How a Commercial Success Can be an Artistic and a Moral Travesty

And how Ayodeji Awosika’s writing advice traps new writers with a bait-and-switch tactic

Ayodeji Awosika is a self-described “writing guru” with roughly a hundred thousand followers on Medium. But the advice he offers uses a bait-and-switch tactic, and reflecting on that tactic can illuminate how his market works.

Ordinarily, sorting through a writer’s submission guidelines and business tactics would be none of my business, but I’ve critiqued the writing standards of publications such as The Startup, The Ascent, and Writers’ Blokke, and of individuals like Zulie Rane, Nicolas Cole, and Awosika. And I’ve done so because you can learn a lot about the neoliberal conditions of the creator economy from how up-front the top propagandists are in presenting their methods and expectations.

Just think of it: often, to know what someone really thinks you’ll have to read the tea leaves because some of her plans might be secret, or maybe she’s normally engaged in mere small talk. But a publication, for instance, spells out its criteria in its submission guidelines — which is handy if you want to understand exactly what you’re dealing with. It’s as though someone were walking around with an “About” page written on her forehead.

And it’s worthwhile to understand how the leaders of an industry think since they set the agenda.

So, that’s why I’m sticking my nose in Awosika’s business. It has nothing to do with Awosika as an individual. For all I know, he’s a lovely man. His personal life — about which I know next to nothing — really is none of my business, but his impact on Medium and his selling of a certain conception of writing are matters of public record. I’m a writer too, and I despise the mistaking of sophistry for thought, and of advertising or propaganda for artistic or intellectual commentary.

The types of writing

Awosika talks a lot about “writing” in general. In an article offering twenty tips “to improve your writing,” for example, he says, “It’s okay to suck at writing. You’re not supposed to be good at it right away. Improving your writing skills takes years and it’s a never-ending process.”

But unless Awosika is drawing from the syntax textbooks you’d use if you were teaching English as a second language, it’s vacuous to speak of “writing” in such general terms. There are the basic mechanics of stringing words together to form proper sentences and paragraphs, but otherwise there are only different types of writing, and you may excel in one type but not in another.

We’ll see in a moment the type of writing that Awosika promotes, but the point for now is that he sets up a bait-and-switch operation by talking so loosely about being a “writing guru” with tips on how not to “suck” in general at “writing.” Perhaps he excels in various genres, but the fact is that what he promotes on Medium is one type of writing, namely the kind that maximizes its chances of succeeding commercially on a platform like Medium.

As I explain elsewhere, that kind of writing caters largely to one audience, to young, White, college-educated, liberal professionals. Other outlets like The New York Times and Fox News have very different audiences with incompatible expectations on what counts as good writing. Again, perhaps in his workshops Awosika can tell you how to succeed as a writer in any market, but even that would be only a narrow business venture. Knowing how to make money from writing is a very different skill from knowing how to pursue writing for intellectual or artistic purposes.

See, further, how open-minded Awosika makes his project seem when he says, “Most writers don’t have the stones to say what they really mean, so I filled that void. Practice long enough and you’ll find the weak spots and voids you can fill.”

He makes it sound as though he succeeded on Medium because he tells it like it is, which is nonsense. Awosika succeeded because he was an early adopter of the platform (starting in 2015), and because he settled on niches that indirectly promote the platform, such as the production of uplifting propaganda for the creator economy and of advice on how to write well on Medium’s terms.

That meta-genre of learning how to write was bound to become very popular once Medium started paying its writers, and this genre now draws hacks from the four corners of the globe. Just imagine what Medium would look like, though, if everyone were writing solely on how to write. In that case there would be no first-order writing — on the news, politics, business, science, technology, people, culture, or intellectual subjects like philosophy and religion. The how-to genre is parasitic on those primary subjects.

However, the point is that, contrary to what Awosika says, this isn’t a “void” but a full-blown, albeit lamentable genre because Medium pays its writers, which naturally attracts entrepreneurs and charlatans claiming to be able to tell how you can strike it rich in that marketplace.

