I have to stop.
I gave up YouTube for Lent and it's been great so far but I'm rethinking so many things.
I used to have the most followers on Twitter before that whole platform imploded. Like 4000ish people followed me there, not that they were ever particularly engaged with my content. I’m sure about half of them came from those cheesy follow for follow writer hashtag things. I remember asking what flavour chips everyone liked and getting like nearly 2000 followers in one weekend.
I also didn’t write a single word of fiction that weekend because I spent it obsessively refreshing Twitter thinking I was winning somehow. When I left Twitter, I kind of just didn’t care about the grind I went through. I joined Twitter shortly after it launched in 2006. Leaving just felt inevitable. I get a secret joy out of starting fresh in a new place, which was Threads, but then Threads got annoying and then I moved to BlueSky, which has also become the same redundant cesspool of people clamouring for attention.
I’m not very active on either platform, although I did recently just watch a bunch of curling and posted more #suggestivecurlingquotes that lots of people used to enjoy on Twitter. I’m finding myself less engaged with short form posts than I once used to be. I suppose some of it is the knowledge that a lot of the people I’m talking to on there aren’t even real. Another is that (and I hate to sound like a dick) everyone is just suffering from some major main character syndrome. People always griping on there about the dumbest shit, or pretending to be a social justice warrior for worthy causes but like…just doing it while watching Love Island on their couch, probably. Like, yes, I care that there’s a genocide going one right now but it’s hard to really feel activated to do something about it when I’m just trying to finish my bag of Doritos on my work break.
I’m just a product of my own society. I wanna fix things but sadly I’m just not programmed to. I’m spending less time online, or at least trying to. There’s a nice group of local influencers in my city doing their best to promote non-profit groups that help those in need who are in the community. Even just having coffee at the local coffee shop has grounded me a bit more than the Internet ever has.
I’ve sold more books to people in my own community more than I ever have online. It’s so fucked up to think about that. I’ve spent HOURS of my life online trying to gain followers, but literally to sell books I just had to book a stall at a night market and pretend to be an extrovert for an evening. I mean, I also had to buy my own book stock in the first place, which I’m immensely fortunate to have been able to do. I understand the privilege I have of even being able to sell books at a night market in the first place.
I don’t want to disparage anyone who tries to talk about world issues on an online platform. I don’t have a lot of followers. I kinda just wanna ditch Instagram altogether sometimes. I don’t have the drive to cater my entire life around following an algorithm just so my lazy posts get seen. Still, I have that millennial NEED to be seen and noticed, and so I keep posting the odd thing. I try to be raw and real and come off as a genuine person. Only a fraction of my 1666 Instagram followers ever see my posts. I appreciate the people who reach out and compliment my outfits or my writing or my photography.
In the meantime, I struggle with all of this and yet I’m still constantly stressing about how slow the editing process of working on my novel is going. I actually intended to start working on the novel but then I wrote this instead simply because I had that nagging thought of "It’s been a while since I last posted on Substack…”
Writing’s supposed to just be an outlet. I’ve had a pretty nice life simply because writing was that sponge that absorbed a majority all the damn angst I’ve felt since the 3rd grade. In my teens, I’d spend all my free time just writing, not surfing multiple social media platforms until the dopamine died out and I had nothing left to do but attempt to blend some angst into fiction.
I gave up YouTube for Lent because I had this nasty habit of “getting into the zone of writing by watching a couple videos first”. It never worked, and I’m slowly finding that journaling a bit before writing works better, but I also never want to do it. I’m trying to just retrain myself a bit. Maybe dropping more social media will help, probably, but then like, who will know I’m even doing any of this?
Social media was supposed to be about networking. I’d argue it still is to some degree, but why the fuck am I agonizing so much about networking when I don’t even have a fucking book to send out?
I like Substack most out of all the social media I’m currently using. I’m a bit more intentional about it. I still gotta figure out how to use it in a way that best benefits me at this point, but I do want it to be a bit more of a journal. I wanna put more paid stuff in there, maybe more personal posts behind the paywall, etc.
I dunno what my future online is going to look like but I do feel like I’m in a threshold right now.
Social Media has definitely become an annoyance to me. I go on Instagram for comedy and cat videos not political posts, doom, gloom and curated fake lives. I go on tik tok for fellow writers and artists and again I get the scary stuff, so fine I will dust off Facebook, but its more of the same. Even the stack as I call it, is getting some b.s. but less than others.
I go on social media to have a laugh, see adorable cats, or support other artists instead I am told the world is on fire, I see women selling their bodies for money, I have men offering me money for mine... and I see animal torture, genocide, bombs, inequality, and a bleak future for us all. Thank God for ASMR and YouTube a relaxing space, and of course the stack my creative outlet with some cool people
Social media is weird.
I came to the conclusion about 15 years ago that the only people profiting from online advertising were the advertising syndicates (notably Google) but it took me much longer to reach the same feeling about social media.
As you say, there's some value in 'having a network', but if it's not in the tens/hundreds of thousands then I wonder how much? And what part of me would I sell to reach those figures?
So, I guess we have to try to ignore the numbers and do what we like, hoping a fluke will turn this into some weirdly authentic success story.
Good luck to you, and us!