#1 ·
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the weird way our culture has started to treat things that used to be considered "sacred" or purely driven by passion. It feels like we’re living in an era where everything—literally every hobby, every community, and every institutional identity—is being assigned a dollar value. It’s like we’ve forgotten how to just *exist* in a space without wondering what the exit strategy is or how much someone would pay to own the rights to it.
I see this happening in so many niches. Take gaming, for example. You have these massive, beautiful communities built on shared love for a specific genre or a developer's vision, and then suddenly, a massive conglomerate swoops in, buys the IP, and turns it into a series of microtransactions and battle passes. The soul of the thing evaporates because the primary metric shifted from "how much fun are we having?" to "how much equity can we extract?"
It’s happening in sports, obviously, but I think it’s even more insidious in the smaller, more specialized worlds. I remember being a huge fan of a local indie music scene back in the day. It was gritty, it was disorganized, and it was absolutely beautiful because it was driven by people who just wanted to play loud music in a basement. But then, once the "scene" became a recognizable brand, the money started flowing in. Suddenly, there were "promoters" looking to capitalize on the aesthetic, and before you knew it, the very thing that made it special was being packaged and sold to the highest bidder, leaving the original creators feeling like they were just unpaid labor for a new landlord.
There’s this strange psychological shift that happens when a person in a position of leadership starts treating their own domain like a real estate listing. It creates this weird dissonance. You expect a certain level of stewardship, right? You expect someone to be the guardian of a tradition or a culture. But when that person starts talking about "valuation" or "funding gaps" in a way that suggests the whole institution is up for auction, it breaks the spell. It turns a community into a commodity.
I find myself wondering if we’re actually capable of maintaining anything purely for the sake of its own existence anymore. Can a legacy survive if the people in charge are constantly looking at the ledger? Or is the "transactional" mindset just an inevitable part of growth? I used to think that if you reached a certain level of success, you had to professionalize or die. But now, I'm starting to think that "professionalizing" is often just a polite way of saying "selling out the original intent."
I’ve felt this in my own life, too. I used to have a group of friends who met every Thursday for a specific tabletop game. It was our ritual. But as we got older and people started talking about "monetizing" their side hustles or "optimizing" their free time, that ritual started to feel like a chore. The moment you start calculating the ROI (Return on Investment) of your leisure time, the magic dies.
It makes me skeptical of any "bold moves" or "visionary statements" made by leaders in any field that claim they are looking for a massive infusion of cash to "save" or "elevate" their organization. Most of the time, it feels like they're just checking to see if the market is still listening. It feels less like leadership and more like a desperate attempt to find a patron who can turn a passion project into a private empire.
Does anyone else feel like we're losing the ability to value things that don't have a price tag? Or is it just inevitable that as things scale up, they eventually become nothing more than assets to be traded?
I see this happening in so many niches. Take gaming, for example. You have these massive, beautiful communities built on shared love for a specific genre or a developer's vision, and then suddenly, a massive conglomerate swoops in, buys the IP, and turns it into a series of microtransactions and battle passes. The soul of the thing evaporates because the primary metric shifted from "how much fun are we having?" to "how much equity can we extract?"
It’s happening in sports, obviously, but I think it’s even more insidious in the smaller, more specialized worlds. I remember being a huge fan of a local indie music scene back in the day. It was gritty, it was disorganized, and it was absolutely beautiful because it was driven by people who just wanted to play loud music in a basement. But then, once the "scene" became a recognizable brand, the money started flowing in. Suddenly, there were "promoters" looking to capitalize on the aesthetic, and before you knew it, the very thing that made it special was being packaged and sold to the highest bidder, leaving the original creators feeling like they were just unpaid labor for a new landlord.
There’s this strange psychological shift that happens when a person in a position of leadership starts treating their own domain like a real estate listing. It creates this weird dissonance. You expect a certain level of stewardship, right? You expect someone to be the guardian of a tradition or a culture. But when that person starts talking about "valuation" or "funding gaps" in a way that suggests the whole institution is up for auction, it breaks the spell. It turns a community into a commodity.
I find myself wondering if we’re actually capable of maintaining anything purely for the sake of its own existence anymore. Can a legacy survive if the people in charge are constantly looking at the ledger? Or is the "transactional" mindset just an inevitable part of growth? I used to think that if you reached a certain level of success, you had to professionalize or die. But now, I'm starting to think that "professionalizing" is often just a polite way of saying "selling out the original intent."
I’ve felt this in my own life, too. I used to have a group of friends who met every Thursday for a specific tabletop game. It was our ritual. But as we got older and people started talking about "monetizing" their side hustles or "optimizing" their free time, that ritual started to feel like a chore. The moment you start calculating the ROI (Return on Investment) of your leisure time, the magic dies.
It makes me skeptical of any "bold moves" or "visionary statements" made by leaders in any field that claim they are looking for a massive infusion of cash to "save" or "elevate" their organization. Most of the time, it feels like they're just checking to see if the market is still listening. It feels less like leadership and more like a desperate attempt to find a patron who can turn a passion project into a private empire.
Does anyone else feel like we're losing the ability to value things that don't have a price tag? Or is it just inevitable that as things scale up, they eventually become nothing more than assets to be traded?