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What rat pits teach creators about addictive content · Your Mic

• 0:00
  Victorian London had dog versus rat pits.
• 0:03
  A crowd would bet on how quickly a dog could kill hundreds of rats.
• 0:09
  Is that gross?
• 0:10
  Of course it is.
• 0:12
  But here is the creator lesson, and I'm giving it to you right now.
• 0:15
  Attention is not proof your content is good for people.
• 0:20
  Because if you make content, you need to know the difference between something that is compelling and something that exploits.
• 0:28
  By the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a three-question test to make sure you are not building your audience by turning outrage, humiliation, or somebody else's pain into product.
• 0:41
  Welcome back to Your Mic.
• 0:43
  My name is Freddy Cruz, founder of Speak Podcasting, and this episode is brought to you by the Speak Originals Network, home of shows like Made in House Houston and the House of Debt.
• 0:54
  Today, rap hits, bare-knuckle prize fighting, and the uncomfortable reason crowds gather around violence.
• 1:03
  Then, what all of that means for your show, your social media content, and the attention you are asking people to give you.
• 1:11
  Lesson number one, a crowd does not equal consent and it certainly does not equal value, at least not all the time.
• 1:20
  Rat baiting, it was real.
• 1:23
  In 19th century England, dogs were put into pits with rats.
• 1:28
  The crowds gambled and people timed the killing.
• 1:32
  It was not always hidden away from some criminal underworld.
• 1:35
  Sometimes it happened in pubs and organized venues.
• 1:39
  This was called entertainment.
• 1:42
  And that is the first lesson.
• 1:44
  Normal is not the same as good.
• 1:48
  Popular is definitely not the same as valuable.
• 1:54
  For creators, this matters because the internet can reward almost anything if it creates enough reaction.
• 2:01
  A public fight between two creators, attention.
• 2:05
  A clip that humiliates somebody, attention.
• 2:08
  A title that makes a listener panic about their career, attention.
• 2:13
  A guest's trauma sliced into 60 seconds of OMG content, attention.
• 2:18
  terrible attention.
• 2:20
  You can get views from content that makes people worse.
• 2:22
  You can get comments from content that gives nobody anything except cortisol.
• 2:28
  So stop using performance as your only evidence.
• 2:34
  Instead, a better question is to ask if somebody after, you know, after somebody consumes this, are they clearer, more capable, more informed, or more connected?
• 2:45
  Because if the answer is no,
• 2:48
  but the clip performs like crazy, you may have had made rat pit content, but with a better camera.
• 2:57
  Lesson two is risk is part of the product.
• 3:02
  Bare-knuckle prize fighting.
• 3:04
  It was another major spectacle.
• 3:06
  Long fights, gambling, crowds, men taking punishing hits until one could not continue.
• 3:13
  Think Fight Club, but, you know, a long time ago and without Ed Norton and Brad Pitt.
• 3:20
  Today, we've got rules, regulation, athletic skill, consent, and medical oversight in many combat sports.
• 3:29
  And that distinction matters.
• 3:31
  But let's not lie to ourselves here.
• 3:33
  Danger is still part of what brings people in.
• 3:37
  The same is true in content.
• 3:40
  Sometimes the quote-unquote danger is not physical.
• 3:44
  It's reputational, emotional, and social.
• 3:50
  The creator who tells a story that burns a bridge.
• 3:53
  The business owner who publicly drags an employee.
• 3:57
  The host who gives a guest just enough runway to say something devastating then turns it into a thumbnail.
• 4:05
  Risk makes people watch.
• 4:07
  Your responsibility is deciding whether that risk serves the story or simply serves the metric.
• 4:15
  A good podcast can be provocative.
• 4:17
  It absolutely can.
• 4:20
  It can be raw.
• 4:21
  It can have teeth.
• 4:23
  But if every single episode needs somebody to bleed for it to work, well, you're not building a show.
• 4:33
  That's what we would call a spectacle.
• 4:35
  Lesson three.
• 4:37
  Use this three-question framework.
• 4:40
  Before publishing a high-conflict or emotionally-charged episode, ask yourself, one, one,
• 4:47
  Is the person at the center of this story a human being or a prop?
• 4:53
  2.
• 4:54
  Would this still be worth publishing if it got half the views?
• 5:00
  3.
• 5:01
  Can I explain the benefit to the listener without mentioning the drama?
• 5:05
  4.
• 5:07
  Now, that does not mean never cover ugly things.
• 5:10
  It means do not make ugly things the point when you can make meaning the point.
• 5:17
  In summary, the Victorians had rat pits and prize rings.
• 5:20
  We have viral clips, outrage cycles, and analytics dashboards.
• 5:25
  Different technology.
• 5:26
  Same old question.
• 5:29
  What are you willing to turn into entertainment?
• 5:32
  Make content that earns attention, but does not need to feed on people to keep it.
• 5:37
  If your show is not anything remotely close to what we just talked about, cool.
• 5:43
  But if you know somebody who's got a show like this, if you know somebody who's got a spectacle, not a podcast, send this episode to that person.
• 5:52
  And thank you so much for listening.