How to be a Micropatron

Support the Microculture by Collecting Art with Intention

Collect with INTENTION

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The Attack on the Microculture

Mainstream culture, or as Ted Gioia calls it, the Macroculture, is dead.

The formulas that sprung forth from the optimistic dotcom era, have been taken to their absurd extreme.

The superhero film - already somewhat of a joke to begin with - became an industry destroying automaton. The fundamentals of story-telling - characterisation and plot - shriveled under the dominance of dopamine rushing our brains with obnoxious battle scenes and writhing bass sounds.

Simplification in popular music turned the ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ ideal, into Taylorswiftism - an electronic ridicule of 1990s Nickelodeon theme songs.

Literary fiction, once the bastion of creative risk-taking in writing, is now a competition between Yale and Columbia LinkedIn bios to see who can fit in the most sham-trauma in under 100,000 words.

Generative AI, executioner’s axe in hand, sits dissolute, wondering how on Earth humans managed to destroy it’s own creations before it had the chance.

Yet outside Hollywood and the big record labels, outside Penguin-Random House and the sensitivity-reader publishers, there are artists actually taking risks; who are actually creating beauty.

Not deconstructed trash.

For example:

1. Writing: Published by Overlook Press is THE REVELATIONS by Substacker Erik Hoel; a deep reflection of the meaning of consciousness combined with an expose of academia, all framed within a thrilling murder mystery.

2. Music: Published by music label Metal Blade Records, is DOWNGRADE DESERT by Igorrr; a pulsating, splintering, mixture of Eastern European folk, Baroque classical, and heavy metal music.

3. Painting: Published by gallery Artevistas in Barcelona, is SAVOUR by New Zealand artist James Ormiston; a fragile portrait of a woman eating a fruit, as the white of the canvas seeps through her cold face.

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These people all are rising up from the Microculture, the fragmented rebellion of artists taking their first steps as the Western Empire seems to recede all around them. By the hour, they are getting more powerful; having more influence over the minds of Western art lovers; of wider culture in general.

But, they are hard to find.

Despite not being apart of the mainstream; they still rely upon social media marketing; plays on Spotify, shares on Instagram, views on YouTube.

They still rely upon the algorithm.

But the algorithm increasingly feeds us mind-junk creations, simply because its copyright owner paid the most for advertising - to get on a Spotify playlist, the New York times best seller list, or a Google search list.

The market for art is pathologically inverted.

Rubbish rises, quality falls.

And although AI didn’t have to kill the Macroculture - we did that ourselves - it’s licking its lips for what’s next.

As Ted Gioia speculates, like Amazon with faux books and now Spotify with faux songs, these technopolies want to replace the artists of the Microculture with AI:

This is Spotify’s way of using AI. They have AI songs, they attribute them to people who don’t exist, like Sports Illustrated [has done], and this allows them to take royalties that would go to musicians and keep them for themselves.

The techbro CEO’s, our geeky feudal overlords, have already helped turn most of the population into video-audio junkies, quantified as views, streams, likes, and comments; now they’re coming for the Microculture.

But, as fun as it is to mock and criticise these mainstream authoritarians, we need to realise that we - the everyday art consumer, the little guy on the street - are part of the problem.

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LimeWire Children

My mother’s interest in my relationship with the internet changed dramatically in my mid-teenage years.

She had become the managing director of the music licensing company in New Zealand, Recorded Music. They would license media entities like radio and TV networks, for the public use of music, taking the fees and distributing them annually back to artists and labels.

No longer were us kids - myself and my two brothers - allowed to illegally download music. “These people are trying to make a living too,” she might say, “what if that was you someday? And someone just decided to steal all your drawings and not pay you for it?”

I would imagine cradling my precious drawings and paintings; no, she’s right, I would think, that would … be terrible.

“You wouldn’t be able to be … an artist. At least professionally.”

