I'm thinking back on my use of social media now as a grown ass woman and just kinda getting shivers of both a sort of regret and a sort of anger about the whole thing. I've been meaning to get these thoughts out because I sort of do certain types of thinking better when it's a blog or something because I've been working through my emotions in blog format for like 20 years now. Like I opened a Blogger when I was like 12 years old. But where does this stuff go now? Can't go on twitter, it'd be annoying on tumblr, it's not on brand for the Unjust Depths site, so it goes here I guess.
Welcome. You're my Blogger now.
Anyway.
For me the trajectory of the past few years has been to limit my online interactions, not to increase my reach. I used to post a lot and be very opinionated-- but the fact is I've never really liked "people" (as in the social way that you "like people" rather than the theoretical way that you "like people" and want the best for them in political fashion). I've always had a short fuse and been easily annoyed. I was loud because I wanted to get attention for creative things I was trying to do. People attribute me being "chill" now to me basically just not posting anymore, or choosing to largely ignore things said to or about me rather than engage with them, good or bad. You can be sure I am still a little angry lady though.
I just don't post about it anymore. Or much of anything.
This has only made it more obvious to me how much of an effect just, shouting about your own stuff every day makes a difference to being "seen." I used to have a main account with a little over 1k followers on twitter-- almost daily I would exhort those followers, who probably followed me first because of a random tweet I made in passing, to please read my web novel, that I put so much creative effort and thought into. Oh but it is so gay and so trans and there is so much cool politics in it and I try to make the prose at least interesting no comment on the success of any of those things! I would think of different ways to word "please click on my webnovel" so that it did not sound exactly like that every single time. I would wrack my brain to think of things to say that would make the latest chapter sound appealing to new people. I would time posting with things like Pride and TDOV.
Obviously this is all happening in a very small scale: 1000 followers isn't anything.
But I asked a little over 1000 people to click and retweet and spread the word.
Many of them did! Many of them have kept doing so. Through constantly shouting about it I have gotten several fans and advocates that I am very grateful for. It is a testament to how much that shouting worked that to this day, twitter is still often the highest source of traffic to Unjust Depths, even though I have completely stopped using that account, and even though the official twitter account for Unjust Depths, that is still open, has not had anything to promote in weeks. It is because constantly, constantly yelling about my work brought aboard people who wanted to amplify that shouting, even when it was gone. They shout for me. Promoting Unjust Depths has become much more of a fan-led endeavor.
Because my shouting is gone-- I am never going to open main twitter back up. I don't like twitter. I don't like the environment on twitter. It's tense and stupid, unfun and annoys me. Hell, I don't even like a lot of the people who followed me on twitter! A lot of people annoy me there. But you know-- if you block everyone who annoys you, after a certain point, who is left to listen to the shouting? If you're me, there is a lot of people to block. Anyway I don't like twitter, and aside from the official account, which people kind of just use as an RSS feed because that's what twitter is to a lot of people, I am not promoting there. I don't do hashtags, I don't do trends, I won't pay the CEO of racism for views. I will at most use the official account to remind its 345 followers that the story isn't dead, or that I am dying.
And that has tanked my views-- but not completely, you know? People still look. I shouted a lot back when I was shouting, and the echoes are still bouncing around. People on twitter like the story, they still talk about it, and twitter is still the leading source of social views.
I do promote on other platforms, ones that annoy me less. If you follow me on Cohost you know I mostly promote things. I rarely say anything else. Even here I have just become the type of person who is not going to share my opinion on almost anything-- except I guess now, about this subject. I still also do this on Tumblr. I did a pride promo on tumblr. I pay for artist alley here. I do things here and there, but largely, I've retreated from public. I've lost my zest for posting about things. When I think about posting, I just "rather not."
Retreating from public, big name social media leads to certain very visible outcomes. Traffic for Unjust Depths is dropping, not precipitously, but it is. And when it rises again, it does cluster around times when the twitter account actually posts. It rises with promos. It rises when people post about UD on reddit or something. Essentially-- someone has to post about it, and then people look. I used to shout, people looked. If nobody is shouting, nobody looks. I've had to accept that less people are going to see my writing work. Less people will know about Unjust Depths, less people will read it. I'll never really be "seen" as an artist-- I was just someone who posted some stuff once upon a time and then stopped posting.
(People who are still on twitter, like close friends or even my wife, will sometimes see people talking about me in absentia as if I've actually disappeared, even though I've kept working on my projects and posting in other places. It's kind of funny. They don't hear the echo.)
I'm lucky enough that it is not my goal for Unjust Depths to make money-- neither enough money to support me or support itself (though, oddly enough, it does get enough tips monthly to pay for itself now). If I needed it to make money, the shape of the thing would have to change in some ways. I would need a product to sell-- either "perks" of being a fan on something like Patreon or "exclusives" that people might pay for, or merch, or something, something to sell. But also I would need to speak to an audience, to market, aggressively. I would need to put myself out there again as a personality-- so much product now is about personality and so many people want personality to know if its good to buy the product. And this would be effective, this would work. The thing that bugs me is that it doesn't not work, it emphatically works. If you keep being annoying people will look at it. Some people never will, but a lot of people, enough people, they do look at it if you never shut up.
I don't like it. I want to shut up about it. I'm shutting up about it. I've decided that I am done with promoting it. I am at peace with the amount of readers it has now. I am at peace with just disappearing I guess. I have a privilege of doing this, because there's so many people who must keep shouting about their stuff. And you know what, keep doing so. It works. It is mortifyingly effective. I want to tell everyone who is making something creative online. Just make social media accounts and be as annoying as you want to be, it works. I make a million word long web novel about underwater lesbian communists and a million other things and more people than I have ever met in my physical life read it now. And I'm nobody. And I'll be even more of a nobody now than I ever have been. It's truly crazy.
It works. 9 out of 10 people stop shouting just before a 30,000 follower account decides to promote your work to all their fans, or a subreddit full of the weirdest consumers of fiction you have ever seen decide your work is part of their genre and start clicking on it.
It works and it drives me batshit crazy.
(Obviously, I am still going to write the thing, I love writing extremely long, complicated and intimidating web novels, or I wouldn't have been doing it for like 11 years now. I will keep writing Unjust Depths. If you keep tuning in, there'll keep being more stuff there. I will probably also keep using the artist alley here just because I like that idea better.)
Now what will I do about my weird emotional repression that means I think about stuff better when I'm blogging about it or something? I dunno. See me about it next year.