Sneer of Cold Command

On Behalf of Percy Bysshe, Pete, and a Million More Shelleys

Temple de Ramaseum Colosses brisés, H. Béchard c. 1870

“Today,” wrote Daniel Ek of Spotify, “with the cost of creating content being close to zero…”

It didn’t even warrant a complete sentence, all this content we create – just an adverbial clause used to frame a thought to come. (That thought was so sophomoric, I can hardly bring myself to mock it.)

Obviously, it’s not true that the cost of creating content is close to zero. Ask anyone who creates it. But the rhetorical device Ek employs is not about a statement of fact – it’s an assertion without support that’s been slipped into a sentence as if it were fact. “You have a Soros-backed D.A…” said Trump in the courthouse after his conviction – relegating an unfounded assertion into an adverbial clause before continuing on to a claim clearly up for debate: “I’m a very innocent man.”

This strategy is anything but innocent, however. Pushing a controversial assertion into a clause leaves the respondent without an opportunity to contest it. We’ve moved on to debating Trump’s guilt, or god forbid Ek’s thoughts about Stoicism. Meanwhile the true program has been left behind, a mine of untruth in the path of anyone who dares retrace the speaker’s rhetorical steps.

So let’s take Ek’s clause and give it a verb, to make it a declaration: “The cost of creating content is close to zero.” Or perhaps, since this is patently false, it’s more accurate to interpret it as subjunctive: “The cost of creating content should be close to zero.” Or imperative? “The cost of creating content must be close to zero.”

Any of these complete sentences are a clearer expression of where Ek stands with regard to content creation. He insists that there is no cost to creating content, because he needs that to be true for his program to thrive. Then, you just wait, he’ll prove his point - because once his program thrives, the assertion will indeed become fact. He is busy working to make his false assertion true, just as Trump is working to conjure conspiracies amongst his enemies in order to wipe them out.

As a creator who requires more than zero for my content, I seem to be part of a conspiracy against Daniel Ek and Spotify. The fact of my existence challenges their program. Something has to give, in this literal zero-sum game. If I and other creators won’t accept close to zero for content, Ek and other platforms cannot operate under the conditions they require to build even a sentence. Creators must be swept aside as a conditional clause to their success. (A success imagined as imperial as a Roman Emperor, evidently.)

Which brings us to the most seemingly innocuous word in Ek’s statement: “Today.”

Today, I create content. Tomorrow, I expect to be paid for its use.

The creation of content, today, is never without cost because it does not happen without labor. This is reality in analog space and time, where creators live. But Ek and his fellow tech executives seek the power to say that tomorrow, creators will not be paid for use of their content. That is their desired reality in digital space and time.

AI, I imagine, might have the power to make tomorrow into today. This is likely the unstated premise for Ek’s entire remark. AI could transform Ek’s conditional clause into fact by populating today with labor-free content. Which would, effectively, postpone artists’ tomorrow forever.

We can now revisit Ek’s statement, with its implications made explicit:

Today [once AI has eliminated tomorrow], with the cost of creating content being close to zero, [I and my brand] can remain relevant for decades or even centuries. [Like,] for example, Marcus Aurelius.

…Or Ozymandias, Daniel Ek? Since you’re into “the concept of long shelf life,” how about a bit of Old Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Listening to: Aykathani Malakon by SANAM

Cooking: with every herb in the garden