Monetizing Trash

I was having a conversation with my friend Michael H about dreams, and somehow we started talking about monetizing dreams-- write your daily dreams on the web and then monetize it. However, dreams don't usually make much sense (to me at least). They're usually trashy, useless information. Can you actually monetize things that don't make sense? In another word, is it better to post trash on the internet than to post nothing at all? Let's see now... In the DemandMedia world, the answer is, YES. According to Rosenblatt, it's better to post something, anything, than nothing at all.

DemandMedia pays starving English majors, errrr I mean... aspiring writers a whopping minimum wage (and in many cases below minimum wage) for writing articles ranging from how-tos, to product reviews, to rants about Britney Spears, and other countless things you can think of. Apparently there are tons and tons of writers in America who prefer to get paid peanuts to write, instead of getting paid waaay more money flipping burgers at McDs. Let's go over this now: Writing+passion=10 peanuts. Flipping burger+no passion=10000000 peanuts. The monetary reward is clear, yet passionate writers prefer to get measly 10 peanuts to write, than to make it rich by flipping burgers. So where do all these writing monkeys come from? I don't know. Apparently, there are a bunch of them out there.

Ok fine, maybe monetary motivation is not what motivates writers. As Michael pointed out to me, "there's a fundamental human desire to communicate and that includes writing." People will write, and people will read, regardless of monetary compensations. Furthermore, Michael pointed out that aspiring writers can both flip burgers to survive AND write for DemandMedia. And for these starving English majors, writing is a "gateway" to famedom (this is not a real word, is it?) or getting a Pulitzer Prize. As long as that 0.00000000001% chance of making it exists, these writers will be motivated to write. I guess it's kind of like how lottery and cult work too. You can really motivate (or trick) people by giving them a remote possibility of super-duper-awesomeness happening... similar to how Egyptian workers spend their entire lives building a pyramid so they can go to heaven, or how extremists blow themselves up so they can meet 99 virgins, or how people do good will so they will go to heaven, or how starving writers dump trash on internet so they can be famous one day. Apparently, DemandMedia's Rosenblatt doesn't think his company is dumping trash or exploiting people, so it must be true. It's on the internet. It must be true.

One thing that always baffled me is that DemandMedia generates gets very high ranked and well read articles for some odd reason-- meaning people actually read trash on the internet. But no way! People can't possibly desire trash by spend time on the internet doing unproductive things. I thought that's what tabloid magazines and TMZ are for. Wasting time on the amazingly useful internet??!? It's just inconceivable! The day that pigs fly!!! So anyways, in the DemandMedia world, any content is worth something. Heck, the company is very profitable today, and expanding quickly. As for monetizing dreams, I bet they are worth something too, because posting anything is better than posting nothing. Who knows, maybe I can apply to DemandMedia as a writer if one day, I decide that writing is my true passion/life aspiration (ahem, *cough*, shyeah right... I hate writing). Or... maybe I can just put my content on my blog and monetize it myself. Wait, I'm already doing that. Screw DemandMedia. I guess in the end, the economy of flooding the internet with tons of disposable content written by starving writers, is actually working extremely well. I guess this proves that people really spend time doing unproductive things on the internet after all. Pigs do fly after all!

Thanks for reading my randomly generated trash.