Have you heard the phrase, "Everybody wants to be famous; no one wants to be good"? No? That could be because it's a bastardized version of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: "The problem of our time is that men don't want to be useful but important." Or maybe I read it somewhere and butchered it just for you. I don't know, and I digress.
Well, I'm becoming increasingly furious with my fellow creatives on social media, especially with the younger ones. And no, this will not be a "get off my lawn" kinda rant. It will be a "you're making us look bad" kinda rant. But I digress again.
Here's the deal: social media has made us fixated, nay, obsessed with popularity and vanity metrics that we often forget what got us here in the first place: the love for the craft.
And that has resulted in a bunch of "creatives" doing exactly the same thing as the others. I've seen the same Iceland photos, the same "cool transition" videos, and the same Wednesday Addams drawings. And the worst offender, of course, is creatives making the exact same joke/dance just to get eyeballs on their profile.
Another thing that I've noticed is a huge amount of novices posting absolutely every piece of practice they finish as if it was a piece worthy of seeing. Don't get me wrong, beginners should produce a ton of crappy work as fast as possible; that's how you get better. But they often confuse daily practice with "daily posting is the best way to build an audience."
And that's precisely my point. Craft comes before an audience. I love what photographer Scott Chouciño said in a video responding to "what's the best strategy to raise my prices." He said: "take better photos." How true. Craft comes before pricing, marketing strategies, and audience building.
Thousands of blog posts, tweets, and videos explain all the hacks to build an audience faster. But we need to ask ourselves: do I deserve an audience? Is my work valuable enough? Am I giving you something useful that no one else is giving you?
Going back to the main point: Nowadays, most people care more about being perceived as "influential" than seen as a professional or a master of their craft. We want the spotlight but don't want to do the work that makes us deserve it. The kind of work that happens in the dark when no one is watching.
What earns us the attention of others is the result of the hundreds of horrible first drafts piling up in the recycling bin. The hundreds of photos that didn't come out very well but taught us something about light or composition. A great song lays on top of the corpses of hundreds of ideas that didn't work out.
As creatives, we should be the first line of defense against conformity and sameness. And the only way to do that is to forget about amassing followers and return to mastering our craft. It's not pretty or glamorous, and it's a lot of hard work. But walking towards mastery will give us something even better than fame: purpose.
Do you know what's better than 100,000 followers on Instagram? Making a difference. Leaving a lasting impression on the world. Inspiring others to enter the dark forest where our souls are tested, and our swords are sharpened.
At the end of the day, the thousands of followers that could come to you from silly dances or recycled jokes are nothing but a trivial, hollow number on a screen. They are meaningless because you mean nothing to them.
I invite you to shift your focus back to what's essential. Everything else will follow.
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