ditching my user? online 'brands'?

[scout]

The more I get into scrolling neocities and this forum, the more I want to draw things that bring me joy, the more I want to just uproot my entire internet life for something cozier.

I have 11.8k followers on instagram and the only reason i can stand it right now is because i need the views to get commissions. that's it. i wish i could go back to being anonymous. i hate that people have opinions on me. i want to draw things and post them to less people.

my current username feels like a cage. which sucks because it's a reference to two things i really like!! and i think it's catchy and cute!! but idk, i dream of abandoning ship and starting a couple of quiet accounts with a username that resembles the one i made when i was 4 on girlsgogames. lol

i know this is a ridiculous complaint to have but can anyone relate? do you have/have you had an online brand that you felt trapped in? i just want to feel how i used to on the net

[Dequake]

Not an online brand perse but for sure an online personality. It's in some ways something I still struggle with to this day. To want eyes on your work, while at the same time reserving your right not to exist in any common space.

I'm sure you could "softlaunch" a brand change. Go by both for a little while, so that people start recognizing and correlating the two brands to be the same thing.

Or start fresh! Keep posting your "serious work" to your original brand, the one that gets you commisions. Then somewhere else on the internet, unrelated to your professional brand, exists a personal space. A la Louis Cole/Clowncore.

These are both techniques I have used. They work fine enough, but I also never achieved the level of popularity that you have, so take everything I say with a hefty grain of salt.

[wolfkitty42]

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense to  try  to seperate it into your professional vs personal work... Although I don't really know, it sounds like a really tricky situation. Are comissions your source of income right now?I think you still have room to make a personal, smaller space to share art, but it might conflict with your other needs.

[grubbyfox]

you dont need to be "your brand" on every single website. Just keep your accounts around if you wanted the commisions and then your chilltime web surfin' can be with any other username/"you" 

[RNotteLovesOwls]

i don’t like looking at my artstyle/aesthetic as a “personal brand”, and neither do i like when others use that term. why? because it makes us on the internet sound more like products, not people. and i have too much respect for myself and my work to see myself that way

[Dequake]

i don’t like looking at my artstyle/aesthetic as a “personal brand”, and neither do i like when others use that term. why? because it makes us on the internet sound more like products, not people. and i have too much respect for myself and my work to see myself that way

I can understand that perspective. It is art we make, not products after all. Though personally I do kind of enjoy the word brand, not as a corporate word, but just looking at it in a more naturalistic light. When I make art, even if it's not a product to be consumed, it is still a few degrees separated from myself. I don't make it as me, I make it as an artist, it's a role I walk into when I sit down to create. And when I post it, I don't post it as me, I post it as the webmaster, the role. Ergo, "the brand" is not a product description, but a separation of my person and my creative output. It's like an alias, or a pen name. 

[GlitchWolf47]

I feel you on this

I kinda want to do something similar. its less that I dislike my online brand but more that I want to be more free on the indieweb.

I kinda have a policy about online stuff and thats that I dont tend to share a lot of personal details about myself online. but the indieweb is about one of the only palces i DO want to do that and I feel like by going by my username on the indieweb I am connnecting my prescense here to my prescesne on other sites and therefore preventing myself from making my space TRULY personal.

but the issue is, I LIKE my username and "branding" like id feel weird changing it, so idrk. I think if anything, id change my branding on my OTHER socials that arent my indieweb things.

I might just keep my username tho and maybe just not link my personal website places. That way it feels more private (idk)

[TheFrugalGamer]

I remember a long time ago reading an article (I wish I still had it around, but I have no idea where it was) about Lady Gaga's artistic burnout and the stresses she was going through at the time. It compared and contrasted her with other artists like David Bowie, who would also create "characters" of sorts for each of his projects. The writer likened it to putting on and taking off masks that represented different roles that the artist was playing. After a long time of doing this, a lot of artists can get overloaded in a way because they've been "on" for so long, and none of the roles they're playing are who they truly are.

I think what you've described is pretty similar, and a natural reaction to dealing with audiences for a prolonged period of time. Humans can't act extroverted all the time, and we need to withdraw and recharge sometimes. Plus, the presence of social media and always being connected exacerbates those stresses and encourages us to perform more to get likes and engagement (or commissions, in your case).

I'm not sure if any of that helps, but I don't think you're weird or unusual at all for feeling the way you do! It sounds like you're feeling burnt out from having to market yourself so heavily, and that's completely valid.

[sunnyp4rk]

I've technically got a "brand" in that my art accounts share a name, and my art domain shares that name. However, I've got a separate domain for all of my other website shenanigans. It was honestly a good way to separate my art from my other personal stuff.

[Dequake]

@TheFrugalGamer : A very interesting perspective. I think that this "thing", brand, persona, alter ego, whatever you may call it, can make or break a particular person, project or situation. As much as it builds you it can also tear you down.

Using the word brand henceforth to encompass all these concepts for simplicities sake, I believe that the use of a brand as a wedge to separate creation and creator can function as a way to relieve stress in the short term, but without resloving the core issue that caused stress in the first place might result in the brand suffocating the person in the long term, slowly replacing the humanity in the creations as expectations, ego or whatever else starts to dictate what one creates, removing an element of free will. If left unattended it could end catastrophically, as professionalism is no longer an option, and the veil unfolds before the viewer's eyes, revealing total meltdown. The creator tries desperately to regain some sense of control over their brand.

On the other hand, if the wedge is maintained properly, facilitating healthy separation, the brand can act as a protective shield against unnessecary stress that comes from sharing things publically, as everything one does is open to public scrutiny. A filter that allows one to view things objectively, and themselves scrutanize the criticism or expectations one recieves, separating them into productive and unproductive discussion, and taking action from there according to ones own judgement.

All in all I think this is a very interesting topic and I'm glad we got to have it, as I think it's a very important thing to analyze when talking about what we do online as creators and people, not just as consumers.

[fablefound]

oh, this is a great topic for me, as someone who's kind of done it all at this point...

from 2019 to 2024ish, i had the same username, aesthetic, and "brand" everywhere--centred around a songwriting project. and it was... totally stifling!!! it really messed with my mental health!! everything i did online was attached to this one project and its tone and theme. it didn't help that i was going through a lot of mental health stuff at the time too, including untreated ptsd and the ex responsible for said ptsd, who'd stalk this old username and bother anyone i associated with. and of course, one of my self-imposed "rules" was to not talk about my mental health, because it didn't fit the "brand" or whatever... 

in 2024, i did a total rebrand of not just this one project, but my relationship with social media at large. i used to be petrified of having a persona i could put on and take off, because i was scared it'd, like, get me to depersonalize and so on, but like Bowie and the rest mentioned by @TheFrugalGamer,  i found the mask was something i could put on and take off, and it's honestly been quite liberating. i've lost a bit of traction and my numbers have suffered, but hey, i don't look in the mirror and fret over who i "really" am anymore, so i consider that a win. and i'm putting myself out there again, slowly but surely.

my current setup is pretty much three different usernames--one's my rebranded songwriting project (which is only used where that's actually relevant), one's just my name (for personal/professional stuff), and one's this little username for low-stakes, on-the-web shenanigans that have no reason to be "branded" as the other two.

i think one of the big issues about the idea of the online brand is the whole concept of branding and how that so often clashes with our actual artistry. i had a friend once tell me that we're "artists, NOT content creators," and as someone who's worked in both fields, there's definitely a huge difference. i wish more people could afford to put their art first... i'm trying to, but the almighty algo hasn't been the most forgiving, so i'm still doing that "art vs brand" balancing act.