My Social Dilemma

Can I talk about social media and what it’s done to us as artists? I’m so incredibly torn on this subject at the moment, but also endlessly fascinated by it as well. For creatives, yelling “look at me, look at me!” into the void is nothing new. However, we’ve now been trained by a few billionaires that if we aren’t constantly yelling “look at me, look at me” into their specific digital scrapbooks, we will cease to exist as artists and possibly even as humans.

I will come clean and admit that I am a daily user. Instagram is my current drug of choice. You may have even only seen this because I shared it on Instagram. I log at least 3-4 hours a day. It’s where I get all my art. All my news. All my Stranger Things fan theories. All my disc golf tutorials. All my sports highlights. And all the AI slop that I never asked for in the first place.

All I have to do is just slightly tilt my head down 18-75 times a day and drink whatever it wants to give me through a firehose until I’m not sure where reality stops and starts.

It’s a love/HATE relationship.

The love part is that I do genuinely want to show people the work I’ve made and putting it on Instagram right after creating it can be a mainline IV drip of immediate gratification and validation. I love the people I’ve connected with there that I may have not connected with otherwise. Artists and photographers that have become friends and colleagues. Bands I’d likely never had heard of. Large swaths of like-minded people reminding me that we are not alone in our fears and hopes for this world.

On one hand, I believe social media is currently helping to accelerate a cultural consciousness awakening that would have taken so much longer had we only the slow drip of mainstream media to dole out truth. Yet, on the other hand, it’s keeping us sedated and paralyzed with too much information. We keep hoping that justice will be found if we keep scrolling long enough. On any given morning I’ve taken in more information by 9 am than most of my anscestors would have absorbed in a lifetime.

As an artist, my best ideas have never come from seeing a post by another artist and being inspired by it, even though that does happen every day. My best ideas have come in the spaces where I allow my mind to just do what it was intended to do - think. Dream. Imagine. Rattle around until something suddenty pops out of thin air. And I know if I don’t give myself that time, it will not come.

Just as with scrolling and being overhelmed by news, social media leaves me overwhelmed by the art I consume. So many great photographers, videographers, painters, and collagers of all kind fill my feed and my brain with more ideas than I could ever know what to do with; leaving very little room for anything of my own creation to slip in.

So, what do we do with all this? Moderation would be a good start, but there hasn’t been many days where I haven’t blown past my own self-imposed hour and a half time limit. Just as with drinking, some people can have just a few, but I wasn’t “some people” then and probably aren’t “some people” now. Do we just jump on another app that’s not run by a billionaire goon? Would that solve the problem or only temporarily releive it?

How can we bring the online community and inspiration out of our stupid little phones and experience them again in real life?

I propose a monthly art class where artists gather together somewhere in person and maybe randomly draw an assignment or word or whatever out of a hat. We could discuss what that word or assignment might mean, and then next month we meet again and show each other the work we’ve made, listen to records, talk about the world— connect.

Maybe not THIS exactly, but something like THIS could help slow us down and connect just enough to start unwinding ourselves from these digital handcuffs. This is what artists used to do. Operate in secret, creating an underground society that could not be affected or penetrated by corporate interests. And I don’t know about you, but when I create something now, I post it almost immediately without even thinking.

Give me that dopamine hit of 32 likes. LOOK AT ME!

I’m tired of screaming that into Mark Zuckerberg’s ear every day. What the fuck does he know about art?

Let’s figure out how to connect and create slower, with more intention.

In Real Life.

I’m open and ready for it. And maybe that’s enough for the moment.