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The World Building Thesis by Arlin & Crea Tyler

The World Building Thesis by Arlin & Crea Tyler

For artists only

Arlin Moore
March 01, 2024

Welcome to the 8AM news. Arlin here.

In today’s newsletter, we will go over:

The “Free The Artist” Movement
Top Links of the Week
“World Building”

The Free The Artist Movement

You ever just have some phrase or few words that just stick out and keep recurring in your mind and life?

For me, the last few months, one of those phrases has been:

“Free the artist”

More as a mission and a driving focus than anything else.

I think for a long time, artists have been taken advantage of.

I’ve personally been taken advantage of, copied, used & abused. Misled into thinking someone knows so much about business that I need them.

Then they just mooch off of what i built hiding behind contracts and complicated business terms.

And I’ve seen it happen to my friends, and some of the great artists of our time.

I was speaking to one of my most successful artist friends just yesterday about this. He told me about how one time this guy *literally tried to steal his entire art process, brand and customer base, and start trying to do the same exact thing.

I’ve seen the same happen with my friend Sol Brah. The amount of Sol Brah copycats on the internet is insane.

And more recently, we’ve been seeing it with Kanye West and Adidas. Adidas is literally selling “Yeezy’s” even though Kanye is not with Adidas anymore.

It’s insane.

Lil Dicky more recently has been making some content about how the music industry is being taken over by free independent artist in his music video “Ha Ha Ha”.

People in suits and uniform are after Dicky throughout the video and he keeps escaping. Toward the end he ascends upward into the sky in a majestic, saint like posture. This, to me, was a metaphor for how no matter how hard people try to hold down, and milk the artist of their creativity, and the light they hold within as the artist is creating from an unlimited source, the artist will always win.

I grew up with 2 artist parents. The age old trope of being a “starving artist” was a popular saying in my household growing up.

But something about that notion just didn’t sit right with me, and still doesn’t today.

Because look around.

The artists are the ones that truly shape and change and envision the world, different than how it was before.

An artist is someone who is so good at their craft that the act of doing their art changes the world.

Steve Jobs / Jonny Ive is an artist who changed the world with his vision for a computer company. Apple’s vision to this day is to create products for people who want to change the world.

Lebron James is an artist with a basketball. He’s changed the world just by playing the game at the highest level of mastery.

Virgil Abloh changed the world of fashion forever with Off—White and with his creative direction at Louis Vuitton.

Walt Disney was certainly an artist. Still changing lives with disney land, world, and all the productions that emerge from his creation.

JK Rowling a writer, artist, JK Rowling envisioned the realm of harry potter with stunning detail and realism. The story entertained and inspired people for generations to come.

All of the above people were multi multi millionaire’s. Four of the five, billionaires.

So why should artists be ‘starving’?

The only thing in my eyes that makes an artist starving, is when they have negative beliefs around money. Once an artist reframes and patches up their relationship to money, the art, if true, should attract the right buyers or funds or people necessary to support their work.

I aim to do more in the coming months to support the artists out there.

“World Building”

One month ago, my friend Crea Tyler and I began writing a thesis.

If you don’t know Crea Tyler, he’s an important figure in modern day social media & art and i’d like to start with some background.

In 2016, it wasn’t a common thing to ‘make money on the internet’. There was a small handfull of 18-30 year old dudes who knew about it. But it was an underground cult.

There was no tik tok, no instagram reels.

Only YouTube really.

And even YouTube was still a pretty new platform. The biggest YouTubers were david dobrik and casey neistat.

And in 2016, Crea Tyler released a video that went crazy viral called “The College Dropout.

This video blew up like crazy, depicting the life of a ‘college dropout’ who went on to travel and make content and make money online instead of taking boring business classes and following the traditional route. It inspired millions of young men and women I would imagine, to go and figure out how to make money online.

Crea Tyler created the vision, the aesthetic, the dream.

And one of those kids who was inspired to ‘figure it out’ and ‘make it’ out in LA, was me.

The video is archived off Tyler’s channel, along with most of the other videos that inspired me originally. But I was able to find it on this website below if you’re curious.

College Dropout by Crea Tyler - video Dailymotion

I dropped out of college so i wouldnt be a slave to the system. I am happier than ever now, living the way i want to (on my own terms), so I want to document every day + share with the world in my own creative way.

www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ftf8k

The dopest crea tyler video ever is this one which i had to scour internet for here.

And 2 years ago, I became friends with Tyler. We began texting back and forth, and I guess he had seen my come up on YouTube as well and was likewise an admirer of my work.

We discussed working on ‘something’ together in the future.

And after couple years of travel, once I moved to LA and settled down…

We linked up, and decided to start really getting after it.

The topic that kept coming up was this idea of world building, vs personal branding. When me and tyler first started posting on the internet, 8 years ago, it was a different world.

It was more pure. Less convoluted, less noisy.

As artists at heart, it was easy for us to put our work into the world and for the work to be seen.

But now, as business minded people look to social media as just another marketing channel to get clients rather than a place to share their creations, it has taken on a different form and become a beast. A beast of money.

The algorithms are venomous.

The affect this has on the brain of the unprepared artist is not good.

Imagine you walked into an art gallery, a museum.

And instead of curated works from fine artists carefully placed on the walls, there was basically a hodgepodge of distracting, loud advertisements, AND people running around trying to sell you shit and not only that, but they’re all trying to sell you the SAME shit.

That’s the state of social media today.

- Arlin

So, with this state of the social media landscape today… how do real, legit artists create space around their work to shut out the noise, stand out & play a different game?

Enter, the World Builder thesis by Arlin and Crea Tyler.

The “World Builder” Thesis

Crea & I spent the last month writing this thesis paper.

It’s funny because Tyler’s OG quote, “I can’t remember the last time I attended classes… I just feel like college isn’t the right choice for me right now…” is now basically a reverse

Crea Tyler and Arlin today: “I can’t remember the last time I posted content… I just feel like, being an influencer isn’t the right choice for me right now… I’m gonna go work on my thesis paper.”

So yeah, we legit write a 31 page thesis paper.

We’ve been up late working on it last several weeks almost every night.

And it’s good.

Really good.

tyler in the lab

So good, we’re not even sure we want to share it with the world to be completely honest.

We wrote this for ourselves. We want to use it for ourselves first.

But maybe not.

We want to hear from you and see where you’re at, how all of this resonates with you, and your responses will factor in as to whether or not we’ll decide to release it to the public or not.

If you’d like to apply to read the World Builder thesis, you can go here to apply. The password is “w0rld”.

That is all,

Arlin

How I can Help

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