Wither the gatekeepers?

When the required budget necessary to produce original content was high, and the cost to distribute just as high, we permitted people to curate the content for us, which slowly became permitting them to tell us what to pay attention to.

The gatekeepers gave legitimacy, because the content producer, or the participants in the content, were being vouched for by someone putting up money.

But we are/have quickly taken away that need for money across large parts of the spectrum.

I’m not advocating for no gatekeepers at all.

Book publishers, as one example, have done a fine job of keeping most of the dross out of the book stores for years, with a few misfires here and there.

They did this because their bottom line depended on quality content.

For the most part.

Or at least, content that a significant enough section of the populace wanted to buy.

But there is a subtle difference between curated content where someone lets you know “this is worth paying attention to” and a gatekeeper saying “this is the only thing you should be paying attention to because we say so.”