How Social Media Will Hold Your Art Back

Intro

Hello all. This blog has been stewing in me for a while. I’ve been on social media since it started with facebook (yes I’m old), and I think I have enough experience with it now, and in relation to having a creative spirit social media, to give some insight. Of course, I can only speak from my own perspective, so keep that in mind. 

People are already familiar with the perks of social media as an artist. If you don’t here’s a rundown: exposure, money, and connections. These perks are massive industry destabilizers which is why so many have jumped on the bandwagon in recent years, but there are many issues with social media as well. I won’t go into all of them today, but I will talk about what I think is the most important thing to keep in mind as an artist.

Social Media Can Blunt You’re Creative Journey

I’ve tried to be as objective with that headline as possible. Before I go on, I think it’s important to stress, that this might not be true for everybody, and if it’s true for you, it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. The point that I want to make is that creativity is a journey, and it has it’s fair share of trials and tribulations. The creative process is incredible. Inspiration, experimentation, trial and error, are all parts that contribute to developing your creative voice. Social media can aid in this kind of development, but it takes a careful mind to extract that kind of information.

The draw in the platforms, initially at least is the attention you get from an unknown audience. This is comparable to when an animal first breaks skin as they bite you. The attention will pass, much more quickly than you probably anticipate, but by the time you realize it, you’re too late. You should be able to see where I’m going with this. If you make art, and you start fresh on a platform, get a lot of attention, but over time that attention fades, you get caught in a toxic loop. I like to say to friends now that if you find that you’re making art for likes and not yourself, you are going to be in for a very bad time.

The natural curve for many platforms is to give users high engagement when they start, and as they cement their platform choke engagement until users are forced to pay in some way, to reach their audience. This most commonly manifests as advertisements, or to increase the level of content so much that it’s all you can really focus on if you want to sustain your initial trajectory. This is so antithetical to the creative process that it will drive you crazy, as it has driven me, friends and co-workers crazy.

Chasing after the likes will refine your creative expression to content that is hyper-focused for getting approval, so what happens when you don’t get the approval you think you should on a platform? It becomes a very toxic cycle. Personal expression is one of the most important reasons that we take time to create things, and trading that in for popularity will go about as well as you think it would. Since the nature of social media is to give people a platform, and potentially monetize that platform, the lure is very difficult to ignore; however, if you can ignore the lure, and make what you want to make, you’ll not only be more creatively fulfilled, but you’ll probably attract a better audience that resonates with your natural talents, instead of the kind of audience you get by chasing clout.

Outro

This is not me saying you shouldn’t make a living on your art (I do), it’s me saying that if you participate in social media as an artist with the intention to make money off the platforms, you’ll probably end up making art that you hate, for a small audience that won’t fund your creative endeavors. Alternatively, if you go in with the mindset that social media is a good addition to growing your audience (and not the only way you can), you can keep your expressive freedom, and maximize the power of social media in a much healthier way

Thank you for reading, and keep creating!