Manifesto: An Online Creative's Social Web Dethroning

Preface for Leaflet

This is a mirror of the 1.0 version of a living document in the File Cabinet of my website. Living in the sense that, unlike blog posts, I expect to edit it quite a bit as time goes on. But I like Leaflet a lot as a mirror, so, yeah, I'm putting the 1.0 version here on Leaflet too.

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I know the Booskee gang reads my Leaflet pub, so just as a disclaimer, this isn't a denouncing of Bluesky and the people and communities I love or anything like that. :( Just a foreseeable-future move away from dwelling on it, living in it daily, and home-base-ing it so hard.

I still want to come to Bluesky to catch up and interact with my websiteless friends and peers one at a time, but I won't be as much of a timeline/feed scroller anymore. Moreso a profile scroller. Anyway, what follows is the actual document:

Intro

After wanting for so long to be recognized on the social web for my creative efforts, I finally managed to. On Bluesky. To my exhaustion and burnout. I approached the mirage I'd formed in my mind by following the illusions I'd perceived in others' curated highlights laid out before me. All was not as it seemed.

Though there were drops of community and aid to be found, oceans of attention left mere puddles of friendship and support in their wake. I drowned in feelings of inferiority, ineffectiveness, and overall lack of progress despite a heavy outpouring of effort.

So now, I'm reorganizing my beliefs and retooling my approach.

This manifesto is a living document that is bound to evolve as I learn more, but positive change starts with me solidifying a 1.0. Additionally, this manifesto primarily exists for me, as I feel like most other humans have a higher Social Media tolerance than I do. So feel free to ignore it if it makes me seem like a weakling. There is a reason this manifesto is titled An Online Creative's Social Web Dethroning. That creative is me. But, if it's of benefit to you, I'm glad I spoke my mind where my thoughts could be found.

Grievances

1. The UX of Social Media limits the lifespan of user-generated media.

It causes us to become compelled to make more stuff of lesser value in order to stay relevant and not forgotten.

Immortality of posts is often granted to those who achieve virality within algorithmic feeds and search sorting. But the pursuit of virality always comes at the expense of artistic integrity, and comes with the risk of context collapse from overexposure.

2. The UX of Social Media punishes those who attempt to create in solitude.

Seasons of solitude are great for cultivating one's intuition and connecting to their inspiration and true, inherent, internal, creative drive.

However, the most culturally relevant social media platforms, along with the cultures that surround them, punish those who take time in solitude to repair or reconnect with themselves.

Instead, we are encouraged, directly or indirectly, to post and scroll as much as possible, succumbing to the noise of what other, more successful netizens are doing and posting, or the most noteworthy things other netizens are reacting to. Often, to our detriment. We wade through others' successes as points of comparison, or world events to despair over (often with no organized action towards a solution provided by those sharing them).

3. The UX of Social Media encourages creating Micro-Posts and giving only Micro-Attention.

When MicroPosting, we cut our own art and media short of its fuller meaning and context to make it more convenient for others to consume. This makes the media we create, or adapt for Social Media Posting, less rich and vivid.

When DoomScrolling, the hurry to "experience" as many Micro-Posts as possible in a limited amount of time leads us to only give each post presented to us the minimum viable amount of attention possible.

All this leads to shallow, low-context art creation and consumption.

4. Context Collapse via Algorithms and Seed Audiences

Most FYP algorithms send posts to "Seed Audiences", random users with no connection to you or your interests, to rank how good your posts are at capturing the attention of general audiences.

The way algorithms share user posts to absolute strangers leads to context collapse, misunderstandings, harassment, and posts "breaching containment".

5. Unpaid Jester Labor

The structure of most social media relies on unpaid labor from creatives, who are silently tasked with posting user-generated media that's so entertaining and attention-grabbing that it sweetens the deal for consumer-users who have to sit through ads. The platforms then get the bulk of the ad profit. Some sites have ad revenue opportunities and "creator funds", but they're never a fair share of the wealth.

Art and creativity are labor, and under capitalism, existence is not free. Yet creatives are culturally expected to participate in Social Media Content Creation at the risk of going broke and suffering. Expecting any kind of compensation or financial support for work is frowned upon by consumer users as "pay-walling", as Social Media is where they go to be free of paid media like Cable, Subscription Streaming, Paid Art Exhibits, and more.

6. Social Media Discourages Genuine Communication Instead Encouraging Shallow Dopamine Button Presses

The convenience of a ❤️ button press relieves users of the discomfort of sending messages of encouragement to others.

Despite this, while leaving kind messages for fellow creatives and netizens can boost positive moods and foster relationships, ❤️s turn into numbers that are easily forgettable, and are minimized as users' engagement goalposts shift with their account growth or comparisons to the engagement metrics of others.

7. Quantifying Value Based on Metrics

The UX of and culture surrounding Social Media encourage quantifying the value of a User Account or User Post based on the engagement metrics it has received.

View, like, comment, and reshare metrics are often prominently displayed with little 1st-party ability to hide or disable them altogether.

For You Pages, Engagement-sorted Feeds, and Engagement-sorted Search Results suggest that posts with more Engagement are either more worthy of your time, or more capable of seizing your attention (for advertisers). In contrast, posts with lower Engagement are perceived as being worth less by comparison.

This is a dangerous message to communicate, directly or indirectly.

Theses

1. It's unlikely that Social Media can easily be collectively abandoned.

It's even more unlikely that Social Media can be collectively dethroned. But I can make the personal decision to dethrone it, as giving it so much importance is a hindrance to my financial survival and creative life.

2. Social Media, as an inspiration/interaction/self-assessment home base, is not conducive to creativity.

For all the reasons outlined in the grievances.

