Hey team! Been a minute. Let's get you up-to-speed:
Leaving NebulaAs of last Tuesday, I am no longer on Nebula. This was my own decision, not coming from pressure from the platform. (If Nebula had any problems with me, I certainly never knew it!) Nebula is a great place full of amazing people, and I wish them health and prosperity; this is not a call to cancel memberships, those are my friends over there. But, what I do, and the way I do it, just wasn't working out over there, and the perception that "Ian is a great fit for Nebula" was affecting my Patreon income. Given a choice between making a real go of it on Nebula (i.e. more sponsorships and exclusives) or being fully independent again (i.e. whatever the fuck we do over here), I decided on going solo. Might be a shaky decision, in the long run, but it's what I prefer.
May's MinimixIt's almost June, sheesh! Here it is.
2026 ProjectsThe first half of my year has been A Shitshow... really more the aftermath of Last Year's Shitshow, and I knew there was a lot I'd have to resolve before I could commit to any of my usual, annual projects. So: this time it's a half-year of projects, and they have adjusted accordingly.
I've decided to embrace the Bingo Card format for all of quantifica, locking everything into 3x3 grids with the primary aim of "how many squares can we fill before the end of the year?" So, instead of my usual accomplishments-based bingo card, this year I am focusing on Videos I Want To Complete.
These are all projects that were in some phase of production at the start of the year. Some of them have been in the works for many years. Some of them, you've read portions of! Going left-to-right, top-to-bottom, these are Tendencies of Neo-noir, A Homily for Steve Rogers, The Good Guys Lost [working title], The Artist in Rebellion (Definitely Not A Video About Andor), In The Revolution there Will be Disco, John Wick: With the Animals, Protagony: Gordon, Extremely Overdetermined Adventure Game Tier List, and a guide to flaming out. (Yes, I am giving myself credit for the videos I've already completed.)
The list of project that I am technically "still working on" is even longer than this, and I set the rule for myself: I cannot start any new projects until all these videos are off that list. That can mean a video comes out, or a video is scrapped, but I cannot add new "in production" projects until these nine are dealt with. I picked these because they are my priorities; the other "in development" ideas, well, I would not necessarily cry if I scrapped them. But these? These I want finished.
Next, we have music.
In a variant of last year's project (which failed, because of Shitshow), I have picked nine musical genres, with the goal of finding a great album in each one. I can't just listen to an album in that genre, I have to find one I think is quite good. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom, the genres are: chamber pop, IDM, metal, punk, funk, dance pop, rap, mathcore, and trip-hop. I will very likely solicit recs from y'all, and will write up the fav albums.
And you will get your monthly minimix, as always.
Okay, next is movies:
Being that we're halfway through the year and I have watched [checks Letterboxd] fourteen movies all year, and four of them were Evangelion, my usual 36-43 film randomizer list seems... overly ambitious. So I've reduced it to nine movies to watch in the next six months, each one something I've been meaning to see for a while and that I suspect could blow me away. I often use the randomizer list to give things a chance, dabble in weird stuff, without expecting more than a handful to be Truly Great. This? We're swinging for the fences, here. This is shit that will, if nothing else, promote discourse. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: Nickel Boys, Mother Mary, Die My Love, Poor Things, The Boy and the Heron, Cuckoo, Resurrection, Tornado, Better Man.
("Ian, how have you not seen [Poor Things/The Boy and the Heron/Better Man]?" YEAH I KNOW I'M SURPRISED TOO THAT'S WHY THEY'RE ON THE LIST)
Next: book!
This is a mix of specific books and broad genres/formats. In the corners, we have (going clockwise) Apostle by Tom Bissell, Iron Council by China Mieville, A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit, and The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood. These are four books I started in the past and wanna prioritize finishing this year. The other five squares represent: a mystery novel, a novella, something over 500 pages, something nonfiction, and a romance novel. (You can deduce which is which, I think.)
Finally, we have this year's Game Cabinet:
Top-to-bottom, left-to-right: Paradise Killer, Unsighted, Consume Me, 1000xResist, Inscryption, Blue Prince, Control, Pentiment, Rain World. Several of these are holdovers from last years cabinet that I still wanna get to.
I will let you know that, since picking these nine games, I have already completed one of them! And it is not one of the little ones, let me tell you. I'll give it a proper write-up when quantifica starts back up in earnest next month.
On Which NoteI have never really advertised what it is we do here on Patreon. Which, given that these are the perks one ostensibly is here to receive, is Bad Marketing. So, in tandem with my announcement that I am fully independent again, this year's project announcement video is going to be public.
See, the way Patreon works as a means of supporting creators is not like it was when I first started using the platform. Once upon a time, every video came with a bump in patronage. There was also, always, a slow trickle out of patronage, as people, for whatever reason, cancelled or lowered their pledges. That's normal! And, so long as the bumps outpaced the trickle, the Patreon kept growing.
Videos don't cause bumps anymore.
I thought, at first, that this was a me-thing. My output had slowed, I'd taken one (now two) extended hiatuses, the videos were more variable in subject matter and viewership. But it's been consistently the case for several years now, no matter what I put out or how well it does. And, after talking to some other YouTubers and getting some feedback from the audience: it is not just me. For a variety of reasons, folks just don't back people on Patreon as much as they used to.
There are several reasons for this, the simplest and most obvious being: nobody has any fucking money. Whatever the economists tell you about "vibecessions," people do not have disposable income like they used to. And I can say "it's only a buck a month," but it's not a buck a month, because everyone who makes stuff is asking for a buck a month. You gotta draw the line somewhere, and for a lot of people it's "I need to stop spending money on Patreon." Cuz a buck a month to a few dozen creators adds up. (I've been there, believe me; several times, I have had to cancel pledges to my own friends, which fucking sucked.)
Also people are fed up with Patreon as a platform (as am I), and have generalized subscription fatigue. And, between YouTube Premium (or whatever they're calling it now) and Nebula and Ko-fi and whatever else, there are a number of ways to feel like you are contributing to a person's livelihood with subscriptions you already have.
So, rather than argue with this, what I'm gonna try this year - and, assuming it is not a boondoggle/the entire economic milieu does not shift in the next six months, will continue in following years - is announce my annual projects publicly as a kind of pledge drive. "Here are the things I'm doing this year, and here's where you can support me in doing it." Because direct calls-to-action do, still, drive subscriptions, especially when you can clear away assumptions about how many ways you are or are not making money. And, based on how that announcement goes, I will scope my plans for the year based on that budget, operating on the assumption that the Patreon will probably diminish by at least $1000/mo by the end of the year and probably not get any significant bumps until the next pledge drive.
My ideal of having this public video ready to go by July 1st is... well, let's be real, that's not gonna happen! But it'll happen at some point in July, and you'll be getting your usual quantifica update near the start of the month either way. So the new folks will have something to look at when they get here! Hooray!
And, to clarify: I am doing fine. These moves are about the longterm viability of my career. I am not hurting for money, nor is my immediate future in peril. The life I live is not expensive, last year's outpouring of support put me in very good financial standing, most of my debt is eradicated, and I am living quite comfortably within my means. This is me looking to the future, knowing that a steady trickle-out of patronage will affect that "good financial standing" in a year or two if things don't change, and trying to plan for that future instead of wait for a crisis.
So, any of you goofballs who saw the headline and went "oh no!": put your damn wallets away, we're good here.
And, as always: thanks for making it good here. :)
Cheers,
-I