A bait-and-switch trap

His “20 Tips” article mostly presents useful advice on how to be a savvy freelance writer on a platform like Medium. But one of his sections is highly revealing. It begins with the subheading “Read Books on Copywriting and Persuasion.” Awosika points out that

Copywriting uses words to sell products. The best copywriters spend the bulk of their time researching their audience first before they pen a word.

Studying copywriting and persuasion teaches you how people think.

Once you know what people want, what they’re afraid of, what frustrates them, what they hope to become, etc, it’s much easier to communicate with them.

Now, this is where the bait is switched out for something more sinister, and the trap is sprung. The kind of writing Awosika has in mind is evidently copywriting, which is to say advertising. Notice that he doesn’t denigrate copywriting. He’s not saying that although advertising is deplorable, there are some neat tips and tricks you can adapt from that insidious genre. Awosika understands that not all writing is advertising, but he whitewashes the act of selling something, by saying this act is only a matter of “communicating” with folks based on knowledge of how they “think.”

That may be how advertisers would advertise their craft, or how the practice of selling would be sold, but it’s not the plain fact of the matter. So here Awosika isn’t telling it like it is after all. He’s hiding something, and what he’s hiding is obvious: advertisements are full of lies, distortions, exaggerations, fallacies, and manipulations. Advertisers may indeed research how people think, just as big tech companies investigate how the brain works, because advertisers mean to exploit people’s fears and desires to sell them products they don’t need, while big tech companies mean to hack the brain to addict their customers to apps.

Lucrative advertising versus intellectually respectable content

We can also infer the kind of writing Awosika favours not just by looking at his oeuvre, but by noting the kind of writing he doesn’t like, and he’s forthright about the latter. He says:

I’ve seen writers who practice for years but don’t actually get any better. They don’t get better because, again, they’re self-centered.

Usually, they’re the type to write a bunch of boring, naval-gazing, insignificant, and totally uninteresting stories about their own lives.

Or they just write about topics nobody wants to read about. Or they have a bizarre writing style that’s not enjoyable to read.

Strangely, they have a huge blindspot and never consider that they, in fact, might be the problem. Remember, it’s never the audience’s fault.

More detail about these “self-centered” writers can be gleaned from this passage of Awosika’s article:

I learned how to blog first, so now I can write complex essays, as well as personal stories that don’t suck and people actually read.

I can go toe to toe with any writer out there. Including MFA grads.

Here’s the dirty little secret about the pretentious writer types. They’re broke and no one reads their shit.

It makes them bitter to see ‘bloggers’ like Mark Manson sell 3 million copies of his book.

Fuck em. Learn how to write for an audience, get paid, and get better at the same time.

Now, then, we discover that Awosika is rather resentful of “pretentious,” “broke” writers who have little in the way of an audience. We know he’s resentful because he relishes their failure, revealing the depth of his anger by saying, “Fuck ‘em.” And it’s clear why he’d resent them since they’re likely to think of Awosika as a hack. Indeed, I could be regarded as one such writer, and I’ve shown in some depth why Awosika’s impact on places like Medium is detrimental.

Awosika thinks starving-artist writers are bitter because low-brow self-help authors are making fortunes, and indeed that’s plausible. But self-help writers like Awosika might be bitter, too, because they have no defense against the charge that they’re hacks and sell-outs who are helping to retard human progress by infantilizing consumers, flattering them with platitudes, and covering up the downside of neoliberalism.

In any case, by getting carried away with this emotional monologue, Awosika inadvertently reveals his true agenda. Here are the key lines:

• it’s never the audience’s fault
• …the pretentious writer types. They’re broke and no one reads their shit.
• Learn how to write for an audience, get paid, and get better at the same time.

