What makes something - an idea, a post, a picture, a show, etc. - worth staying for?
And I’m not talking about what pulls you in initially. I am well aware that could literally be anything (I will not digress into explaining the guitar gear rabbit hole I tripped down this morning), but the point is - what keeps you there? As in after the novelty wears off?
Catalogue value gets you found. Belonging value is what keeps.
I’m thinking about creating for the sake of creating and how the audience factors into that decision for creative types of all stripes.
No matter what your field of creativity fits into, the part that pulls people in, to explore, is your catalogue value. In the world of influencers, catalogue value has a funny way of working for a while.
OK I do need to discuss the guitar gear rabbit hole here for a second. I was thinking of Pepper Keenan’s time in the band Down, found a really cool clip on YouTube, then some more stuff from the same, longer-form interview, and when I went to play the whole interview I had a “cool, but this is probably all I’ll need” moment.
The thing I wanted (Pepper + guitar) led me to the short video (talking about Down’s first album) looped me back to the host’s channel and the full video where… in the intro he grabs his gum, straight out of his mouth, and puts it on the table. Just, drops it right there. Like he might want it back in a minute. So I’m watching this and now I’m thinking, “what am I even doing here” because - I suddenly have all sorts of new questions about the gum. I fast-forward a bit and it’s gone. Now I’m playing it back looking for where. I’m suddenly miles away from my original concern for clicking on this thing - the internet is so weird.
I wanted the episode. The episode was in this catalogue. I got my hit and I got out.
Maybe I’m being too petty. Maybe I’ll be back (because it was a cool interview), but this is what life is when there’s so (so, so) much content.
It’s also a microcosm of what’s happened to me with all sorts of other social media people.
Irrespective of where they put their gum.
In a moment, I notice that they are cataloguing and curating something I want. This is the cool thing the internet promised. I am HERE for this.
Then, I realize I’m blindly clicking but not really enjoying myself, I drift for a bit longer, and then I wonder why I’m still there and I leave.
For any and all creators - catalogue value gets you found. It’s worth building for that purpose. But, and I do mean BUT, catalogue alone isn’t what ties an audience to you.
It’s belonging value that keeps people from leaving.
Most influencers (even if they don’t call themselves that) optimize for the catalogue.
Which leads me to asking myself - who are the anti-influencers that I still like?
They’re the eccentrics.
Eccentrics, almost by accident, are optimized for belonging value. Eccentrics think, behave, and go through life belonging to an otherwise bizarre set of beliefs.
The eccentric is the definition of having belonging value, even if you look at them, and think “What is going on in your head because I do not get it, at all.”
Eccentrics might put their gum on the table next to them, and you might think it’s weird, but they don’t care to the degree that they will just leave that moment in their YouTube video.
Which is part of why there’s definitionally no eccentric business model recommendation. It’s actually pretty antithetical to anything more than a specialty/niche offer.
However, if the influencer is defined as all-catalogue, the eccentric is all-belonging.
The influencer’s pull is the promise of a certain kind of polish, a certain kind of access, a certain kind of aspiration for something you, the consumer, want.
When you’ve seen enough of the catalogue - when you’re satiated - you realize how the novelty was part of the product. This is why influencers, even the most interesting of the lot, can start to feel like empty calories pretty fast.
The eccentric’s pull is weirder and slower. You’re not sure you get it at first. You have doubts but your curiosity tells you to look just a little bit longer. To think just a little bit deeper about what’s actually going on.
When the eccentric’s catalogue clicks with you, you realize you’re in a special place. You’ve joined a structure. It’s either part of your identity you already knew about OR it’s a new perspective you realize you’ve been searching for.
The eccentric doesn’t have a hook. The eccentric does have a scene. It just comes with some weirdness that you’re either going to adopt or get over in the name of abject curiosity.
This is also why influencers can operate like startups. They optimize for hooks. They can track and measure conversions. They think in terms of growth. They optimize for scale.
An eccentric, on the other hand is like a bootstrapped, local pub. At best there’s a scene of fans. It can’t even be McDonald’s, it can only be the best option for a neighborhood stop.
Startups ask “did it work?” Scenes just notice who’s still around. “Still here? Cool!”
I see a lot of influencer culture masquerading as scenes. The “community” promises have died down, but the reality is a lot of these people with big catalogues, bigger promises, and an emphasis on audience over community have nothing to offer once the hook wears off.
Increasingly, and maybe this is further enabled by being back in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, I see eccentrics building scenes without even meaning to. People are just weird. In public. Consistently. And they might not have a million people show up, but a handful do, and that’s all it takes.
The trick, if there even is one, seems to be eccentric AND accessible.
Not eccentric as a brand. Not quirky-for-quirk’s-sake-on-purpose.
Be as genuinely weird about the thing you’re genuinely weird about and then, and only then, also be patient enough to see who finds their way in and sticks around.
It’s worth it. You can’t manufacture belonging value.
Make a scene worth belonging to.
ps. Ok I know somebody wants to know the video. Here you go. The gum happens about a minute in so you don’t even have to wait for it.
