Category: CommunityCategory: Community

Buy the plane ticket, get your busker license, take that meeting, get on that Zoom call with total strangers.

“Tension is the feeling we experience just before we grow.

Ironically, it’s what we seek, at the very same time we avoid it.” Seth Godin

Uploading a song to the internet is easy. Zero tension.
Premiering your work “inside the dome of the Oskar-Lühning Telescope” is hard.

That’s what makes the easy stuff so alluring, as no one can judge you, or point and laugh if it doesn’t work out.

You can stay busy making Reels, but that’s another form of playing it safe, as hardly anyone will see them, let alone judge you for it.

Zero tension.

Instead, try writing an email to the five (or 50) people who open all your emails, or people who’ve bought from you in the past.

You could make a podcast and post it everywhere and reach practically no one, or you could make it for a small group of subscribers.

This creates tension because when you make a podcast for just a few people, it’s likely a few of them react in a meaningful way.

Changing the name of your project creates tension – will it confuse people? Will people forget about me? But you do the hard thing because it feels right in your bones.

There’s no tension with a product shot and a “buy now” button.

But you can create tension by documenting the process of making a great photograph and offer a limited edition print to your YouTube audience.

If I remember correcty this video only had 350 views by the time the prints were sold out.

So make that call, sign up for that marathon, email a venue and plan an actual event, with real people, in real life.

All of this hard work is less of a dopamine rush than playing the social media viral popularity game, but there’s tension, and it’s totally what you need.

In last week’s Escape Pod (my group Zoom calls with subscribers), we told stories about our experiences with social media, culminating with one person asking a direct “yeah, but as a musician how do I exist without playing the Spotify game or being on Instagram?”

We all went around and chimed in, but sadly, we didn’t get them booked at Madison Square Garden by the end of the call.

On Friday, Cassidy Frost’s Weekly Live Q+A Sessions had much of the same vibes – we’re all trying to figure things out, bouncing ideas around and chiming in with suggestions, ideas, and concepts.

No one won a Grammy that day, but we all gained a bit from the collective energy and ideas in that group Zoom call.

Figuring out how to lessen our dependency on social media is a journey, there is no map, and it’s best to travel with others.

The people who run social media platforms would hope we isolate and try to figure this out on our own, which is why we need each other more than ever.

• We need groups of writers for every fathomable sub-genre. Silent co-working style, or groups to talk about self-publishing, or pitching outlets.
• I bet you could start a songwriting group. Bring un-finished songs to the group, and everyone shares their work at the end of the call.
• Photography groups, where people could get together and edit photos together, or go through a photobook together, or talk about styles and gear or anything else.

Fire up your favorite video chat service and get back to being people, making connections, and building each other up. Do this in person if you can.

Because I don’t think competing with the daily publishing schedules of the more prominent media outlets is our game. Instead of churning out daily “content,” what if we slowed down and hung out with the core people who appreciate the art we’re trying to make?

Is it scalable? Heck no.

But is spending 12 hours this week posting to Instagram and trying to lure people to sign up for our newsletter the best use of our time?

How many subscribers is enough? How many fans is enough? Do we ever find contentment? Is our thirst ever quenched?

When do we stop doing things we hate for people who don’t care and start doing things we love for people who already love what we do?

• “God, I hate posting on social media.”
• ”Making content for social media is so draining.”
• ”All the time I spend on social media promoting my work feels like such waste of time.”

We have people right in front of us – digitally, and in real life. Imagine if we spent our time and energy on them, instead of spinning our wheels on social media trying to impress everyone and no one?

Like Molly Ella says in ‘The hard truths of content creation” (emphasis mine):

“The community that I have grown online are the reason that I continue to do what I do. Their thoughtful messages and comments can lift me even on a bad day. I recognise the names that come back again and again and I’m so grateful for them.

I intend to continue to prioritise nurturing these existing relationships as opposed to solely focusing on attracting new people.”

Growing relationships isn’t just about subscribers or “fans,” either. It’s about the entire community that exists in the little world around us.

In the music world, this could include producers, label owners, painters who make album art, effects pedal makers, and/or the local record shop owner.

So instead of posting for “everyone” and hoping to get discovered, we build a foundation of great people in our orbit with intention. That community is how we’re going to untangle ourselves from the social media / creator economy shit show.

As Metalabel wrote, “The creative status quo has made us lonely content machines” (read the whole thing from their New Creative Era booklet).

Our individual Social Media Escape Plan gains momentum in backyards, and on Zoom calls with other creative spirits, without algorithims.

Let’s go.

The days of posting to social media and a million “things” happening are ending. It was all a house of cards, smoke-and-mirrors.

Yes, there were winners along the way (even today, I know), but the casino has to pay out occasionally, or else people stop visiting.

Writes Kening Zhu in ‘the internet as a creative practice’:

“You cannot truly embody a creative practice in an environment that exploits attention for profit, where you’re pushed to measure your “success” according to metrics of validation. This system encourages that the creative act, not be embodied and lived, but performed and pantomimed.”

I don’t think we set out to optimize, hack, and short-cut our way to more subscribers, shares, likes, and comments.

I wanna run in the woods. You might want to go on more photo walks, or set up a studio, or write a book.

These things take time, so why must our work happen at top speed? What if we slow down, instead?

What does it look like if downshift our efforts and seek deeper connections with just a few great people, more so than growing audience at all costs?

Look at this London Creatives meet up that artist David Speed recently led:

The tech bro pipe dream marketing machine wants us to believe that their platforms are the creative epicenter, but look at that photo above – not an algorithm in sight, just vibes.

What would that look like for you? Maybe not an in-person gathering, but an occasional video call? An accountability group but with postcards instead of daily check-ins? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination

Because look – posting to social media is so easy our parents can do it. Organizing a time and location to meet with other creative folks and share your wins and challenges? Now, that’s hard, and that’s precisely why you should do it.

I know, I know – social media is right there. Just so easy to post. Hit like. RT something.

We’ll just keep hitting those buttons and pulling the levers, along with the 10,000 other artists and musicians and photographers, every minute of every day, around the clock.

“The next post will be a winner, I can feel it!”

Or maybe instead of posting that meme for “everyone,” we share it with one or two people in our contacts list.

Could some of our connections grow deeper if we just made that effort? Instead of “engaging” in another comments thread, what if we sent a DM or email to one or two people this week?

And what if we stopped obsessing over our stats?

There’s always one more goal, metric to measure, and level to reach. Capitalism is about constant growth and the pursuit of more.

Stop looking at your stats and seek good energy instead.

Opportunities can come from the people we already know, the connections we make today, and the relationships we’ve had for decades.

Let’s slow down our desire for more and realize what’s right in front of us.

I made the above video reply for my Substack pal Mariah Friend, who is “diving into the world of offering live events/workshops with the hope of building community and engaging more directly with my readers.”

You can find her original comment here.

“Unfortunately, I’ve had little to no engagement. I have around 370 subscribers and offer both free/donation based events and ticketed events… so far, I’ll have 2-3 people sign up on Eventbrite but then not show up. This honestly makes me anxious because hosting a workshop for a live audience vs. doing a recorded workshop with NO audience has a very different flow! I’m not sure how to best prepare for a scenario I’m uncertain about until it’s happening.”

Hosting these events can be a lot of fun, and build lots of goodwill among your subscribers, but getting them to show up can be a challenge!

Hopefully, this video is helpful. Every situation is unique, and every audience is different, so take everything I mention with a grain of salt and then apply it however to your process.