WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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I don't know if you can see
how much it's raining on camera, but...

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...it's raining a lot.

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In 1988, Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond wrote
“The Manual”,

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or “How To Have A Number One The Easy Way”.

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They’d had a novelty pop song hit the top
of the charts earlier that year, and the Manual --

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I've had to plastic-wrap my copy,
it's a bit rainy --

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was a tongue-in-cheek guide
to success in the music industry:

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how to achieve a number one single
with no money and no musical talent.

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Almost all of it is out of date now,
but there’s one section, right at the start,

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that is as relevant today
as the day it was written,

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and it’s trying to talk the reader out of
what they think they want. And it says:

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“The majority of Number Ones are achieved
early on in the artist's public career

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“and before they have been able to establish
reputations and build a solid fan base.

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“Most artists are never able to recover
from having one

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“and it becomes the millstone around their necks
to which all subsequent releases are compared.

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“Either the artist will be destroyed in
their attempt

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“to prove to the world that there are other
facets to their creativity

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“or they succumb willingly and spend the
rest of their lives

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“as a travelling freak show.”

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A number one song does not make a career.

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In fact, it can kill a career:

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if all you’re known for is doing one thing,

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all the world will want to see
is that one thing.

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A single popular video does not make you a
YouTube star,

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it makes you the person who stands up
and repeats that catchphrase

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over and over again
until everyone’s tired of it.

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There are people out there who think,

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just one big hit, that’s all they need,

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that’s the path to stardom
and being set for life.

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They were wrong thirty years ago,
and they’re wrong now.

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If you’re a one-hit wonder,

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then it’s not you that’s popular;
it’s that one hit.

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What you need is a steady build, a back catalogue,

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enough time to learn the skills
that you need to survive under the spotlight,

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to have long-term, sustainable success.

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If you’ve been tasked by your boss to
Make Something Popular,

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or if you’ve had that one hit
and now you need the second,

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that is a terrible environment
to be creative in.

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If you sit round, with a committee,
and you ask

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“What’s funny? What's good?
What's popular? What can we make?

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“What will people be interested in?”,

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then you’re already on the wrong track.

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But you know that idea you had when you were
in the shower, or in the pub with friends,

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or just letting your mind wander on
a rainy beach today?

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That idea might be good.

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Your brain isn’t indexed so you can say
“think of something popular”.

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Your brain thrives on connections.

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And it is way more difficult to make
those connections when your job depends on it.

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For me, it took me more than a decade of throwing
stuff at the internet,

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of steadily building up a small following
and learning my trade before I found

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the Things You Might Not Know format,
an idea that really worked,

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an idea that got me a large audience and

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a chance to actually turn this
into something that could support me.

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By sheer luck, that happened at the point where
I’d been working somewhere long enough

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to build up some savings,

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so I wouldn’t be completely bankrupt if this
new, shiny YouTube idea didn’t work out long-term.

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There’s a reason that a lot of people who
make stuff for online platforms are either

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kids supported by their parents,

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or students with a lot of time on their hands,

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or folks who have the means to support themselves.

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And even if you are one of the lucky ones,

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if your project starts bringing in some money,

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if you’re lucky enough to have the budget to
be able to book a last-minute sleeper train ticket

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and travel to a remote, rain-swept Scottish island
because it makes a better background for your video,

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it could still end at any time.

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You could get ill,
or your audience could get bored.

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Actually, your audience, they will
get bored at some point.

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There are some folks out there,
mostly still teenagers,

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with millions of people already following them
and money rolling in,

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and they think this is going to last forever.

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But every band’s second album is difficult,

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and every TV show starts to lose ratings over
time as newer things come along.

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The internet works the same way.

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The new stuff doesn’t necessarily have to
be better: it just has to be exciting.

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People like to have both familiarity and novelty,
but there’s got to be both.

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Too much familiarity is boring.
Too much novelty is scary.

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If you don’t strike a balance,
if you can’t change with the times,

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someone else will be ready and willing
to take your audience.

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For almost every creator making stuff for
the internet,

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the work they do is a passion project.

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So if you’re starting out, you should know:

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it isn’t going to support you for the first
few years,

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perhaps the first few decades, perhaps ever.

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And if you are one of the lucky ones,
if you’ve made it,

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it very likely won’t support you for life.

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I mean, if this is a passion project,
you probably won’t care about that.

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And as long as you know that,
as long as you plan for it, that’s fine.

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But you’ll have seen all the creators,
in every genre on YouTube, talking about burnout.

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Your dream job can still be a nightmare if
you don’t have a backup plan.

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In 1994, six years after they wrote the Manual,

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Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond pulled all
their music from sale.

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They went to their bank,

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and they withdrew most of the money they had
left over from sales and royalties,

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both from the novelty number one single,

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and from all the other hits
they’d had since then.

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They had one million pounds in cash.

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They travelled to this island,
Jura, in Scotland,

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they went to an abandoned boathouse
a couple of miles down the coast,

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they burned all of that
million pounds cash as art.

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Now, I’m not about to do anything like that.

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I wouldn’t recommend doing
anything like that.

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I don't think they would these days, either.

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But I am well aware that nothing lasts forever,

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If all you're trying to do is repeat
your one success,

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or if all you’re doing is trying the same thing
over and over and over and over again

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for years and you're getting nothing back,

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then you might as well
just be throwing your money in a fire.

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So these days, I hope that my ideas work,
and I try to accept when they don’t.

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And I try out new things.

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And sure, my baseline is different to
when I was starting out,

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the same way it’s different to that of a
massive corporation

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who might spend millions
on one advert,

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but the principles are the same.

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I keep following all those rules I’ve learned:

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I make as many things as possible,
and I try to connect with people.

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If you’re starting out,
success might take a week.

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It might take a month.
It might take a century.

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But every idea you put out there
is another roll of the dice,

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and you can learn from however
those dice fall.

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That’s how you get popular on the internet.

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That's good enough. Augh!
How is there--

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How is there rain going down
the back of my neck?

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All right, I've got to go
catch a ferry.

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Pack away, catch a ferry.