July 12, 2022

Artist as social media bait

I have a love-hate relationship with social media these days. On one hand, there is obvious value in sharing my work on social media. Right at the beginning, almost 8 years ago, it landed me my first publishing deal. Now, it reminds people I exist. And, if people know I exist, the theory goes, they’re more likely to engage with my work (either in a paying or non-paying capacity).

On the other hand, I find it endlessly tedious because, well, as a small individual, the algorithm and budgets aren’t in my favour. Unless I do what social media wants me to do, of course, and that helps them get folks’ eye-balls on the ads that companies who aren’t me pay for.

And so there’s this chicken and egg game that’s emerged. What social media platforms want grows over time as they incrementally optimize the ways they increase visitors’ visits, clicks, engagement and attention on the platform. The thing is, social media platforms need the artists and creators of the world to create and share beautiful content. It’s what keeps people coming back. At first, it was text (hello Twitter). Then images (hey Instagram). But now, video is the star (Twitter, Instagram stories, TikTok etc) – ever more data-rich than a single image – is turning out to be even more addictive and engaging for the general population and ever easier for creators to create.

But the trade between artist and platform here doesn’t seem fair. In fact, it seems like the classic and very old-school bargaining deal that I and many others in the design industry rejected early on in our career – Let us use your art to make us money and, in return, we’ll give you “exposure.”

But, as the algorithm optimizes incrementally and infinitely in favour of the platform, the artist becomes the spider in the toilet bowl. Struggling to create content but never quite doing it well enough, or often enough, or in a format that the platform rewards fairly.

The commercial benefits of the artist’s work for the platform are clear, tracked, and measurable. The artists’ benefits are not. Instead, artists (or maybe it’s just me?) are driven by a blind faith and a fear-of-missing-out that’s pushing us to post more often, at particular times, in different ways. The value proposition for using social platforms for ‘marketing’ seems so diminished that I’m sitting in the ‘why bother’ camp now. The power and benefits balance is, well, unbalanced.

I’ve noted before that Roald Dahl doesn’t have an Instagram account but despite this, his incredible work (produced in a time before social media), still has a very strong presence on social media. A lot of my favourite artists aren’t posting there either. So, if the time I dedicate to ‘marketing via social media’ is, instead, channelled into thinking more deeply about (and doing) the work itself, I have a hunch that I’ll be better off in the long run in my pursuit to find a truth in my art. Chances are, if I find that truth, the commercials will follow. And if they don’t? Well, I still got what I needed to get out of my art.

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