We obviously couldn’t pay for all the stuff we had been skimping off LimeWire, so my mother set each of us up with an iTunes account, and told us to buy mp3s my parents would pay for.

And I didn’t think about it for years. I would come across music I like, through word of mouth at school, or somewhere else on the internet, locate it on iTunes - and purchase it - without really being conscious that at least a little bit of the money was going to the artist (later I was to learn, most of it was going to a record label, and much of the rest to Apple, but … that’s another story for another day.)

At my first stint of University, studying Philosophy and Art History, this ethos stayed with me. I was almost invariably the lone figure arguing against my Socialist friends who thought everything on the internet should be ‘free’, that we - art-lovers all - need to pay for art; that it is immoral not to do so. Yes, fuck the big record labels; fuck even the big artists. That still doesn’t change the fact that if everybody thinks like us - artists, in the professional sense, will cease to exist.

Culture will die.

Years later, at my second stint of University, now studying Clinical and Social Psychology, a new ex-Socialist friend (he had developed a frontal-cortex, like me), expressed surprise at me buying his band’s studio album off bandcamp.

“That’s so nice.”

Nice? What did nice have to do with it. I loved the music and I bought it. I told him the story of my mother; our family’s relationship with music. How buying music - instead of pirating it like everyone I knew - had become a habit.

I mentioned that the market’s valuation of art is … one of the things that confuses me most. Using economics to discuss the value of art is futile - economic value implies time and space; implies use and therefore degradation; to me, art cannot be quantified. As Iain McGilchrist would say, this is left-brain thinking; too functional, too reductionist.

But then I went economic: “And anyway bro, your album is like 20 bucks? I could buy one and a half shitty beers for that. In a few minutes, they’d be gone. Most music on bandcamp is like a dollar or two for song. And people are like ‘oh, I’d rather not pay a dollar, and just listen to it on Spotify or YouTube or whatever.’ Are you fucking kidding me? One dollar? You cannot afford that? Just to support an artist trying to do something on their own? Whether they realise it or not, they are instead helping massive tech-companies and overweight record labels produce worse music while making more profit and killing the independents as a result.”

What makes it sadder, is its not just ‘regular’ consumers who do this to save a buck, or make their day more efficient. The many people who choose to stream off Spotify instead of buying an mp3, or who pirate pdf books onto their phones, are art lovers themselves; who dream - like me - of a new flourishing of culture; who intrinsically understand the transcendental quality of art.

And I’m not trying to say I wasn’t one of them. Despite my family’s healthy relationship with art consumption, I pirated heeeaaaaps when I was young; I illegally downloaded independent films; ripped underground musicians mp3s off YouTube; and I’ve bought books off Amazon instead of supporting my local bookstore.

The point is, if we all do this, culture will die. And this time it won’t only be the Macroculture, it’ll be the Microculture.

With burgeoning artists now subject to algorithm fuckery and AI replication; the decisions of individual art consumers - us - carry more weight.

If you’re around my age, mid-twenties to mid-thirties, you were probably a LimeWire child; a Napster child. You benefitted, rightly or wrongly, off the exploitation of artists.

It was all fun and good when the exploitation was of narcissistic, overrated pop-stars, but if we’re honest, the exploitation ran all the way down - to the underground music producers, trying to make it from their bedrooms.

Our flesh and blood.

If we don’t change our attitude, we may be sacrificing the new transcendental art of the Microculture, for a buck here and more convenience there.

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Function versus Beauty

One can pontificate as much as they like about the beautiful and aspirational qualities of art; but if they’re not facing our pragmatic reality of capitalism¹, where money represents value, then artists are not going to exist as professionals. If they don’t exist as professionals, they have to relegate their creations to the hours before dawn and after sunset, which means less artists are out there, taking wonderful risks for us consumers to transcend our daily experience, and lead more enlightened lives.

The problem is to integrate function with beauty. Is it even possible?