Just ask yourself what kind of person is famous for saying the audience is never wrong. Awosika’s adapting the businessperson’s adage that the customer is always right. So, Awosika’s presupposing the business of selling your writing, which again is very different from the skillset you’d need to excel as a writer in artistic or in intellectual terms, in mastering ideas and language rather than just customers, competitors, and a big tech platform.

The kind of writing Awosika despises is, of course, the kind that often fails utterly in business terms, the kind that doesn’t sell well or that few people prefer to read. By implication, then, the kind of writing Awosika promotes is the kind that caters to an audience (such as Medium’s neoliberal crowd), and that’s most likely to pay off for the writer in commercial terms. Awosika adds vaguely that he expects such a writer will “get better at the same time,” but that’s neither here nor there for him. After all, Awosika ignores the potential conflict between business and artistic/intellectual standards.

Don’t wake the baby!

I’ll demonstrate this conflict for you by quoting from Awosika’s submission guidelines for his newly minted Medium publication Practice in Public. There he includes one “topic caveat”:

We will not accept submissions that we believe are geared toward political outrage or excessive negativity.

Awosika’s hardly alone in that respect. As I show elsewhere, Mind Café is similarly ill-disposed towards thought-provoking criticisms on “sensitive topics” like politics or religion or that are “negative” in bashing writers on Medium.

From a business standpoint, these restrictions make sense. If you’ve identified an audience and you’re trying to sell your customers something, you don’t want to alienate them by going off-brand. Judging from the success of self-help publications on Medium and considering the neoliberal context of the creator economy (an economy driven by big tech companies), a Medium writer who’s focussed on selling her work will be grateful for this advice: don’t alienate your potential readers who are mainly professional liberal consumers looking to amuse themselves to add to their happy lives in between visits to Tiktok, Instagram, and Pornhub.

The kind of “negativity” that’s forbidden on business grounds would be the kind that questions the assumptions of big tech companies, the creator economy, the happiness industry, the self-help genre, consumerism, and neoliberalism. Rock the boat in that fashion and your work won’t likely sell well in a marketplace that presupposes the merit of those systems and ideologies.

But that has nothing to do with excellence in non-business terms. An article that harshly criticizes these industries can be perfectly admirable on, say, scientific, philosophical, aesthetic, satirical, or moral grounds. The fact that certain audiences ignore such negative pieces has no bearing on whether those articles succeed in ways that aren’t accounted for in economic terms.

Of course, a neoliberal audience won’t prefer to confront content that’s hostile to its way of life. Likewise, speaking truth to power is seldom profitable.

The limits of laissez-faire Philistinism

But let’s be clear on the limitations of Awosika’s conflation of advertising, neoliberal propaganda, and writing in general. Not so long ago, the American elites were making a fortune by selling Africans as enslaved persons. Does the fact that the market made the slaveholders rich mean no one should have questioned that practice by stepping outside the economic framework, and by fighting a war over the matter and amending the Constitution to prohibit slavery? Obviously not.

Or take the way big tech companies make their apps addictive, by mastering the copywriter’s dark art of sophistry, of exploiting people’s cognitive weaknesses to virtually enslave them, to addict them, in this case, to their smartphones and to turn them into pampered, antisocial babies. Does the fact that there’s currently a market for this practice in which some companies thrive mean the business is unobjectionable on other grounds, be they sociological, religious, or moral?

You’d think there would be no such independent grounds only if you were a neoliberal who assumes that laissez-faire business standards subsume all others since everything can theoretically be bought or sold.

Indeed, the self-improvement industry operates on that neoliberal presumption, that happiness is practically quantifiable or is at least achievable as a product of the right personal training. Again, self-help writing happens to excel on a platform like Medium because of the interests of Medium’s audience and the conditions of the creator economy which Medium serves. The rural, elderly, Fox News audience, by contrast, would scoff at the self-help enterprise, deeming it so much elitist, godless puffery.

