Why I Might Really, Truly Be Done with Social Media
I’m Your Annoying Friend
I’m your annoying friend who periodically leaves Facebook but doesn’t just quietly leave. I’m not sure how many times I’ve used the very platform I’m complaining about to share some article about how social media is ruining everything and make a dramatic statement about taking a break. I’ll stay away for a while but have always come crawling back eventually. And I’ve never taken a break from Instagram at all, because I’ve been operating under the delusion that it is a good platform for artists.
COVID Made Me Do It
I was mostly off Facebook for the past year and a half, until the COVID shutdowns happened. I use a Chrome extension that blocks the newsfeed from my desktop browser and puts an inspirational quote there instead (highly recommend!), and I was mostly able to avoid looking at it on my phone. I logged in once in a while to share art-business stuff or to interact with a couple of groups that only communicate that way. And then the pandemic came along, and I got sucked back into full-fledged social media compulsion. I’d find myself staying up way too late scrolling, scrolling, looking for updates and information, switching between Facebook, Instagram, and the iPhone News app. Needless to say, none of this behavior was useful in any way, but I just couldn’t stop. I hate that.
Selling Art Online?
Soon all the in-person art shows I normally participate in were cancelled and I thought “ok, well, time to start selling art online then!” I LOVE the idea of selling art online. Cue Instagram, which I used frequently, but mostly to post time-lapse art creation videos and work-in-progress photos rather than finished works for sale. I noticed that some accounts I followed had a shopping function enabled, which allowed users to click directly on an image to get a link to purchase a product. I had actually tried to enable this function some time ago, but was rejected and gave up on it. This time I was determined to get this enabled so I could sell art more easily on Instagram. One of the most frustrating things about Instagram is the fact that you cannot put a link in the description of an image, so you have to put something like “see link in bio” or “DM to purchase this,” which just creates unnecessary friction for a potential buyer. (This is your first clue that the primary aim of Instagram is not to help artists sell their work, but to keep eyeballs locked into the endless Instagram feed!)
Hoops and Obstacles
After much searching, I finally found a Facebook help email that gave me some concrete information on why my Instagram was initially rejected for the shopping function. My account was deemed to be not a business account but a mix of business and personal, and I was told that I should only list products. I clarified with them that it is acceptable to post things like works-in-progress (I had seen many shop-enabled accounts do this). I was told to use a business logo instead of a personal photo as my profile pic. (I have since been told by other artists/makers that they were able to get their shop approved with a personal pic and that they consider a personal pic to be essential for fostering customer engagement). I deleted some posts that could possibly be considered personal though I considered them an art project (photoshops of my parrot “traveling” to different places while everyone was trapped at home), and listed some “product” posts. Those “product” posts felt like a chicken-and-egg situation since I didn’t really want to list items for sale until I had the shopping function enabled, but I had to list them to get it enabled. In short, I jumped through a series of annoying but not too onerous hoops, and finally got my account approved for shopping.
Actually listing items for sale is a bit of a convoluted process. I had to first list the item on my own webshop, and then list them in a separate Facebook Catalog. This part of the process took longer than it should because while Squarespace (my webhost) allows you to duplicate shop items and change whatever details you need to change, each item has to be listed from scratch in Facebook Catalog. I have a lot of items that are similar, say 5” x 7” art prints, so it is incredibly time-saving to be able to duplicate them. And THEN, still not done…I use Dropbox to get whatever images I’m using from my desktop to my phone, because for some unholy reason you can’t post to Instagram from a desktop. Then download the images from Dropbox to my phone, then upload to Instagram, add description text. Thankfully adding the product link is just a single click in Instagram.
Crickets and Self-Doubt
I am the first to admit that I tend to have naively high expectations whenever I embark on ventures such as enabling my Instagram account for shopping. What I did NOT expect was getting FEWER interactions on all my shopping-enabled posts. All my Instagram posts are cross-posted to my Facebook page, and I did get one sale from Facebook. And two sales later on from subsequent Instagram posts. When I shared the shopping posts from my business Page on Facebook to my personal account that presumably has more eyeballs on it, those posts also had noticeably fewer interactions. It’s really difficult to not be frustrated at spending so much time on the tedious process of listing products in multiple places for such little result and a seeming step backwards in interactions. It’s even more difficult not to suspect that there’s some nefarious algorithm at work that is deliberately suppressing those commerce-oriented posts so I get fed up and spend money on advertising. I posted a picture on Facebook around the same time of some fancy focaccia that I made, which got more likes and comments than anything I’ve ever posted. It’s also difficult to not go into a spiral of self-doubt. Is it me? Does my art just suck? Should I take up baking fancy focaccia as a career instead?