We have extraordinary capacity for both. In the same city, insane feats of engineering that make our lives easier sit next to art that reliably brings tears to the eyes.

One of Iain McGilchrist’s main ideas, is that our recent obsession with function has devoured beauty.

A material boon, a spiritual curse.

This is evident in the death of the Macroculture. Popular creations are not transcendental anymore; they exist to serve a function - generate profit. As Ted Gioia reports, our techbro CEOs don’t even view it as art:

How can you tell if somebody in the music business wants to replace musicians with AI?

The first clue is that they describe music as content (ugh!). The second is that they’re delighted that millions of tracks are now generated—the bosses no longer use the word composed—for next to nothing

Standing here, writing this (yes … I have a standing desk and a kneeling chair; I accept your ridicule); it seems I could spend an infinite number of lives trying to properly integrate function and beauty.

They are two brothers living in the same house. They may share the same last name. But they don’t get along; and never will. The duty of the mother, then, is not get them to love each other or even like each other; just to get them to be civil.

A working relationship.

The Macroculture is already dead. But if we are going to support the Microculture, and save it from the hands of pathological functionalists weaponising AI and other exploitative means, we need our function and our beauty to work together.

We need to take on the roll of Patrons - and get over the somewhat icky mixture of money and taste:

PATRON

2: a person who supports with money, gifts, efforts, or endorsement an artist, writer, museum, cause, charity, institution, special event, or the like …

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The Micropatrons

One long night in the capital of New Zealand, Wellington, I opened my University’s website, located my course, ARTH 313: The Renaissance, and downloaded the files that contained an essay question for an impending assignment:

Describe the influence of PATRONS in the RENAISSANCE using the writings of GIORGIO VASARI.

I hung my head. The most boring possible question. Patrons? Why can’t I write about frickin’ artists? It’s ART HISTORY, after-all; not PATRON HISTORY.

Fuck’s sake. Shall I have another cigarette?

In the reflection of the university library windows, the deep recesses under my eyes mocked me. In four and a half hours, 9AM, I would have to hand in the essay. It was short, only 1500 words, but still, I had got to university only an hour ago, and procrastinated even further by smoking cigarettes.

Fortunately, I was an expert delaying my self-loathing until after I needed to do what was the absolute minimum - handing my assignments in on time.

I sighed a petulant sigh, and got to work. The next four and half hours were to expand my thinking in ways I’m only realising now, ten years later.

Many artistic people, including myself even to this day, deride the unholy alliance of money and art. Yet one of the central reasons art flourished in the Renaissance, was because of the taste of people with money.

They were in many respects, noble.

Now, poverty was so rampant, that they were the only people with money who could be patrons. Ironically, with the help of left-brain thinking, of function, we developed powerful technologies in-hand with practical policies that lifted the majority of peoples out of poverty, turning them from serfs, slaves, and mud men, into the richest and most leisurely population to have ever existed.

Today, even our poorer citizens live like the kings of dynasties past.

What does this mean?

If we want the arts to flourish, we cannot rely on ‘the powers that be’ (because that’s really working). We need to reserve some of our income and time, into the conscious effort of finding and financing artists we find truly inspirational.

We need to become Micropatrons; we need to fund the Microculture.

In this way, we can exist outside of the treacherous technopolies (well, somewhat - more on this later), we all can benefit from new transcendental art, and lead more enlightened lives.

With our developed sense of taste and our sensitivity to beauty, combined with facing the realities of our economic environment, we can start our own Renaissance.

The Neo-Renaissance anyone?

Wait, I think’s that’s a double up …

The Micro-Renaissance!

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How to be a Micropatron

You’ve got this far and you want to be a Micropatron? Well, distinguished and noble financier, whose taste and creative sensitivity crosses dimensions, here are some ways you can go about doing so.

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1. Taste is Everything

I’m not asking you to buy a shit novel just because someone self-published it. That actually defeats the purpose, because you are not discriminating based on taste.