By seeking to bury philosophical content, the kind that questions even the assumptions that make people happy and that keep the peace in society, or the kind that’s likely to “outrage” a complacent neoliberal crowd of consumers, Awosika shows that he’s operating mainly from a business standpoint. The kind of writing he means to promote may indeed be the easiest to sell to that audience. Still, that kind of writing is incompatible with the intellectually respectable sort that might be dedicated to questioning those very assumptions, in an uncompromising search for knowledge and progress.

Awosika denigrates the starving artist, yet history is replete with examples of artists who died penniless, their works being overlooked in their time, but who were later hailed as geniuses. Indeed, Christianity has preserved at least the outlines of a countercultural ideal, by worshipping one such starving artist or “prophet.” A genuine artist may even be obliged to drop out of society to pursue her internal vision or her muse’s promptings.

Who says art ought to sell well in the first place? Isn’t art, like prophesy, supposed to hold us to a higher standard, to satirize the powers that be for disgracing themselves and for betraying the human potential for living up to a worthy ideal? Doesn’t great art criticize social norms that go off the rails? Aren’t Awosika’s presuppositions and practices — namely neoliberal propaganda, sophistry, manipulative advertising, and self-help balderdash — dubious in non-commercial terms?

Obviously, he’s entitled to set up his writing business as he sees fit. But he can’t obscure forever the contrast between hackery and genuine art or deep reflection, that is, between writing that’s meant mainly to sell well and that’s even equivalent to a form of sophistical advertising (as in the case of the self-help genre), and writing that’s meant to uncover the truth, including truth that disturbs our selfish, infantile glee and our sleepwalking through a realm of illusions.

Only for so long can charlatans, sophists, and wokesters in the self-help con escape criticism by hiding behind the happiness industry that bans “negativity.” Eventually, babies must grow up and depart their playpens to face the wider world’s indifference to their welfare.

A sad coda

I’d like to close with a coda to report on what happened after I published my last, thorough repudiation of Awosika’s practices. On the very same day, he blocked me on Medium, which means he banned me from reading his content. I was surprised it took him so long after he became aware of my earlier criticism of his role on Medium, since positive-thinking types are fragile creatures. My experience with similar sophists, such as Zulie Rane and Alberto Garcia, is that they block critics without delay. After all, they’re in it to make money, not to exchange ideas in an intellectually respectable manner. And incisive criticism of your views can be bad for your business.

But Awosika did the two-step of blocking me and on the same day posting what looks like an indirect, brief, and wholly inadequate reply. He doesn’t refer to me or to my objections in his article, called “The 1 Reason Most People Fail At Becoming Content Creators.” But he picks up on some language I used in my lengthy criticism, especially my talk of “sell-out” content creators and my contrast between business and “artistic” concerns. At one point he speaks of “art” in scare quotes, which doubles as a quotation from my article.

Possibly I’m mistaken and this is just a coincidence. Regardless, once again Awosika inadvertently gives away his game by monologuing, so it’s worth responding to some of the telltale lines from that possible reply to me. I will say, though, that if that short article was meant to respond to my comprehensive take-down of his chicanery, that would support my observation that Awosika’s quite the hack.

What kind of thinker or writer would read a host of criticisms of his or her work, ban the critic from reading any more of it, and nevertheless post a response that’s only indirect and obviously inadequate? Who would this writer be fooling?

Commerce, art, and philosophical reflection

Anyway, Awosika says that the main reason writers fail to make a fulltime living from their craft is that instead of following “a simple, reliable, and repeatable process for creating,” they “think that content is ‘art’ that must only be done when you feel inspired or that subjecting yourself to a routine and using strategies makes you a sell-out.”

And he gives three elaborations:

Reason #1: Content creators are hard-headed. They’ll ignore advice from people who are already doing what they want to do. Just listen

Reason #2: They take their work too seriously, thinking that the world is waiting for their landmark creation when nobody cares.

Reason #3: They’re arrogant and think they’re above listening to what the market, and consumers, think about their content.