3. I need to engage in Art as a Spiritual Practice

The primary purpose of art is the self-expression of our experiences, traumas, interests, and fixations. If we deprive ourselves of the ability to express these, our spirit/personhood gets clogged, and we feel repressed. That's why it's important to make art regardless of audience or reception.

4. I need not let others' heavy Social Media tolerance invalidate my Social Media pain.

Different people have different brains, and different brains have different tolerances. That's only natural. It's not a failing on my part that I can't tolerate the grievances social media brings.

That said, a lot of what looks like Social Media tolerance to others is just confinement in the feedback loop. Or, people having strong boundaries with the medium in ways that the medium itself obscures.

5. I need to take weird approaches to my online presence.

I have to be willing to do outlandish and out-of-culture things to take care of my health and nurture my projects. No matter how much it may make me feel like an outcast.

6. I am no longer self-resharing posts to resurface them in the Social Media firehose.

If someone is too intimidated or inconvenienced to visit my website, subscribe to it by RSS, or sign up for my email newsletter, they're no longer part of my target audience. The distraction and stress of repeated log-ins and self-reshares are not worth being able to reach them.

It's not a failure on their part; it's just where their personal convenience overlaps with a major source of my stress and pain.

Once the lower rungs of my hierarchy of needs are stabilized, I can spare some time to make RSS and side-Email tutorials, but right now, there are more pressing matters at hand.

SRPs are madness-inducing because, in this case, one commits the action solely for the result: more engagement. Which, in my case, causes me to hover and obsess.

If SRPs can one day be automated in a hands-off way, I am willing to reimplement them. Until then, no. Anyone concerned with keeping up with my art would benefit from getting an RSS feed reader or setting up a separate inbox for newsletters from myself and other artists.

7. There's no such thing as "Bad Art". All art that expresses or communicates a message, aspect, or interest of/from the creator, is functionally, Good Art.

It's only once I log onto social media that I begin to think some of my art is "Good" while other art of mine is "Bad". When I stay on my website, I feel like even my old, less experienced art is "Good".

Explain this phenomenon to me. Then, explain why, given the existence of that phenomenon, I should continue to dwell on social media.

8. Social media has ONE core benefit: interaction, and ONE core demerit: Micro-Attention.

Death comes when I base my creative value off of interaction-based metrics in a world of Micro-Attention.

9. Narrower, more aligned audiences are better than sprawling, unaligned audiences.

The effort poured into building massive audiences always comes with the caveat that a larger portion of those audiences is unaligned with the artist and their mission.

The effort diverted into audience growth could be better utilized towards both skill development and project execution.

Principles

1. Make art, not content.

Art: Evergreen creative output that is intended to be thoroughly experienced and interacted with.

Content: Brief, second-long experiences that are made to be (and if not made to be, distributed to be:) button-pressed and quickly forgotten.

Many people only make creative output as content and aren't even aware of it.

2. Strategic and mindful usage is ok, but do not dwell on Social Media.

Market with post scheduling.

Browse and interact using the FollowDex.

Use a dynamic bookmark database to keep up with accounts belonging to people and projects you care about. (Especially those who underutilize, or refuse to build, personal websites. And, those who post exclusive content to social media platforms.)

Discover new posts and accounts by seeing what posts from other users people in your FollowDex were willing to ReShare onto their own profiles.

Leave when you're done.

Timelines and Feeds are attention traps, mood killers, and intuition blockers. Due to Social Media culture as a whole, and influence from bigger platforms, even the Timelines of the best Platforms are attention traps, mood killers, and intuition blockers.

Everything we think the Timeline is superior for—connecting with friends, keeping up to date with news, or passing spare time—can be better executed in bursts with other channels and tools. Stop using the timeline as a Swiss Army knife of information, and start seeking out specialized tools.

3. Don't overwork yourself for free, especially not to the benefit of platforms you don't control.

Throwing all of one's creative labor away for free all the time makes people not perceive it as labor, but free content.

In a world where everyone's needs were met, I'd love to distribute all my work for free, but it is what it is.

4. Create spiritually and selfishly.

I'll always create for the benefit of my projects, interests, and goals. Never in pursuit of what others'd find interesting. Unless, of course, the two directions overlap.

5. Create in solitude.

Posting is not solitude. Posting = scrolling, and scrolling = subjecting oneself to comparison and the disorganized input and interests of others.

There is a time for sharing and (organized) creative input, and a time for creative solitude. Inspiration cannot be fully realized without both.

6. Focus energy and effort towards where I'm sought out both specifically and with depth. Not where Micro-Attention is the best people can give, and where it's painful to be passed by.

Not on timelines, or in community messaging servers, but on my website and newsletter.

7. Share thoughtfully, but detachedly.

Release the compulsion to post in order to prevent being forgotten. Only then can I effectively choose what I want to post onto social media, and when and how I'd like to share things there.

8. See Social Media Posts and Profiles as a Backlog of Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are points of intrigue that all funnel those curious to superior forms of connection, like my website, or 1-on-1 messaging.

Genuine, positive interactions (comments, replies, discussions) can serve as the seeds to deeper, off-platform relationships. Another sort of breadcrumb.

Forget about the success/failure rate of a post's engagement within its feed-based lifespan. Hope that one post or reply will generate enough curiosity to make a passerby go "who is this guy?", scroll through the backlog in your media tab, and hopefully visit your website, subscribe by RSS, or send you an email.

9. Enjoy Art Privacy.

What kinds of art would I keep special to myself if I didn't succumb to the pressure to post everything in order to stay relevant to, and not forgotten by, Social Media?

Art need not be shared to be validated or enjoyed.

People who would forget me for taking moments of rest are not part of my target audience.

10. Have a personal ritual for the completion of Art.

Self-assess and reflect on the process and outcome. Treat this self-assessment and reflection as superior to all external reactions.