I've been having a tug-of-war regarding social media and how to deal with it lately. As per usual when we travel for vacation, I limit my social media activity and stay off of the phone as much as possible. I love just being in the moment and enjoying whatever I'm doing and wherever I am without thinking about posting something. I got over that habit a while ago. Every now and then I have to remind myself of this when I'm in my everyday life, for example, when I go to gallery or museum exhibitions. "There are no photos that I can take that will be nearly as good as the ones that the gallery or institution will have", is what I say to myself. I'll still take a few photos, but only after having looked at and experienced the work without the mediation of the phone camera.
On the latest trip to Mexico, one of my goals was to read much more and I did. I actually finished one book (Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler) and read through 3/4 of the other one (Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson) before returning home. I took plenty of photos, but didn't post any of them, and still haven't. I would check in on my social channels periodically,usually in the morning for a few minutes, mostly IG and Threads, Zuckerberg's new alternative to what used to be Twitter (now "X"). I didn't look at Facebook and LinkedIn at all.
In general, I've been feeling burnt out on social media as an artist because the algorithms are stacked against the user, unless you pay to promote your posts. As I've said elsewhere, most social media is run by capitalists whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth and monetization of everyone who uses the platforms. In order to maintain cash flow and keep users roped in, the algorithms continuously change and we are told that we have to basically be online 24/7 engaging with the platform. Like casinos, social media is structured so that the house always wins.
I don't know if there's a way around that and quite frankly, I'm done with trying to figure any of it out. I mainly use social media in an attempt to broaden the range of people who are aware of my work. I have come to find, and I think many of us who pay attention to how platforms work, that most of the people I connect to online are other artists and to a lesser extent, curators and some galleries. I've come to find that online activity for artists (posting work images, making reels of your practice and shows, etc...) only goes so far mainly because of the fleeting nature of people scrolling and how your posts are pushed out (or not) by the algorithms. When I post on my IG story feed, I can guess almost all of the people who have seen it before I look at the activity list under that post and it's pretty consistently the same and barely 2-3% of the accounts that follow me and that I engage with. There is no longer any kind of "organic" reach-we're siloed in. It takes a lot to produce posts and other content for social media and the return is next to nothing. We're giving Meta free labor AND content.
We're roped in by the POTENTIAL of gaining followers, getting shows and more through social media, but the reality is that real life interactions run the show-social media is only a tool and a good tool, if you are at least somewhat intentional about your engagement with it. I like to share all sorts of things, but mainly keep it to art-related things with the occasional dash of cats and other regular life moments here and there. After experiencing my IG being hacked last year and the building burnout I'm feeling from it, I'm on another wave of reevaluating my use of socials. For all of August, I've been trying to keep my engagement to a minimum in an effort to retool my usage and specifically how much I use it as a distraction. Over the past month, I've only posted on my story feed and mainly reposted memes and other things from different accounts. Since I read so much on my vacation, I've been making sure that I spend more time reading than scrolling on my phone. I still look at my feeds during the day, but much less than I was before going away.
I've been sharing a bit on Threads, but in a different way than on IG. Since Threads is supposed to be more like the app formerly known as Twitter, I take a more relaxed and open approach to posting there. Engagement so far seems a little more organic. When people I follow reply to something, that post will get pushed to me and I have a chance to follow a new account, if it seems interesting to me. I like this approach and right now, there's no ads (I'm sure they're coming) and minimal functionality, but it feels less cumbersome and over the top than other platforms. There's more to come about my evolving relationship with social media, but more later.
TM
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