It’s quite interesting that the most creative people in our country are more than likely standing behind a cash register. The difficulty to make it in the arts world is so profound that I believe football players have a higher chance of making it to the NFL than an author ever has of making money off of one of their novels. Due to this challenge, our idea-makers, the creatives of this world, are forced to make ends meet in other ways. Either by giving up their passion and going into the corporate world, or working a simple day job so that they can focus on their dreams.

 In the United States, we have differed from the righteous path of appreciation for the arts. Recently, I traveled to London. I went to three different museums, an arts club, and a play in one week! Along with this, only one of these places actually charged me any money. I paid ten dollars to visit all three of their exhibits. Can you picture what you can purchase with ten dollars in the states? For me, I’m looking at a red Gatorade and a Payday Bar. Yet I managed to travel back in time, not once, not twice, but three times, for ten dollars! Even if our country supported the arts similarly to Europe, a majority of the organizations would be looking for a cash grab rather than holding onto a beautiful and diverse history. Our society has become blinded by greed and forgotten about a community that is already rich, the arts.

 I believe that this needs to change. Tiktokers and content ‘influencers’ have adjusted to the same routines, with the same hairstyles, and the same inflated egos. These greed-driven clones aren’t nearly as authentic as Picasso’s fingernail, which upsets me to the fullest. In a world where camouflaging to fit in is a normality, it is a necessity that unique individuals arise and produce genuine pieces of work. This is why I have invented a solution to break the mold that our country so desperately clings to.

The real enemy of the arts is social media. It has sucked the soul out of content creation and derived truly creative individuals of their talents. All of the highly popular ‘influencers’ promote each other. This makes it impossible for the playing field to be even. If there was no social media at all, then everyone would be forced to create with the intention of it being revolutionary because there would be no pre-created creation to copy. What I am trying to communicate is that we should ban social media. Ban social media! All of it! Tikok! Snapchat! Instagram! I guess we could keep facebook, cause it’s made for anyone going through a midlife crisis or for parents to post awful photos of their children. Actually on that note, ban it! You may be asking yourself, “Is that even possible?”, “You can’t just ban things, can you?”, “Who are you? Mussolini?”. I’ll answer all of these questions with a resounding yes. Wait, wait, wait! Only the first two. It is possible to ban certain applications through a voting process. I know that there is already a ban being processed on Tiktok, thank God, and the other applications will follow suit if there is a movement behind them pushing them off a cliff. The arts community will be the ones to push them off! Wow, I am making this sound really bad. Meh, who cares, it’s not like their real people. 

The art community is expansive and multicultural. These traits put fear into capitalists and suit-wearing douchebags because we’re not something they can manipulate in the stock market. We’re people with ideas, big ones at that. In our country it’s dangerous to have ideas, to have a voice, and to speak about the unspoken, but that’s just what we do because we care. We give a damn and if everyone else who gave a damn about art voted to ban the platforms that bring it down, then the government will have no choice but to shut up and listen.