Art and Social Media: Pleasing everyone is dumb
Let me tell you about the story of a newbie, a noob at art, that shares their art through social media.
This noob used to post whatever they felt like drawing, an actual drawing here, a silly art there, but they had fun doing what they wanted to do. Then, one day they post a silly art of a chocolate, which does pretty well on the socials they're in, so much in fact that a lot of people discover and follow them due to that.
This noob doesn't know what to do about this sudden influx of new people, do they keep doing what they were doing up to that point, risking that chance of sudden success, or do they focus on doing more silly art of chocolates, and maybe reach a wider audience? The noob needs to pick a choice quick, as time keeps on moving. They decide to go with what seems like the better option.
And so, this noob decides to focus on doing more and more silly art of chocolate, even trying other types of chocolate art along the way. And it works out! They went from basically a no-one everywhere to THE artist that draws silly art of chocolate, they manage to connect with far more people all around the art sphere, and overall become pretty known in this art community. But... Were they actually doing it for themselves and their passion of art, or because they wanted to keep chasing that seemingly never-ending high?
Sure, it all worked out pretty great social media-wise, but it was reaching a point where this noob was having constant struggles with their art, they felt restricted to what they could do, as everyone only knew them because of their chocolate art, with some people even doing their own takes of silly chocolate art. It became this noob's motto, it became what they were forced to do every day.
This noob was passing through some bad times. This noob felt limited to what they could do or say. This noob was struggling...
... Now, why did I tell you about that story? Because I see it happen to other artists on social media... I saw it happen to me, too.
Granted, I didn't draw silly chocolate art, but the rest is still pretty much true to what I experienced through most of 2023 and 2024. It all started nice and swell, but it can reach a point where you can end up hating your passion, losing your motivation to doing it at all.
For comparison, when I used to draw this topic before it blew up, I had around 30 pieces on that "series" made across almost 2 years. After it blew up, that amount tripled in 2 months, which is not healthy.
Most of my art blocks/breaks in the latter half of 2024 are because of severe burnout due to doing these constantly, and yet, I still needed to keep making more and more, I was starting to feel more and more like a machine that pumps out content rather than, you know, an artist? Even my friends started to become worried about me. This wasn't healthy at all.
It doesn't help things that I had to leave Twitter and Instagram around that time (due to the AI Training and overall worsening of both sites), and I needed to grow my audience elsewhere quick to even stand a chance again, so I fell into this spiral again. I even considered quitting art multiple times during these times.
At the start of this year I got a reality check, though, which made me realize something... I should, no, I NEEDED to stop pleasing to everyone with my art.
Trying to make art specifically for a bigger reach kills all the joy, all the soul of your art, it doesn't feel aunthetic, it makes it feel bland for you. And while at first it might feel better to do it to grow your audience, at the end of the day it'll do nothing but harm on the long run. It's far better to do art that speaks to you and grow organically than doing Silly Chocolate Art Number 145 to bring in more people, which at this point it doesn't even feel Silly anymore.
Does it hurt to have few interactions on your art posts? Yeah, it can! But at the same time, those people are actually passionate about what you create, and aren't there just to like your sillyposts and nothing else.
I feel like social media is to blame here, because of how most are built, they try to make you focus on getting more and more interactions, to always keep reaching more people, of which, am I the only one that sees similarities to how these relate to public companies? They always need to reach more and more growth to appease people, but they can just be lost at a blink of an eye for literally any reason. Why should we focus on being like companies? I don't want social media to become my job!
I feel like I'm going off-rails here. But if I don't focus on doing what I've became known for, then what am I gonna do? Well, since the start of the year I've went back to how I used to do art pre-2023, as in, doing what calls my attention the most, hopping from an idea to the other, doing it all for fun! and lo and behold, it's working out in some places, too!
Granted, not as much as if I focused on what became my "brand", but more and more people are starting to support my other types of works, and that makes me more than happy.
I'm writing this not only as a blog post, but also as something I have to look and read at if I ever feel like I need to go back to these habits. I don't need to, I never needed to.
- AnubiArts, does art that arts.