Nice Followers You’ve Got There...
On the indignity of letting an algorithm decide if your friends are allowed to see your art…
This morning, I was walking to the subway, and there was an artist set up on the sidewalk with some paintings.
There was a woman and her son poring through the collection, asking him, “These are great. Do you have a business card?”
He said, “No, but I have an Instagram.”
My stomach immediately sank. Not only because A.) This guy should totally just have a business card at least, but also that B.) These two people will never be able to find each other again.
That is how this is now designed. She will follow him and then probably never see any of his work in her feed. He will possibly follow back or try to reach her by posting his art, but never be able to reach her. Even if he tries to use DMs on Instagram, she will be buried with the flurry of spam, slop, messages, and whatever other junk the platform decides to throw at her.
It reminded me of a conversation I had just a few days later with my friend Amy.
Amy is a brilliant working cartoonist, and she is currently trying to promote her upcoming graphic novel and storytelling workshop. Over the years, she has done exactly what the tech overlords demanded of her: she played the game, fed the machine, and amassed an audience of tens of thousands of followers across social media. These are people who explicitly, emphatically clicked a button that said, “I like this person’s art, please show me more of it.”
But when she went to announce the workshop -the actual, tangible thing that pays her rent- she couldn’t reach them.
The platforms decided her announcement wasn’t “engaging” enough (read: It contained a link taking people off the app), so they buried it. (Shadowbanned it) She was lamenting the absolute absurdity of possessing an audience of tens of thousands of people, and not being allowed to actually talk to them.
I have had this exact conversation with a dozen different creators this month alone. I told her that she isn’t doing anything wrong. The game is just rigged.
If you’re trying to make a living as a creative in the modern digital era, this is exactly how the cycle works now:
1. The Grind.
You spend years acting as unpaid labor for tech companies. You feed their algorithm a constant, exhausting stream of high-quality content, slowly accumulating a massive following of people who genuinely want to hear from you.
2. The Sweat Equity
You log off, roll up your sleeves, and spend an immense amount of time, money, and effort making a real thing you actually want to sell to that audience. A book, a print, a workshop. The thing that actually sustains your career.
3. The Shakedown
You promote this new project on your platform, hoping that even 1% of the people who asked to follow you will actually see it. Instead, your post is immediately shadowbanned. The reach plummets to zero. A Silicon Valley algorithm essentially holds your audience hostage, whispering, *“Nice followers you got here. Be a real shame if nobody saw this post because you had the gall not to boost it with twenty bucks.”*
4. The Churn
Eventually, the platform becomes entirely unusable. A new bullshit platform pops up promising “organic reach.” We all migrate over there, and the exact same extortion racket repeats itself three years later.
The uncomfortable, gritty truth of the matter is that the algorithm no longer serves creative people. At all. It hasn’t for a long time. It does not care about your art, your workshop, or your livelihood. It only cares about keeping a user’s eyeballs glued to a glowing rectangle long enough to serve them an ad for a drop-shipped posture corrector.
When you rely on social media to build your business, you are building a house on rented land, and the landlord is a sociopath.
Which brings me here.
The last bastion we have left as working artists is, ironically, the very first bastion we ever had: the email inbox.
There is no algorithm here. There is no tech-bro billionaire sitting between my keyboard and your screen deciding if this essay is “optimized” enough for you to read. It is purely chronological, completely direct, and entirely voluntary. If I write something, and you are subscribed, you get it. That’s the whole transaction. With the exception of a few overzealous spam filters, it works pretty perfectly.
It’s the only place left on the internet where the artist actually owns the connection to the audience.
So, I want to end this by saying a very genuine, very profound thank you.
Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Thank you for opening these emails, for reading the essays, and for refusing to let the algorithms dictate what art you get to see. It means the absolute world to me.
If you want to help keep the ink flowing, keep the tech overlords at bay, and keep this direct line of communication alive, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It costs less than a bad bodega sandwich, and it ensures that I can keep making things for the people who actually want to see them.
See you out there.
‘til next time!
Your pal,
PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.
