It happened. I can’t say when exactly but it’s been a long time coming. I could say becoming a father for the first time was the catalyst but there was always this feeling. This sense of trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ but never really feeling like whatever I did was ever enough. Do you get that feeling sometimes? As a musician living in an increasingly social media world there’s always this expectancy. The algorithms feed off of it, the so-called experts tell you to do it (you *must* post x amount of times on this or that platform), everyone else is doing it and so you feel obliged to do it even though there’s this little voice inside you that’s screaming for you to stop. Is it really worth it? The truth is, it really isn’t. The more I did it, the unhappier I became. I’d get into arguments with my wife over how much time I was wasting on social media trying to get attention with the latest photo, post. etc. when, at the end of the day, it got me nowhere except in a downward spiral of frustration and bitterness.
So what changed? One day I just said to myself: enough is enough. I’m not playing this game anymore. I even wrote a song about it called “Real Life” (I may release it someday). In the beginning it was alright – sharing something and seeing people’s responses – but at some point it started to become a drain. A drain on my time and energy mostly. And then the pandemic came. Suddenly, everything that I thought I knew was thrown into sharp perspective. What I’d already considered to be perhaps trivial and egocentric about social media now seemed utterly meaningless. I’d start posting things simply to know if there was anyone ‘out there’. But everyone was too busy with their own problems to notice. At a time when being online became almost the only way to stay in touch with the outside world, I’d never felt so alone. Even the name “social media” is an oxymoron: because the algorithms are designed to cultivate the ‘I’, to find out what we like as individuals and to lock us in our own little goldfish bowl of pre-existing thoughts, interests and ideologies, showing us only what it thinks we want to see. Don’t get me wrong; there have been times when social media has been used for good. But does it make us happy? Probably not, but then that could be said for any addiction (which, let’s be honest, it can very easily become so). But I’ve read enough articles to know that I’m not the only artist who feels forced to feed the algorithms.
For now, this is the reality we artists are faced with and it’s difficult to imagine a way out of it. Do I still use social media? Well, I would be lying if I said I’m completely off of it. I still use it occasionally, mainly because I know it’s the only way to reach certain people and I’m not a big enough fish to swim on my own; and therein lies the crux. But sometimes it’s important simply to express these feelings even if there is no immediate solution. So for all you other fish out there who feel trapped in the social media gold fish bowl, you are not alone…