The impulse to turn the locals forum into – at best – an enhanced “comments section” for Rumble, or – at worst – a Twitter/Tik-Tok doomscroll app, is in keeping with what the rest of the industry is already doing. You can see this on Daily Wire, Crowder, and a bunch of other Rumble creators. This is likely in the short to mid-term, to yield a huge bump in “engagement” and ad revenue.
However, long term, I think it’s a huge mistake. Firstly, because Locals was originally conceived as a sort of “congregation” area for people interested in certain topics, not as a marketing funnel for creators.
The way I put it, it’s the difference between having an “audience” and having “traffic”. “Traffic” is what happens on the expressway. Millions of people zip past your content (and the ads interspersed in it) all day and night, and uptake is very short-attention-span. This is fine, if all you want to do is attract billboard advertisers (like you would see on an actual expressway).
But it’s bad news if you want to cultivate a stable, active COMMUNITY. Which is what an “audience” is. Think of it like sports team fans, or theater-goers. Unlike television or radio, where you scan the dial, and just stop on whatever’s interesting, the sports stadium and the theater are places you have to get up the motivation to GO TO, and hang out there, as an event, at least, but more precisely, as a habit.
Secondly, because we have seen what the “marketing funnel” approach leads to, on sites like X, Tik-Tok, and Facebook. It’s extremely volatile, very vulnerable to economic ups and downs, and tend to push creators into extremely shallow “attention” capturing content, which is likely to drive away any serious audience.
Overall, I think the change is a very discouraging turn of events, and I think it might be worth a mea culpa for being so willing to give the Rumble owners the benefit of the doubt for so long. In the end, it turns out being a pessimist is again the wisest stance.
