Social media is a loaded gun. This
article is really about how not to shoot yourself and your dream with it.
There are two online posts that got my attention last week: Please shut up: Why self-promotion as an author doesn't work (2013) by Delilah S. Dawson and Painting in the Dark: The Struggle for Art in a World Obsessed With Popularity (2016), a video essay by Adam Westbrook. Both deal with a dilemma that we creative entrepreneurs struggle with - the role of social media and popularity in our creative work.
Back when I
was doing my undergrad in Communications, we were told that shameless self-promote was in. For a person shedding
the limitations of dis-empowerment, and timidity, the concept was brilliant; it
helped me step into the light boldly. However,
since then I have come to temper that impulse with experience and mature
reflection, and writers like Dawson explain why this is probably a good idea.
Dawson convincingly argues how social media pushes
and prods instead of pulls the audience, making the
latter an object to be "acted upon" rather than a "subject that
makes a conscious decision that feels a twinge of curiosity and discovers
something amazing". The constant tweets, posts, promotions, sells, are to
her, a cacophony consisting of badgering, nagging, wheedling, urging,
threatening, cajoling, and being whined at. Some of her advice to writers is to
"[s]pend your energy and time being kind to your colleagues . . . making
new friends with no expectation that you will eventually use them to claw your
way to the top" - in other words, to engage in organic and
authentic communication.
Westbrook,
takes the point further. He starts his video by noting that, "Maybe one of
the greatest things about the internet is how much it's leveled the playing
field. I mean we've created a world where anyone with an idea can go out there
and tell a story, and the whole world is watching." But he goes on to
question whether being watched
by the whole world should be
the reason why create. Are we essentially creating for the ephemeral likes, shares and comments, for that Warholian 15
minutes of fame? Westbrook then introduces Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of
the autotelic in Flow:
the psychology of optimal experience. People like Van Gogh, Dickinson, Monet,
Mafouz, etc. . . notes Westbrook, are autotelics who created not because of any
"expectation of future benefit but simply because the doing itself is the
reward"; out of a flow which focused their attention on
the work itself rather than its consequences. Westbrook hits a nerve when at
the end of the video, he asks, "In
a world obsessed with popularity, will we do our work regardless of the
consequences? Will we still make our art, even when no one's watching?" (Wow!)
I can't count
the times when focusing on the consequences brought me to the brink of throwing
in the towel and walking away; how many times I have slumped into depression by
comparing my disheartening Twitter and Facebook analaytics to the apparently effortless
popularity other creatives are getting. The rabbit hole of narcissism,
self-loathing, envy, resentment is dark as it is dangerous. Above all, it
disrupts the very flow in which you naturally create with energy, commitment,
and joy! It dims your very raison d'être as an artist.
In no way are
either of the writers saying to heck with social media engagement. No, in fact
that is the very thing they are making us re-think - engagement instead of a narrow,
self-interested approach.
Rather than
compulsively, and despairingly trying to control the consequences of promotions,
while overloading and alienating the very people we want to reach out to with our work, both Dawson and
Westbrook remind us to stay true to that initial dream that started us on our
journey - the purpose why we create, and to diligently focus our attention on
the quality of our work. Both put popularity in perspective.
In her
2015 rebuttal to people's comments of her 2013 article,
Deliliah S. Dawson brings a vital point across: "What you say is as
important as how you say
it, especially online,
where we don't have facial expressions and tone of voice to help out"
(emphasis mine). Dawson takes us beyond a diligence vs. popularity dilemma to
the real point of all this - how
do we engage with the very people we want to influence with our work.
Taking a
refreshing departure from an aggressive shameless self-promotion approach, she
encourages creatives to be respectful, genuine, value-laden, peer and community
minded, organic, positive, creative with engagement, and selective with
the social media. She wants "writers to stop shouting their wares and
start walking over to admire someone else's cart"; to “get a query
rejection, file it away, forget about it, send out another query, close
Twitter, and start writing the next book instead of chewing on that rejection
for a week and letting it connect in any way with their own talent and
self-worth."
In the last
week or so, the Spirit has got me thinking more in depth about the
mark I want to leave on this world. The more I think about it, I've realized
that I need to get out of the victim
mentality that comes with the starving artist idea, and dream bigger.
I've begun to think more of the purpose of my art, about the values I want to
convey and how I convey them. I've begun to
realize I absolutely have to end this death-game of narcissistic comparison, which leads me to
deadening low self-worth, which in turn sabotages my will to create.
I have to first be diligent in ordering my time AND my focus, and being accountable with
these resources because I have to take care not only of how I present myself,
but also how I take care of my artist's heart ( A point I address in LIFESTYLE
OF AN ARTIST: THREE RITUALS FOR CREATIVE LIVING ).
I have to
also be diligent about the quality of my work, and also about the quality of engagement I want to create and maintain with my
audience. If I suck at these at the moment, I have to make a choice to abandon
my lone-artist MO, and get real and apply myself to learning new
skills. Dickinson and Monet didn't have the reality of virtual reality to
contend with. We do. And to ignore it completely is asinine and
self-sabotaging. Rather than obsessing over the consequences of my
promotions, I have to think long and hard about the values I communicate in the
process. And I have to commit to conveying those values consistently over time, so people
can actually trust me.
I’ll share
more on social media do’s and don’ts in another post. I've already taken up enough
of your head space. And I am grateful that you gave me your attention so
far. In the end we have to be diligent with not getting overwhelmed
and distracted from the initial dream/ purpose of our creative journey, as well as not being totally out of touch with the modern- day realities of creative entrepreneurship.
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