If you’re just ‘being nice’ then, likely, rubbish will rise in the Microculture and be no different to the Macroculture. In fact, it would be the same as DEI programs in the publishing and film industries, where out of sympathy for past oppression, they elevate ‘people of diversity’ without consideration of merit, in turn devaluing and demeaning their products.

We don’t want to elevate people simply because we ‘feel sorry for them’; because they’re an independent artist ‘oppressed by the tech-companies’. We elevate people because we are moved by their creations. Now, ‘moved’ can mean any positive emotion toward the work. Though I would encourage an aspiration for great art that inspires deep emotion, enjoyment and entertainment is more than enough.

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2. Migrate to Digital Lands that Liberate Artists

The sad irony is that artists still rely on the digital manifold overlay and their shady algorithms. The sad choice then isn’t whether to use these platforms, but which one.

So, if you have the option to support an artist on a platform that liberates them, have already followed 1) (and so therefore you value them intrinsically), then put that extra effort in, pay a little bit extra, and be their Micropatron.

Here are some examples of platforms that help instead of hinder artists, by circumventing the horrible and artistically restrictive agent-editor-publisher dilemma, allowing Micropatrons to pay direct to the artist:

• Substack: For writers (and what I’m using now). Subscription model. Compared with all the others, it is the most in support of free speech and expression - a fundamental necessity for the growth of art.

• Bandcamp: For musicians (and what I publish my music on). Provides one time purchases for songs and artwork (and even merchandise).

• *Patreon: For graphic artists and filmmakers. Subscription model. (*Edit: The Man Behind the Screen noted that Patreon can tend toward ideological censoriousness - the nemesis for a flourishing art community. Instead, he suggested SubscribeStar and Kofi as alternatives.)

• … and I couldn’t think of anymore! I’m guessing there’s others out there, so if you know of one, please comment below.

And here are examples of platforms that liberate the consumer (in the direct materialist sense - getting the product to the consumer faster, easier, and cheaper) but don’t liberate the artist. Always remember that. (They can be very useful for an artist as marketing tools, however):

• Spotify: For musicians. Streaming model: Pays $0.003 - $0.005 a stream ($3 - 5 every 1000 streams). Beside from being a waste of time for artists that aren’t MASSIVE, Spotify have begun to replicate artists with AI.

• Instagram: For everyone, really. Ad revenue model.

• Tik Tok: Are you joking?

(Note: I mean not to provide a binary choice between good and bad platforms; the convenience of one that exploits artists [Spotify], can be used alongside the another that liberates artists [Bandcamp]. Many times I have bought an artist’s song of Bandcamp, and then added it to a Spotify playlist, and vice-versa - found a song I love on Spotify and then bought it off Bandcamp. One could make the compelling arguement that the ‘bad’ platforms are not necessarily bad or exploitative of artists at all, if understood and thus used correctly as marketing tools, whereupon artists direct new followers to their real revenue streams. However, whether or not you take this position is irrelevant - that as Micropatrons with a desire to help the Microculture flourish, we should want to support artists on platforms that help them the most,)

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3. Go Experience Art

One of the easiest ways to be a Micropatron, is to buy a ticket to live performance or gallery showing.

Not only is our personal relationship with the artwork heightened when we see it live; but when done together with others, as with music, it 1) leaves a warm psychological residue, and 2) strengthens the bond with those people we experienced it with - including the strangers present!

It is something I certainly want to more of. I have a musician friend (the same one from above, the ex-Socialist), who regularly sees independent local bands and travelling musicians out of the mainstream.

It’s really cool.

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4. You’re a Critic? Critique the Microculture

Recently I read a marvelous piece by the

The Brothers Krynn

that reviews five fantasy authors on Substack, quite obviously outside the mainstream. In my own review series, Delinquent Links, I am planning to review a dystopian novel called Exogenesis by

Peco

, another Substack author, at the end of the month.

