social media is my prison

[grovyle]

I don't work with social media (thankfully) (I would never) (my condolences to y'all) but I had a similar experience with another kind of job that I think adds to this conversation!

I used to work in a very touristic place. The kind people wait all year to go back to, that's practically dead off-season, etc etc. I loved working there, I even came back twice, and then as a tourist! But while I was working there, people kept telling me how wonderful it must be to be surrounded by nature/animals/another features of the place, and how grateful I must be to be able to wake up every day and be there (bc we also slept right where we worked - think if you worked in a hotel and slept in a hotel room). And yeah, I was grateful! It was wonderful! I was extremely lucky! But it was also my job. And I had a single day off a week which I didn't have much control over, but there was a rule that it COULDN'T be on weekends or holidays, because this place would receive hundreds of people each day on those dates. And I had to be there working. And my experience of it wasn't the same as the tourists'; it included a lot of stress over everything going right, people understanding my directions, I had literal lives depending on me at all times, the place was closed at night but if something happened we'd have to get up even if it was midnight and check everything was fine, tourists are mostly a nightmare to work with, etc etc etc.

So, I think social media must be like that for you. "You're so lucky you can make money from streaming and tweeting!!" "You love drawing so you must feel soooo lucky to be able to make it your livelihood!!!" and so on. And that dissonance from your experience and everyone else's with social media comes from inhabiting those spaces differently. From the outside, it looks like for now it's a downside of the job that some people are able to get over by sheer fame and/or some wealthy regular clients. Acknowledging the risk of sounding like a boomer, some things are Just Part Of The Job and you have to learn to suck it up. For me, at the touristy job, it came in waves. There were weeks when I wanted to have my brain crushed by a mammoth from the stress of just being there, and weeks when I woke up and took a deep breath and thanked the HR lady who hired me. Most weeks were someplace in the middle, though.

[DiffydaDude]

I think I realized why people are even addicted to Youtube:
People got a habit of watching youtube and that habit was reinforced with good videos.
But then adpocalypse happens and all the youtube videos become bad.
So they all suck, but the habit's still there.
So people are endlessly watching bad videos to try and satiate the habit, which doesnt work,
So they feel burnt out and tired of watching youtube but cant because the habit took up all their time in the day.

Thats also why people put family guy clips in videos now, its cuz the videos are so disinteresting, you have to put something else in there to trick people into watching anyways.

That is why people are so depressed about youtube and the internet, explained in a way i could actually understand.
 
Honestly why do people always let themselves be "tortured" by social media at this point. Like its so stupid its a god damn video app, it doesnt need to be your life at all. If y'all think the internets dead and theres no other sites out there, well there are sites out there, its just so many people are too depressed to actually go looking for them and/or make them. It makes me mad sometimes.

[OnBambisMind]

Firstly I really empathise with your situation.

I completely underatand the feeling of wanting to leave. The social media prision is so real and is so horrific and toxic nowadays. I can't speak on twitter as I have never been to gain any sort of follwing there but I have plenty of experience with instagram and tikok.

I have a small art business where I sell greeting cards and things on Etsy and the only way to market myself was to use instagram and tiktok. The pace that you have to make content and make that content fit the 'trends' is insane. I rememeber all I could think about was how to make a piece of my art fit the current meme or trend so it could hopefully get popular enough that I could afford the weekly food shop.

I was spending most of my time editing tiktoks and reels than it was actually making art and doing things I enjoy. Filming yourself make art (especially tradional art) takes so much time, you have change the camera angles every few minutes so you can edit it down to 3.5 secounds to keep the viewer engaged, it's hell. You can't get into the flow state at all if you have to stop every few minutes. I ended up hating making art and creating. I felt like my art became souless which I hated because I supposed to be a colourful punk collage artist haha.

I spent hours looking at my notifications/looking out for new trends to hop on rather than spending time with my partner and my cat. It drove me to insanity to be honest and I couldn't continue.

The only way I got out of it sadly, was partly giving up. I got a part-time job with stable hours and stable income so I could work on my small business on the side. I stopped all social media and just let etsy's algorthim decide if I got orders or not. I went completely social media free in 2024 to stop my social media addiction and even got a flip phone to help. It has luckily worked out but I cannot help but feel guilty about it for some reason.

