I think people have been totally brainwashed by the idea of finding success within the creator economy.<p>For instance, hobbies are no longer things one does because they bring joy—they're now activities that people haven't figured out how to monetize. Before you’ve purchased a pound of clay and a pottery wheel—before you’ve even made your first mug—you’re buying a domain, designing a logo, and thinking about whether to sell your ceramics on Etsy or Shopify. And maybe you'll start a Patreon to document the learning process. I think for people who have been formed by the creator economy, people who have grown up in this space, the impulse to create and SELL seems almost pathological.<p>Then, there are the people who are afflicted with what I'm calling curatorial neuroticism. These are people who view curation as creation—they curate and share at a frantic pace. They gather, organize, present, and archive information obsessively. There's no stopping them. They spend more time writing in their seventh iteration of their Zettelkasten than they do interacting with people. If only I could get organized, if I could only "cultivate my second brain", I will unlock my creative potential, I'll figure out how to make money on Substack with a highly curated newsletter, or something.<p>What I sense in the curatorial creation is not really a "product", but a need to be seen. People share what they share—all of the lists, and links, and archives—so that they are viewed as having a certain literary taste, or wanting to be seen as having read these books, watched these movies, and so on.<p>Anyway, a quote from: Leisure, The Basis of Culture:<p>"I have never bothered or asked", Goethe said to Friedrich Sort in 1830, "in what way was I useful to society as a whole; I contended myself with expressing what I recognized as good and true. That has certainly been useful in a wide circle; but that was not the aim; it was the necessary result."