How to talk about your creative work at a party

How to talk about your creative work at a partysubstack.com
How to talk about your creative work at a party
by mishaderidder.eth13093 🥝 • 2y
AI summary of the linked article

The article, from the Metalabel newsletter, argues that creative people can make a party introduction more memorable by giving a short, structured context: an establishing statement, specific details, and what is new or unusual about the project. The author describes a failed first conversation at a party, where a bare description of Metalabel as "a new space to release and collective creative work" ended the exchange, and a second conversation with a famous acquaintance, where adding those three elements led to interest and a plan to talk again. The piece also offers sample introductions for a documentary filmmaker, a painter and a designer, and it closes with a newsletter featuring the artist Rui Nakamura's CROQUIS art book, priced at $25 in an edition of 20.

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Lol this hits home more than expected.

I actually know for myself that what I do is pretty cool and I feel like if people would understand it in its entirety, then they could also see it as cool, but when I introduce myself to normies, I actually go in with the most common denominator answer possible „I run a tech news website.“ If they then ask me more specific questions I quickly start feeling awkward, especially when they ask me about „what kind of news?“ etc.

I‘ve said this in other places too, but I find it so awkward nowadays to stand by crypto with all the scammers in the space, so that I avoid associating with the field altogether. If someone gets to know me better, salami tactic style, I will, more and more, admit what I do and what my position is. But no fucking way Am I introducing myself with „I work in crypto“ straight away. It‘s social harakiri. The odds of doing that are that the opposite thinks with a 50% chance that I‘m some sort of lying sociopath who‘s scamming people online.

I said this in the TG too, but this is why I learned to hate degen culture. Not only does it free ride on the good faith of technically sophisticated projects, it also fucks with all of our real world reputation. Not good.
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I agree with the author that adding context to the thing you do is important, and his second pitch is better. But I still would have no idea what Metalabel is.

“Metalabel is a new space for releasing and collective creative work.”

What kind of space? Is it a website or a physical gallery?

“We’ve made a curated space where you can release work on your own or with other people."

What does curated mean? Who is the curator - your employees or the community?

"So far people are using it to sell zines, art, and music.”

So is it an indie project or something big?

“I even released an essay as a limited edition zip file. On every release you can automatically split earnings between collaborators too.”

Not sure if normies still know what's the zip file. Plus the file format is irrelevant here.

This is how I would describe it:

"Metalabel is an app where people can share their digital creative work and let people collect it, just like they collect vinyl records, old books or paintings"

"Our editors pick the best art, music, and zines, and their authors make money by selling limited editions of their work. So far they made over $1M."

"I even released my essay there, and some people collected my work. The cool thing is that if you do a collab with other artists, you can automatically split earnings. So if we recorded a song together at this party, the money would flow to us, 50/50"

(not sure if I'm right about the editors and revenue but it's just for illustrative purposes, plus I spent like 2 min on that)
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