Stop it — stop falling prey to influencer courses that teach you how to grow your brand & build your audience & churn out content in your wheelhouse (what the fuck even is that word).
You’re not stupid, you’re better than this inglorious steaming dump of shite.
We joke about algorithm this & algorithm that & now we’re at the point where we literally talk directly to the fucking Algorithm asking it to lead us to so-called like-minded people as though we were blind beggars in a glittering empire roaming the golden streets with our hungry bellies & broken hearts. They’ve brought us to our knees & it’s exactly where they want us, so they can stuff the giant dick that is AI slop down our throats & fuck us blue till kingdom come.
& if for a hot second you think that because you have a bunch of followers & therefore have some ownership & agency over your audience then let me tell you — you’re being fucked harder than the rest of us1.
Go to any influencer — & by this I mean literally ANY one with over 10K followers — account (any one that’s left that isn’t hinged on vomited up robotic brave-new-world- bullshit) & see how they are forced to post, day in day fucking out, the SAME EXACT CRAP TORPEDOED OUTTA THEIR ASS.
They might have started innocently enough to share their art. Maybe they took a photo of something they looked cute in & posted that. Maybe they fired off a little tweet or a posted about their plants or kids or baking. & now? If they deviate even slightly from that line, guess what? PUNISHMENT! CONDEMNATION! RAIN OF HELLFIRE.
Or, well…low engagement. But the thing is, at this point, for so many people — that’s what it feels like. Which is sad. But also, I get it. We’ve been funneled into the attention economy & realized that even though most things are free, the true cost is that very ethereal uncapturable other part of us…it’s not our personal info, not just that, it’s our time which is made of up of our life made up of our actions that come from that essential unique self beyond any of this drivel. & that’s what’s being commodified & torn to shreds here. & we’re stuck, like good little boys & girls, with our hands out & pants down, whipped into shape. The shape of an amorphous singular blob.
Sure, maybe within that blob are little units of supposed individuality. But you must only find them there. Want to organize a protest & show how much you care abut the burning world? Find your gang here, spot your activist niche, market your martyrdom! Want to learn how to cook? Come on over, that’s in this part of the blob, full of flower sprinkles & cute kids or dogs with their faces covered in cake. Yum. Want to rage about how women suck? Come, come, we got a little blobby corner for that. Want to rage about how men can go fuck themselves? Shout about that here. Hate gay people? Come on over, sit down beside daddy. Sick of the cis hets — eviscerate them over here. & do it all with a tote bag with your favorite quote or a dropshipped t-shirt with a wacky cartoon animal doing something human. In the end, that’ll be the most human thing about you.
I don’t know what to fucking do. I want to cry. I want to go outside. I want to tell you to do the same thing. If you’re a creator or an artist starting out or who has already started, I want to warn you — please, don’t listen to them. Don’t enter the blob. Don’t pick a lane, don’t stay in line, don’t get herded off into that gooey all-consuming blob. You are YOU, no one else is YOU. SORRY if that sounds like shit, I don’t fucking care, it’s the truest thing there is.
Don’t pick a niche. Write about whatever the hell you want. Make art. Knit fucking socks. I don’t care, BE YOUR CONFUSING COMPLICATED SELF, MOTHERFUCKER.
Substack is also social media, but so far, it feels a little less insane. Yes, they’ve got the reels tab now, but so far I’ve mainly seen people reading poems or one dude making a wooden duck. It probably won’t stay like that. Most definitely, this platform will burn too.
Soon enough, you’ll get tons of AI accounts here manned by some evil dude in a baseball cap & a case of cheap beer. So, yea, find your people, but CONNECT with them beyond the algorithm.
Try to crawl back to what the internet was supposed to be.
Make time to meet people in person. Make friends with the people who love your art & your words. Go for hikes. Start a book club at your local library. Talk to living breathing humans. & for god’s sake: don’t buy courses that promise to help you go viral. Stop trying to go viral. Don’t be a catalyst for the disease they’ve already spread.
I say all this to myself as much as to anyone.
In the words of one of my favorite poets2, Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
does that mean I’m including myself in this count — well YEAH ofc, that’s why I’m so pissed to begin with!
& yes I know it’s about something else on the surface but great poems are such their words can be the theme music to more than the intended situation)
I hear you on this. I hate these social media companies y their owners.
I barely do social media- don’t have the physical or cognitive energy so in a way being sick & disabled simplifies this part of my life.
As a disabled person I ask writers to think about not using disability metaphors like this: “as though we were blind beggars..”
Writers, who are not disabled often use them with negative connotations & but disabled people don’t see their disabilities in that way. It is their life.
By chasing freedom we become the commodity.
Thanks for the reminder, when you make your sole purpose trying to grow on a platform like this you probably need it… Now, time to go check on my engagement metrics.