The first “reason” picks up on a point I made in my last article on him, which has to do with Awosika’s complaint that literally no new writer has ever taken his writing advice when he’s reached out to offer it to him or to her personally. All Awosika wants is for writers to listen to him. He’s the goose that’s laying golden eggs, selflessly revealing all the secrets of the kingdom. Like Jesus of Nazareth, he’s only trying to help humanity, yet still he ends up crucified.

Pity the saintly Awosika, then, who’s done nothing wrong and has only the noblest of intentions — of confusing laissez-faire business success with art and with intellectualism, of selling his sophistry as a writing coach, and of protecting neoliberalism, consumerism, the big tech social media business model, and the self-help and happiness industries, all of which are arguably disastrous.

The second “reason” is highly revealing. Again, there’s the contrast between the hack who rattles off pablum with no thought of elevating the discourse, and the genuine artist who strives for perfection because he or she works from passion, being enraptured by what great writing or art of any kind can mean.

And should artists cease striving for perfection because the rest of the world is content with mediocrity? Doesn’t the artist, rather, withdraw from Plato’s cave, like any spiritually or existentially substantive person, to rise above the chatter because he or she glimpses a profound truth that’s hard to capture in any medium? Awosika’s advice to not take your work too seriously because nobody else cares what you’re doing is a recipe for the degradation of all content. He would be on the side of the dehumanizing algorithms and of the social network effects that make for a race to the bottom. (But Awosika’s still saintly, so stop criticizing his writings!)

Granted, if the purpose is to make as much money as possible on a platform like Medium, it would be possible to take your work as a writer too seriously. As I explain elsewhere, this is because the blogosphere competes with even more infantile fare from the likes of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, computer games, and Pornhub. You can click on Medium or just as easily on any other website, so a savvy freelance writer might be inclined to dumb down his or her ideas, to compromise with the lower standards that prevail on social media.

But whether maximizing commercial returns or making a living as a freelance writer ought to be the writer’s purpose is the very question at issue in my contrast between business and artistic/intellectual concerns. So, Awosika would just be begging the question.

His third point is also so revealing to me. He chastises artists and intellectuals for arrogantly assuming they’re above what the market thinks of their work. I demolished that laissez-faire claptrap in my previous article, so I won’t repeat that line of argument here.

I’d just emphasize that Awosika’s misrepresenting the problem. For example, I respond to the vast majority of comments on my Medium articles, and I’ve engaged in dialogues with fellow writers. Indeed, I’ve tried here to engage with Awosika, and he’s the one avoiding the overture. There’s no necessary connection, then, between writing uncompromising content and ignoring what the audience thinks of it.

Evidently, though, this isn’t the kind of “arrogance” Awosika has in mind. Presumably, his point isn’t that these pretentious writers ignore their audience, but that they dare posit non-capitalistic standards of evaluation. Again, he’s just saying that the market’s evaluation of content is the best there is, or at least that it’s foolish to subscribe to some other standards.

What’s more arrogant, however: staying true to your muse and to your inner vision, with no pretentions that the output will have broad appeal, or setting up a business to tell all writers what they should be doing, and saying “fuck” everyone who doesn’t listen, as Awosika said?

I understand very well why certain philosophical content wouldn’t sell well to a neoliberal audience. I’ve explained this dynamic at length in numerous articles. It’s no mystery. The issue I’d raise isn’t that neoliberals aren’t entitled to their laissez-faire, race-to-the-bottom competitions. Of course, certain low-brow contents will rise to the top of social media platforms, driven by big tech agendas and already-infantilized audiences.

No, the problem for Awosika and his ilk is that sophists and neoliberal apologists like him have no defense against philosophical criticisms of their worldview. The point isn’t that there shouldn’t be any capitalistic races to the bottom; rather, the point is that the products of such races are often philosophically condemnable. Whether philosophy will end up changing the world for the better is another matter.

But that’s enough from me about this “writing guru.”

Laufen Sie Ihr Rennen direkt in den Boden.