(2025-07-29) Zeigler Subgenius Patronage Lessons

Matt Zeigler on Sub-Genius Patronage Lessons. A friend and I were chatting about patronage and the arts.

Can you actually make a living off of making lil descriptions of life in some other format (be it songs, or art, or poetry, or blog posts, or YouTube videos, or…?)

The conversation always goes back to starting small.

The conversation always ends up somewhere around Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fans.

But there’s one other touch point I always think of and rarely say out loud.

It comes from the Church of the SubGenius.

Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond were two Texas friends that bonded over a shared obsession with those crazy pamphlets you (still?!) find in a convenience store

Who made them? Who read them? Who read them and then joined one of these crazy organizations?!
Most importantly - why couldn’t THEY make pamphlets like this too?

if a group like Heaven’s Gate could convince hundreds of people to commit suicide, then surely they could convince, in a way less harmful way, a few thousand people to simply send them a dollar, right?

For my creative friends who want to get paid for their art, take note.

Be weird. The farther from normal you are, the more differentiated you can get comfortable with being, the better. Commodities are the same, but specialty items and especially luxury items know how to stand out.

Know it. Be very aware of your status as weird. Own your weirdness completely. Know exactly what makes you different and lean into it deliberately.

Then, give people a simple way to appreciate you. They made it $1 for more information, but really, the donations were proof-of-concept monetized appreciation

The more direct you make the appreciation, the less you’ll have to worry about middlemen taking a cut.

*This is invaluable advice for smaller scale creators.

If you’re weird and entertaining, people will help fund your weird pursuits.*