At the heart
Deep down I know my art doesn’t suck, and while I like baking, it’s not my focus. Of course the answer to all this is “you have to treat your art like a business and promote yourself and your work.” But I just don’t know that I have the energy for it, particularly the way that these platforms want. And honestly, even if I never ever sold another piece of art again, I would still keep creating. Art is not a job for me, it is not a business, it is not a career. Sometimes it involves aspects of those things, but at the heart, it is, for better or worse, something that is so completely entwined with who I am and how I want to live my life that not doing it is basically unthinkable. Of course there are ebbs and flows and times when I have to focus on other things (like the things I do to make most of my income), but creating art is what I always come back to. My conflicted thoughts around “art” and “business” are really a separate post entirely though, lest this one get too lengthy!
Potato Chips
It seems that the advice for how to use social media more effectively to promote your work is always to interact more with it. Post more. Scroll more. Comment more. Follow more people so maybe they’ll follow you back. Or get really micro-level and figure out exactly WHEN is the best time to post. Write your posts in advance and use a scheduler to post them at optimal times. Think about hashtags! Research what hashtags are trending! Notice which posts get the most attention and keep doing that! This is particularly pernicious for artists, I think. I actually started using more animals in my art because I noticed that people seemed to click more on things that had animals in them. Is that really the way to make interesting art??? One could make a full-time job of interacting with social media, and indeed, large companies have people who do just that. But I am one person with marginal business skills. Mostly I just want to make art. I am not going to spend still more time on behavior that feels increasingly unhealthy for me and seems to be mostly counterproductive. There are only so many hours in the day, and (to dabble in a wildly overused and misappropriated quote), it feels increasingly insane to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
Around the same time that my frustration with using Instagram to actually sell things was increasing, I noticed that my enjoyment of scrolling through and looking at the posts of people I’ve followed was diminishing. I fell into the envy trap when I realized that some of the artists I follow seemed to be selling everything they posted. I’ve always justified scrolling through Instagram as “inspiration,” but it began to feel less inspiring and more enervating. The number of ads seemed to always be increasing. I tried to step away from Facebook yet again after spending way too much time getting involved in futile political discussions. And I couldn’t help going back again and again. What ridiculous conspiracy theory has so-and-so posted now? None of these things lend themselves to thoughtful interaction, by design. I like long-form writing and interesting discussion and social media is not the place for that. I would go onto either of these platforms to do a specific task and get distracted and end up wondering how twenty minutes had gone by and I still hadn’t done the thing I went on there to do in the first place.
Participating in both platforms felt increasingly unsatisfying, yet I kept going back again and again. It felt like eating potato chips (I love potato chips). I know I’ve already eaten too many potato chips and if I eat more I’m going to feel ill. But I WANT to keep eating potato chips even though I know it’s not going to be good and if I stopped and thought about it for a second, I’m not even really enjoying the potato chips that I keep mindlessly eating.
Quitting?
I found myself googling things like “artist quit Instagram” and “artist instagram failure.” I found articles like this: Why These Artists are Quitting Instagram and Why I Quit Social Media which ring so true to me. I found Reddit posts by artists complaining that they only have 10,000 followers and only get 100 likes on their posts. I have never gotten above 700 Instagram followers, and the most likes I’ve ever gotten on a single post is maybe 30. Somehow that post was a real eye-opener. I have no idea how one even gets 10,000 followers, but if even that isn’t enough, then it really makes me question the whole enterprise. What even is a follower, anyway? I’ll likely be writing more about social media on a higher level at some point, since I find the subject fascinating and so important for these times we’re living in, but I’ll just say briefly here that I’m really questioning the value and even the ethics of continuing to contribute to these platforms that are profiting enormously from hijacking our attention and our social interactions.
For the time being, I have not deleted either my Facebook or Instagram accounts. This is something I’m still debating. I’ve posted messages in both places saying that I’m taking an extended break and asking people to email me if they want to keep in touch or to sign up for my new monthly email newsletter. I think I’ll keep those posts up for a while. I’ve deleted Instagram from my phone, and it’s basically impossible to use on a desktop browser. I’ve blocked Facebook from the web browser on my phone and changed my password to something ridiculously long that I don’t remember. I’ve deleted the News app. I’ve turned off email notifications and only check it at specific times of the day. I’ve become aware over the past few days of just how often I have a subconscious urge to look at something on my phone. It’s a little disturbing. But it also feels good to have made a change.
Focus
Right now I just want to focus on posting things to my own site. Writing more. Being open and honest and thoughtful. Continue to share my finished work and also my creative process. Hopefully cultivating more direct relationships with people. I started a Patreon a few months ago because I think it might be an interesting way to interact with people who want to support my work. So far I have three patrons, one of whom is my husband, so we’ll see… I might start posting the time-lapse videos on YouTube, but I know that’s its own special pool of problems, so I’m undecided on that. Basically I’m tired of feeling like all my efforts on social media are ultimately enriching tech giants with dubious ethics instead of helping me reach my own goals. A fear of being invisible has kept me on those social media platforms, because that’s where everyone is these days. The chances of anyone randomly coming across my website amongst the masses of stuff on the internet are fairly slim, but right now it feels better than continuing with what I was doing. I almost don’t even care if anyone ever reads this, which is incredibly liberating. Basically, I feel like I’m on the right path at last and I’m excited to see what happens next.