I think I just feel so sorry for the people who can't get out of it whether thats because of illness/health issues or just lack of jobs in their area that makes it so they have no choice but to use social media. It makes me really sad. I wish I could just make art for fun again but I know I cannot. If I got a full time job, I know I would be too tired to make art and that would make me super sad.

I hope one day I will grow my business enough to take it full time without the use of social media but for now I think I am happy with where I am :)


ps. I am really bad with writing out what I have in my head so I have probably left out a ton of what I actually want to say, so I might update this again in the future.



 

[nemmoue]

i think what ends up being so painful about this situation is that there is really no other path to revenue for artists.  visual art is a long uphill grind of building techskill just to reach a plateua where you realize your options are either to sell your soul and be the pusher on social media day in day out for a livable income, diluting the thing you've given your life to into a numbers game.  or you opt out, don't engage in the social media sphere, and lose all opportunities to work professionally or even connect with other artists. 

I chose the latter.  its been an incredibly lonely few years since i cut the cord but i really dont regret it in the sense of the peace of mind it's brought me.  2023 was the most productive art year i think i've ever had.  2024 has been a bust but at least i am not sitting around with that feeling that my heart is in a cage, fearful of what's hiding in my notifications or which old internet demon is going to come out of the woodworks to haunt me on X Y or Z day.. 

guess you end up with places like this as the inbetween between being The Pusher and being a total hermit.  there's a thread for artists to follow in places like these where people with respectable skill do interact from time to time.  but it's not the same as the density you get in the social media cloud.  really the thing i can actually miss about it is that; the way you'd be bombarded with GOOD work by SKILLED people in and out.  it was both inspiring and exhausting watching the world's talent play a stupid numbers rat race every day just for attention seeking validation points that make your brain go BING~~...  if i had an idea of where we could be going that's better from here, god i'd be runnning for it.  the scatteredness of solo websites is the best we're going to get for Indie at the moment i think, true alternative art anyway   

[DiffydaDude]

i think what ends up being so painful about this situation is that there is really no other path to revenue for artists.  visual art is a long uphill grind of building techskill just to reach a plateua where you realize your options are either to sell your soul and be the pusher on social media day in day out for a livable income, diluting the thing you've given your life to into a numbers game.  or you opt out, don't engage in the social media sphere, and lose all opportunities to work professionally or even connect with other artists. 

I chose the latter.  its been an incredibly lonely few years since i cut the cord but i really dont regret it in the sense of the peace of mind it's brought me.  2023 was the most productive art year i think i've ever had.  2024 has been a bust but at least i am not sitting around with that feeling that my heart is in a cage, fearful of what's hiding in my notifications or which old internet demon is going to come out of the woodworks to haunt me on X Y or Z day.. 

guess you end up with places like this as the inbetween between being The Pusher and being a total hermit.  there's a thread for artists to follow in places like these where people with respectable skill do interact from time to time.  but it's not the same as the density you get in the social media cloud.  really the thing i can actually miss about it is that; the way you'd be bombarded with GOOD work by SKILLED people in and out.  it was both inspiring and exhausting watching the world's talent play a stupid numbers rat race every day just for attention seeking validation points that make your brain go BING~~...  if i had an idea of where we could be going that's better from here, god i'd be runnning for it.  the scatteredness of solo websites is the best we're going to get for Indie at the moment i think, true alternative art anyway   

Im gonna be honest, i think that the idea that art is only about working online is stupid. I mean, the whole idea confuses me. Why is visual art to artists not about actually making the art but all this other stuff that isnt about the art. And i dont think that doing social media stuff online is the only way to make money doing art. That just sounds so closed in. I just really hate how artists treat art these days

[nemmoue]

Im gonna be honest, i think that the idea that art is only about working online is stupid. I mean, the whole idea confuses me. Why is visual art to artists not about actually making the art but all this other stuff that isnt about the art. And i dont think that doing social media stuff online is the only way to make money doing art. That just sounds so closed in. I just really hate how artists treat art these days

that's exactly why i think disengaging is the best solution.  seeing the art more clearly seperated from the social lens.  it seems like a lot of artists dislike how social the act of art itself can be online.  of course there is a social aspect of sharing art in person, but i personally feel like it is an infinitely more respectful experience.  the problem is that those spaces and opportunites are very inaccessible unless you have money.  which most artists don't.  there's definitely collectives and venues and shows and galleries in a budget price range, with punk ethos or otherwise, but it's not conducive to an income.