Content creation: one battle after another

Inspired by watching Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, this personal essay uses the film's critical success and commercial failure as a lens to examine the tension between quality and financial return in content creation. It connects the pressures facing filmmakers to a broader AI slop rush flooding the web with algorithmically optimized content, and notes that social media engagement has been declining since 2022. The piece closes with a philosophical reflection on the balance all creators must strike between artistic integrity and commercial reality.