"Content" and the Engagement Wars

Intro

Ms. HausOfDecline got me thinking.

View post on Bluesky

Thinking about something artists (not her, she's actually tapping into it here, I think, more so the one in my clique) have gotten wrong for years.

The problem isn't that we call art content. The problem is that we treat art as content. By liking it, and immediately scrolling away.

Also, this like-scroll-like-scroll-like-scroll behavior is intrinsically (I meant intrinsically!!) tied to the way Social Media works altogether.

Social Media is Dirtier than the Dirty Word

First, the word. "Content". The word isn't the problem. It's everything surrounding it.

The word "content", in this context, short for User-Generated Content, just exists as a catch-all-word to separate actual human media on a social media platform. Ideally, such media would be the only media on a social media platform, but nah. Most Social Media is kept alive by ads, and companies have found that we interact with ads more when they're an integrated part of the timeline, not a little image/video/animation tucked away in a sidebar, somewhere.

You'll scroll into what appears to be another Instagram post—but it's an ad. You scroll into what appears to be another TikTok post—but it's an ad. That's why the term User-Generated Content exists. Some posts are actually made by us regular-degulars, and some are corporate ads in Social Media cosplay. Thus, some posts are User-Generated Content, and some are ads.

It's not the word we're mad at. It's the behavior.

We like, and we scroll, and we like, and we scroll, and we like, and we scroll…

…and IMO it's kinda our fault we're in this mess.

Kinda.

I mean we're the ones who migrated to the likes of Twitter and Instagram in the first place because [the audiences would be wider] and [we'd convert more engagement into sales]. We left the community galleries and personal sites behind. That part is our fault. The capitalism that inspired us to migrate, along with the platform enshittification for the sake of investors and corporate advertisers that happened around us, is not our fault.

It's complicated.

But here we are, in a world where information is endless, and platforms would rather steer us towards corporations and creme-de-la-creme content that is proven by like-count to keep you in the app for longer.

And in doggy-paddling through the endless-info rapids, we only have time to like-then-scroll-and-like-then-scroll or else we'll drown. Or something. We can't savor the flavor or chew on our food anymore. How am I supposed to savor the flavor and chew on the delectable art of ~800 people in one sitting if I don't like-then-scroll-and-like-then-scroll? Weird predicament.

"Well, what are we supposed to do?!"

Engagement Wars

In the olden days of deviantArt, when you pressed on the Favourite button, a tooltip would pop up reminding you "Don't forget to leave a comment!"

IDK how to record this animation for you because I doubt it's present on the current form of deviantArt anymore.

Let's talk about Likes vs Comments vs Retweets.

Similar to "content is a bad word and if we just stop saying it everything will improve", I will lead this segment with another Common Thing artists get wrong. Not a subtweet swear-on-my-life since I've seen hundreds of people toss out this sentiment into the world.

"[Likes are a useless engagement metric. If you really want to support an artist, you must Retweet* them]."

※ Or whatever else repost button the platform has.

Likes and Retweets both have their usefulnesses and their uselessnesses.

Likes

Useful for an audience that browses some sort of For You algorithm.

Useless for an audience that browses a following-list based algorithm.

Reposts

Useful for an audience that browses a following-list based algorithm that doesn't exclude reposts.

Useless for an audience that browses a following-list based algorithm that excludes reposts.

Useless for an audience that mutes a specific user's reposts.

Useless for an audience that browses some sort of For You algorithm.

Surprise: They Both Fail

On Twitter, I used micro-blogging as even more of a catch-all 3rd-space, and retweeted a lot of non-art-specific content. I can only imagine the number of people who muted my retweets. That option isn't on Bluesky yet, but even now, in an era when I mostly use reposts to boost art, I imagine I'm getting my reposts muted on-sight by a significant number of users, lmao. Like "shut up bozo, I'm following you to see when you post art, not when you point me towards other people's!"

Whether people feel that Likes, or Reposts, are the true Engagement Fairy of Social Media: I feel like there's this underlying idea that Engagement means that The Money Will Come or The Community Will Come. In truth, engagement guarantees neither of these two futures.

View post on Bluesky

Trust me on that. I wake up every day feeling like I got 7.8k followers by accident. I still live in my mom's house with spotty income. More likes, or more retweets, won't inherently earn you more friends, or more money.

