people decide they like it, not because it’s one of three options. The internet’s a melting pot of creativity where genius gets to go through countless amount of trial and error until they deserve the publicity they receive. What I do, running this webcomic, would not be possible if the internet was run the way that media 1.0 is.

But now the stakes are being raised, and more money is getting involved, which attracts the cash zombies. Cash zombies are your typical stock market investor, who doesn’t care about the ethics, creativity or freedom of the businesses they get involved in, but only the profits and the dividends. Cash zombies themselves don’t eat or destroy businesses. On the contrary, their involvement makes good business sense. They just eat the soul of a business until it becomes a faceless and potentially evil corporation. Just look at Google these past few years.

Independents can’t survive in a cash zombie apocalypse, and get swallowed up or beaten out of the market by larger competition; fading into obscurity while networks develop and individual creativity is squashed. Additionally, as media 1.0 realises they can’t compete with the internet, they’re going to push for things like SOPA, CISPA and ACTA which tries to keep their old products relevant by destroying innovation and independent development.

And that’s why an internet burst might actually be a good thing. It gets the money out. The cash zombies run away from the threat of low dividends, so the people that stay are there because they’re passionate about what they do. The ones that are left aren’t in it for the money. They’re in it because they love doing it. We go back to having creative and innovative development without getting mixed up in complex economic systems that even the people most involved in them don’t quite understand. I would keep running this webcomic, and producing cartoons for the internet. It doesn’t earn me an income, but I like doing it, so I’d keep going for as long as I could.

What if Comicfury collapses, or becomes a paid service in order to survive? Well, by that point, I’ll hopefully have a job in animation in an area that isn’t volatile, and so I’ll be able to use my income to pay for whatever it is that needs paying for in order for this to work. I would have a job I don’t hate, paying for a hobby that I love. And that sounds pretty sweet.