Good faith critiques (and I guess, even bad faith, biased critiques) surrounding artwork help create a community of discussion, fueling excitement. If you are in the review business, and came across a new album, short story, or painting from the Microculture, then consider giving it a review.

One point on this, however - and this relates to 1) - I implore you to not soft-ball your critiques and instead engage your taste even at the risk of offending your fellow Microculture artist. If you softball, you’re doing exactly what those moronic Hollywood critics are doing.

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5. Order From Your Local

This piece was inspired by the general intentional consumer, who, instead of buying their entire life online from amazon, decides to support local businesses - even if costs them extra time and money. I recently had a chat with a friend who loves cooking; instead of going to the supermarket to buy his meat, he would happily spend a bit extra and go down to his local butcher - who also has much better cuts.

The other day I bought a camera and my instinct was to save a couple bucks and buy direct from Sony. But standing in the local camera shop, it felt wrong - if everybody did that, this little business owned and operated by photography and cinematography lovers, would cease to exist just like smaller musicians if we keep on playing their songs on Spotify instead of buying them from Bandcamp.

The point is with art that you can buy physical copies of - like books, vinyl and CDs, visual art - consider checking out your local store down the road. The people that run these businesses often share your love of art, your passion. They help facilitate your patronage, too.

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6. Crowdfunding

I almost missed this one; but crowdfunding seems an obvious way to become a Micropatron. Personally, I’ve never crowdfunded myself, but I’ve heard it’s popular for tabletop games and increasingly, short films. If you see a project getting crowdfunded you like, consider chipping in - it may help create something amazing.

I’m interested in researching crowdfunding more; and may do an article on it - what works, what doesn’t, etc.

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7. Anymore?

If anyone has any other ideas to help one become a Micropatron, I would love it if you shared them below!

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Revel in Art Collecting

The great patrons of the Renaissance were all show-offs of some kind. Some were bad show-offs; false connoisseurs, who recognised the connection art had to status. However, some were good show-offs, and unlike false connoisseurs, had remarkable taste. One of their greatest joys was show those close to them what they have collected over the years; how this work makes them feel, what it means to them - how their art patronage has enhanced their deeply human experience.

I’m sure many of those reading have had magical experiences when you show a friend a great work of art you’ve found - especially if it’s from the Microculture, outside of the mainstream (when your mate goes “who the hell is this, this is AMAZING!”) It’s one of the best things about being alive - and one of the fastest ways to become close with someone (if they share your taste of course!)

Although traditional, non-digital collecting in my opinion provides more opportunity to connect with others (discussing a painting on the wall; trawling through old hardcovers; pulling out preserved vinyl), we should revel in the art collector mindset, and be proud of what we can share with others - because, frankly, through our collections, though our patronage, we are part of the conduit that makes transcendence possible for all people.

In our the current techno-nightmare, where art is considered by the geeky feudal overlords and their nitwit government bureaucrats as “content”, something to be “generated” by AI to increase profits margins, it is as much the actions of the Intentional Art Consumer as it is the artist, that will fuel the artistic rebellion of the Microculture.

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Thank you all for reading.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider giving it a like, or if you have some thoughts, share them in the comments. Even better, click the subscribe button for more essays on culture.

Chur, and have a good day and night,

The Delinquent Academic

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Substack Authors: Peco Gaskovski; Erik Hoel; AC Cargill.

Just got a new record player; cannot wait to go crate-digging in the Microculture.

My decks - how I often listen to music. Buy wavs or aiffs and give em a mix.

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1. One could argue we aren’t living in a Capitalist society anymore, but a Neo-Feudal one.

Note: My thinking on this topic has been informed by one of my favourite Substacks, THE HONEST BROKER, by Ted Gioia; and the books THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY by Iain McGilchrist and THE COMING OF NEOFEUDALISM by Joel Kotkin.