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Principles of Small Creation

Scale and complexity are traps;

  • It doesn’t have to be scalable to 10M concurrent users if it’s only going to be used by 10 people.
  • It’s better to work okay every time than to work perfectly one time in ten

There is freedom in a lack of professionalism, in doing things incorrectly, and in doing things poorly

  • A lack of commercial prospects is not a reason to prevent yourself from Coding or Singing or Drawing or Writing for the joy of the doing.

We build things for people

  • Specific people, small numbers of people, knowable, manageable groups.

Include people

  • We strive for the things we make to be Understandable when they need to be understood; Usable (and useful), when they need to be used; Enjoyable, when they are meant to be enjoyed; Discoverable, so that they can be found.
  • Level editors! User Generated Content! Customization! Permision to remix and reuse and cover and sample and to do all the things.

Respect our audience (users, viewers, consumers, etc.) and our artists (coders, videographers, musicians, etc.)

  • Credit your collaborators
  • Protect the vulnerable in our communities.
  • Compensate people as fairly as is possible.
  • Don’t track users or harvest data
  • No “Proof of work”, if you hear the word “blockchain”, slap someone.
  • Do offer options for customization when possible
  • Try to build things that will last. Consider the impact on your community when you no longer exist to provide the thing. How will The Thing outlive you, if it can outlive you?
  • Consider the impact of your work on your community, strive to do no harm.

Share, and make sure everyone else does

  • This means licensing clearly, and making attribution easy
  • We use CC-BY-NC for media and AGPL for software.
    • More permisive licenses allow BigTech companies to do what they wilt with your content and code.
    • There's a track record of BigTech refusing to use AGPL. It's like kryptonite to them.
    • Any legal methods which can be leveraged in order to hurl spanners into the works of BigTech companies, or hinder Large Language Models should be utilised.
  • The licensing thing scares off the grifters and suits, whether or not you have the personal means to hire lawyers or participate in court cases.
  • Even if you have no faith in, or don't believe in the legal system at all, these license symbols ward off bad spirits. Other people believe in the bullshit, and will act accordingly.
  • This lets us distribute Small Media through lots of disconnected networks, while making sure that anyone who wants to can find the creator (and pay them!), and ensuring that a company like Disney or Facebook won’t swoop in and profit off of our hard work.

Know your neighbors

  • Physical or digital, get to know your community. Makes it easier to look out for one another.
  • We’re all real people, after all.

Make it quick, make it cheap, stop when you hit Good Enough

  • No one is going to be upset that your low budget, anti-capitalist disaster movie doesn’t have billion dollar special effects. Tell the story and move on.
  • Quick doesn’t mean “Go as Quickly as you can”, it means “cut out any steps that won’t help you finish the thing.” Don’t burn yourself out making a small thing! But also, don’t spend so much time polishing the thing that you never finish it.

Don’t give power and money to those that seek to destroy you, when an alternative is available

  • Disney, Comcast, Fox, Sony, Google, Facebook, OpenAI, X, Microsoft.

Provide community based alternatives to the things that major corporations create

  • We can make our own News, entertainment, social media, music, art, games, toys, clothes, and food at various capacities.

Support one another

  • If you can afford to pay a creator who made a thing you enjoy, do.
  • If you enjoy a thing, tell soemone about it.
  • If someone needs help that you can provide, consider helping
  • If you need help that someone else can provide, ask
  • Forget the social norms that prevent you from asking for help, or that lead you to disparage those who do
  • If you’ve got nice gear, share it
  • We help us.

Don’t let Gear stop you

  • Use what you have.
    • Nearly any cell phone can produce Good Enough video. Steven Soderbergh shot Unsane and High Flying Bird on iphones.
    • “All Hail West Texas” was recorded on the integrated microphone on a cheap, barely functional boombox, and it sounds like it. It sounds bad! It’s still a wonderful, award wining album.
    • Dozens of award winning documentaries were shot on the first consumer video cameras. These cameras produced some of the worst video footage imaginable. It’s fine, anyone who cares more about the Fidelity of your gear than about the quality of your work is missing the point.
    • Most of our gear is second hand and a lot of it is 10+ years old. Keep it out of landfils.
  • If you want to and can buy some gear, find something good enough, and stop thinking about it
    • There’s nothing wrong with using something nice, if you have it or have access to it, but Diminishing Returns are real.
    • It’s better to have a finished thing that’s lo-fi than an unfinished thing in perfect fidelity
  • Every dollar spent on gear, is not spent on the people involved, the sets, the costumes, etc.

Not everything has to be a Small Thing, but the best big things start small.

Sustain

  • Don’t burn yourself out
  • Take care of yourself and, if you can, help your neighbors