And while I have hundreds of people I'd like to be better friends with, neither they, nor I, can coax the other out of the timeline and into direct messages where actual internet friendship can begin to grow.

View post on Bluesky

"So if both likes and reposts each fail to reach a subset of my audience, and neither of them guarantees community or financial security for me, what do I—"

Don't Forget to Leave a Comment!

Insert that humble, old deviantArt tooltip here.

"How the heck do comments generate money—"

Hold on, let me cook.

First, the friendship.

A Voice to Recall and a Face to Remember

Though I'm mostly speaking for myself here, I've had friends and peers echo the sentiment:

Silent likes and retweets are lonely as hell.

Tens (in my case, maybe hundreds and thousands in yours) of people high-five me and speed away in a busy street that feels like an ever-flowing river of strangers.

Commenting is stopping for a second, letting me see your face, and letting me hear how my art or blog post or whatever else made you feel, even for only 7 seconds, before you speed off into the street again.

Do that enough times, and I begin to remember your face. I begin to recall your voice. It's worth it.

I know it can be hard. Sometimes I feel like the comments I could be leaving are dumb, short, shallow, and empty.

But at this point, when the bar is as low as silent high-fives, a "pretty" or "nice" can do a ton to make you become a follower or moot I not only remember, but hope to hear from. Much like a patiently sat dog wagging its tail.

I also think that writing a "good comment" that is "not short" and "not dumb" might be a skill I can train with practice? To the point where I wonder what would happen if I forced myself to write a comment before liking or reposting. Even if I don't send the comment and it just stays in my journal as a comment-writing workout.

"Okay, friendship, shmendship. What about the part where comments make me enough money to live?"

I gotchu.

Reimagining the Quote-Repost

OK, so… y'know, I come from Twitter. I am also black.

I think, despite Quote Retweets being intellectually linked to black culture, activism, and community moderation, for there to be a whole discourse over Mastodon not having them (at one point), we're all familiar with quote retweets as a callout tool.

Quote Retweets have also stirred up discourse about EN-Netizen/JP-Netizen tensions. Y'know, when we English-speaking fandomers do those Quote Retweets like "I HATE HIM!!!! I WANT TO KILL HIM SO MUCH!!!! 😭💜💜💜" to express our cuteness-aggression towards a character a JP-Netizen drew fanart of, and after running a machine translation and losing that context, all a JP netizen can really say is 「なんだこれ？」

Both scenarios—quotes as callouts, and quotes with context collapse—have led to artists commonly defaulting to turning Quote Reposts off.

What if, in situations where someone's Quote Reposts are kept on, we used them, positively, to turn the silent high-five of a standard repost into a "Hey everybody come check THIS guy out!!"

A silent repost onto someone else's timeline can leave them asking, "Ok, you put this on my timeline now, I guess. Nice? Why?" With a quote repost, you get to advocate for your choice to put something someone might not have asked for onto their timeline.

For example, quote-posting a friend's comic can look like, "I loved this page! Especially the part where [blah-blah-blah etc.]". Or if you have a buddy running a Kickstarter, you can be like "[My friend]'s been working really hard on this campaign and they're almost at the goal!! [Their comic] is a delightfully charming read! You can read it for free before you pledge!"

The repost is no longer silent; you're advocating for its existence on your followers' timelines (if they even use timelines with reposts on them), and you're encouraging your followers to sustain your bestie's livelihood.

Outro

Genuinely, I think we're stuck with Social Media for better or worse. Ideally, we get the bulk of our fill for community, camaraderie, and a 3rd space, somewhere else, but we're probably stuck with it as a news/current-events space and a self-promo space. We're also probably not going to be making any drastic changes to the breakneck speed at which social media operates.

But, while we're here, I feel like we could at least make Social Media a bit warmer and friendlier. But that doesn't happen by removing the word "content" from our vocabulary. It happens by having more virtual interaction and conversation with both the artists (not just visual) who make our time online a bit more interesting, and with the work that they share.

I dare you to pair or replace your Like-button press with a comment. Even if it's one you write in a private space, just for the practice.

I similarly dare you to replace your silent Repost-button press with a Quote Repost. Use your own words to advocate for the original poster's art to your audience. Again, you can just practice drafting such a quote repost in private until you feel comfortable enough. But make sure you have one written down before you fall back to your silent repost.

That's all I have. Bye!