Today, social media plays a crucial role in promoting artists. You post your work, follow trends, anticipate algorithmic needs, and gain followers. You become more visible compared to those who still believe in <traditional> ways of gaining media attention. Everything seems perfect. But where’s the devil? It's right there in those algorithms.
Impact of Algorithms in Distraction Industry
Right now, there’s an entire distraction industry, and its main tools are social media platforms. They absorb and incorporate all other industries: art, entertainment, movies, music — everything feeds into the endless consumption of content.
And then, you post your latest work on Instagram or YouTube, only to realize you didn’t get the response you were hoping for. You feel like your art deserves more. And that’s when things get interesting: to get attention, you need to start playing by the rules of these platforms’ algorithms.
Algorithms demand that you adapt. You start adding popular tracks to your animations, which don’t enhance your work and sometimes even change its atmosphere, going against your original intent. You begin creating pieces on topics that are relevant to the algorithms but have nothing to do with what actually concerns you as an artist. In the end, you’re not creating your art, but "content" written by the algorithm using your hands.
Algorithms aren’t interested in promoting new and interesting art. They need repeatable, successfully working templates. They want to keep users on social media as long as possible. So, artists are forced to churn out repetitive works to satisfy the system’s demands, not their own.
How Social Media Kills Artists Creativity
And here’s the vicious circle: you want to find your audience, to share yourself and your art, but you end up becoming a hostage of the algorithms. You create art for social media, but not for yourself.
In my previous article, I already wrote about how important storytelling is in art (here). But how much meaning can you pack into works that you’re forced to produce every day just to please the ever-changing algorithms? And more importantly, how much of that meaning will be noticed by users, who are accustomed to fast, shallow content, spending no more than a minute on your work?
Conclusion: F@ck Algorithms, Just Do Your Art
I believe social media is a powerful tool for any artist. If your artwork is truly great and meaningful, it will find its audience, who will notice it among the tons of monotonous content created by "algorithm artists" (and now by AI too). But you should think: do you really want to spend your creative energy working for lines of recommendation code rather than your own ideas?
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