I want to be online, but I don't want to be online
Navigating a very strange era to be alive.
So I have issues with being a ‘content creator’. I always have. Which is ironic, because I’ve created content more than I’ve done anything else in my life. I want to be online, but I don’t want to be online. I love access, but I hate access. I want a simple offline life, but obtaining attention online seems to be the only way to a fulfilling life (based upon my personal standards), artistically and financially. It’s almost as if posting about something immediately dampens the authenticity that surrounded it, yet not posting about it eradicates its memory and stifles its weight. If it wasn't documented, did it happen? If others didn’t see it, did I truly live it? If I go fully offline, truthfully—I don’t know how I’d make money, lol. I’ve put everything into this game. But when I’m online, I’m a slave to the algorithm. Which I don’t like. However, if I’m not a slave to the algorithm, I don’t grow. If I don’t grow, I don’t earn—and I’m forced to find work elsewhere, in some other lane, at the cost of my art.
That’s the paradox.
I romanticize this era of offline documentation. I look at the archives that my parents generated of their upbringing—painting the walls of their first house, capturing our first Christmas, camping memoirs, travels, analog tapes, and printed photos that weren’t advertised to anyone but our tight-knit family. These moments hold so much gravity because they had to survive years of time, moving homes, all of us growing up, the times changing… yet they persevered. I view these tapes and look at these photos with so much euphoria. I look at old Instagram photos almost with a distaste—performative, always for someone else, never solely for you or your loved ones.
There is no right or wrong here. But believe me, I’ve glorified this proposition more times than I can count. Wiping all social media accounts, dumbifying my phone, and living like I’m in the 70s. Even as I’m typing this, I’m getting giddy about the possibility. However, some of my best friendships were cultivated online. My best opportunities. Core life memories instigated by someone who followed me, who knew someone else, who knew someone else that I got connected to. But really, what always stops me from leaving the grid are you guys. Is this. Hearing just one thoughtful comment. One direct message of how you connected to my work. This is my purpose. Without that, I’d be lost to the void.
I think where dissonance forms is when we know we aren’t who we really are ‘online’. We aren’t making the art we’re meant to make. Our fans are fans of an alias, not us. We’re slaves to a shell of ourselves and to their audience’s demands. Again, the best feeling in the world is a simple message or in-person conversation, hearing that your work translated to someone that you respect and vice versa. This is what all artists truly seek. Every actor, director, musician, painter, screenwriter is ultimately chasing that age-old feeling of importance and purpose. Posting and constantly trying to grow metrics feels like I’m going against the natural flow of creation. Engineering an alternative form of ‘success’. When I feel like a cringey, recycled content creator, I want to just dig a hole and live in there. When I publish something that I know—if I was on the opposite end of it as a consumer—I would not respect it or enjoy it… this is when it becomes draining. This is when I take a step back and realize that I am just genuinely not enjoying what I’m doing. That’s when it’s scary. Self-chatter of ‘Why are you doing this if you hate it?’ ‘Is this even what you want to do?’ ‘Maybe you need to just reevaluate the whole situation.’
I don’t know. I don’t write to you with an answer. I think answers are extremely overrated. Every video or newsletter now proposes some big and shiny conclusion as if it’s the third act of a Disney film. But the reality is that it is just up to you. You have the freedom to cut the cord and live whatever life you wish. Prompt yourself with these questions:
What will make you truly happier?
Are you okay with sacrificing the access that this online world gives you?
Can you accomplish the things that you need to offline?
Can you generate the income that you need to be content and support those around you offline?
Can you reach the people you were put on this earth to reach offline?
If so, in case I never see ya again, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
Film of the Week.
I forgot how much I loved this film. Rewatched on the plane the other day and just got lost in its flow. It’s one of those that can transport you. A beautiful take on art, relationships, and risk. Fitting for this particular letter…
Read of the Week.
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If we're not slaves to the social media algorithm, we're slaves to the B2B-sales or homesteading algorithm instead. We're always in service of someone else at least some of the time—whether that means making some amount of content that caters to the taste of the lowest common denominator in our audience, or earthing up an acre of potato plants to feed our family in the autumn. Nothing totally without compromise is sustainable, period. There is always going to be some amount of work you don't want to do; some amount of “give” in life’s give-and-take. All this to say: you can make different compromises in life, but there will always be compromises, and the question we have to ask is whether we truly believe that the alternate lives we imagine for ourselves would involve better problems, or whether they'd just be different problems.
While complete creative freedom—including the freedom not to create—is obviously impossible if you hope to earn enough money to live, making work online can, at least in principle, accommodate much more nuanced and appealing compromises than average between what we want to do and what we must do to provide enough value to other people so that we are able to eat.
Keep at it, I'd say! Many people would be sad to see you go.
Sometimes when I looked at your content, I thought, “It’s like he stole my brain,” even though you didn’t.
Glad to know I’m not alone in having the same struggles..