On Social Media, Or Not.
12th March 24 / Almost spring / Cat art / The bloody algorithm
Today for whatever reason my mood is lighter, my head is clearer, and I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in weeks. Spring is tantalisingly close.
I had a very long lie, then got yesterday’s dishes washed accompanied by My Bloody Valentine on YouTube, and feeling a faint gimmer of optimism thought it might be time to write here again. It’s been a while.
I wanted to write about the cat inspired drawings and paintings I did recently but in the spirit of getting it all out of my head and written down, I’ve ended up having a bit of a rant about social media instead. I can’t ever seem to stay on topic. Oh well!
For the rest of the week I’m going to draw more. The cats have been the inspiration I needed to get me started again after a long break. I’ve worked in charcoal and done small acrylic and mixed media sketches, which are sitting in a little pile in front of me on my messy table. I’ll talk more about them next time round.
In the meantime…
Social media has been driving me mad. Yes, quite MAD. Meta has finally managed to suck all the joy out of sharing on Instagram and Facebook, at least for me and many other artists and small business users who have seen the reach of our posts diminish drastically in recent months. I don’t have a massive following there, nor even wanted one - it’s not about vanity but more about the effect on my income, and the impact on all other little people on those platforms. Maybe it wouldn't bother me if I was only there for recreation, not business, there's no way of knowing.
Instagram used to be a great free tool to market small businesses like mine. More than that it was like the biggest most exciting art exhibition ever curated, full of beauty and joyful creativity and colour, that satisfied the soul and made me want to return again and again. There was a camaraderie between creatives and customers alike to be found there. I couldn't get enough of it.
I joined IG as soon as I got my first smartphone in 2011 and my first awful, grainy over-filtered pictures can still be found if you scroll back far enough, or rather, you would find them if the feed didn’t auto refresh for no apparent reason while you scroll. A lot has changed since those early days. Everything changes, I get that, but Instagram has changed insidiously from cheery family photo sharing app with a retro filter twist to a place purely designed to fuel anxiety and bombard its users with sponsored content ( I hate the use of this word. It actually makes me feel far from content.) Only the most inane or controversial content is rewarded and shown to the most people with the sole purpose of keeping you on the site until you feel so utterly miserable that you part with your hard earned cash just to feel better again.
A lot of people have had enough which might be partly to explain why reach is lower. In my case the algorithm has typically been showing each of my images to between 50 and 100 people lately. Not a lot. I’ve seen other accounts complain their posts are only being shown to 1000 people, so it's all relative I suppose. The point is it's massively less than before.
I now change the settings on each post so the number of likes doesn’t show - I don’t need to feel that public humiliation. And saying that, it’s not even about the likes. I’m truly grateful that anyone follows me there and shows an interest in me and my work. I just hate being manipulated into thinking it’s some sort of competition, when we’re not even on a level playing field. If you have money to boost your post or a willingness to produce endless reels you will be more popular. I’ve also changed the settings so I don’t have any idea how many likes other Instagram accounts are getting. It’s a small thing but helps to bring back some sanity. Even with the use of hashtags new people can’t find our posts and looking at the stats there’s usually a huge delay in the post being seen by anyone at all - often showing to below 10 people after an hour, so the Insta-ness has gone too.
The final straw came last week when, whether by accident or design, I wasn’t able to heart any posts from some of my favourite people. I was clicking away and refreshing the page to make sure I was actually connected. However, when I clicked the heart on a sponsored post it filled up red first time, no problem at all. It was no coincidence. This continued for a couple of days for about an hour at a time. I don’t want Meta deciding what I’m allowed to like. Censorship is rife. Uurgh. (There’s a lot more I could say on this matter)
The irony of me complaining about sponsored posts when I’m also on there trying to plug what I do isn’t lost on me, and this post has probably been a bit whiny for some, but this is a space for me to share my thoughts and at the moment at least, Meta have no control on who can read it, although it’s true that Substack links do tend to be hidden when shared on Facebook. Yes, they’re just a business with the goal of making lots of money but they have FAR too much power and we’ve known for the last decade that they choose to weild it in highly dubious ways.
Will I still continue to post on Facebook and Instagram?
More than likely, because there are a lot of people I only stay in contact with via those sites…and I’m hooked. I’ve invested so much time with them, it’s very hard to break away. I’m envious of the minority who continue to buck convention and live seemingly happy and fulfilled lives without social media accounts. They do of course miss out on the cat memes. Ha!
What's your position on the socials? Love or loathe?
Yeah, absolutely agree. Instagram used to be fun and useful. Now it's neither. 😕
Loved reading your post and your discussions around social media. It can be so tempting to opt out of social media all together. If not just to nourish our mental health.
I didn't know you could hide likes on insta. That sounds like a good plan otherwise you begin to feel a bit manipulated by algorithms.
Unfortunately/fortunately most of my business sales are through social media. Interestingly mainly from facebook, Instagram is pretty to look at but doesn't really do the job with sales.