Really fun and well-attended build stream yesterday (Wednesdays 11am ET on Twitch and YouTube) which has, unfortunately, put my brain in Numbers mode.
As I’ve mentioned before, going into 2023 I anticipated that this was going to be a slow year sales-wise as the worsening economy means less spending on frivolities like puppets. So I decided that as I can weather some storms, the best way to think about this year isn’t to worry about sales numbers, but try and do outreach to get more people aware of all the things we do at Operation: Puppet.
So far, it seems like it’s working out. There are definitely more regulars in the streams, the Discord is livelier than ever, the podcast has a core group of listeners (many of which are now in possession of some quite attractive coffee mugs), and I now have more followers on Mastodon than I ever had on the birdsite. Plus, and this is the best part, they’re all real people who are nice.
Puppets are and will always remain, a niche. Nothing Operation: Puppet does will ever be big or go viral. Both the medium and the content of my output just isn’t a good fit for what “the Internet” at large seems to want. My brief stint on TikTok ended in frustration, and my style of humour is dry and largely outdated.
And all of that is okay. Moving out of the corporate-controlled distribution channels and into more human-driven ones has shown that the Internet, just like the population in general, is full of diverse people with tons of different tastes and backgrounds. The mono-culture that the “viral” mindset creates is a false narrative that leaves behind whole swathes of people.
Puppets have always been a vehicle for outcasts, misfits and weirdos. And they should be. They represent abstractions and caricatures, turning a fun-house mirror on reality itself. Mainstream culture will always balk at that and recoil as it usually reveals truths that are too taxing to contemplate.
But not for everyone. Some of us have learned, sometimes through trial by fire (or stone. Get it?) to embrace our inner weird. If there is any sense in the world, it’s not going to be found in the seething masses. You need to look outward to the fringes, to the interface between the possible and unlikely, and find where it really gets weird.
And that’s where we are with Operation: Puppet. I’m proud of the welcoming, friendly and wonderfully diverse group of folks that share this space. It’s not big, and never will be, but it’s worth lies in the people in it, not in the numbers it generates.
Speaking of numbers, time for the first coffee of the day.