“If you’re posting on social media or any platform with an algorithm, the real question is: do you work for the algorithm or are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?”
I love this; “are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?”
I’m off social media because I don’t want an algorithm shoving garbage into my eyeballs every minute. Sure, there’s sometimes a sliver of good stuff, but I’m no longer interested in sifting through garbage. Not for anything.
Some people are afraid to leave social media. Literally fearful. It’s the FOMO, not being up to date, missing what friend’s are doing.
I do quite well not knowing what my friends are eating for breakfast, thank you.
I’ve heard the song a million times, but hearing guitarist Joe Gore talk about it just gives it so much depth. Like, I can’t even imagine standing in the same room with Tom Waits, let alone making music with the man, and hearing Joe talk like that – even with all his knowledge and skill – it’s just so heavy.
Love the concept of turning the artists into amateurs… using “inferior” equipment, no time to really come up with parts, everything in two takes, and Tom needs to be done by 5 so he can be home with his kids. Man. This is a great interview.
We talk a lot about not letting algorithms and AI take creative jobs – yet somehow we let robots curate “best of” lists and become tastemakers of music and media and art.
We subscribe to cool / smart / interesting people, right?
Then go to their Substack profile and dig through their subscriptions.
Dig around and find some blogs, click on the links in their posts – discover something new, fresh, and interesting from an actual human instead of a computer.
“The reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”
If you want a guarantee, buy a hammer.
Stop looking for tricks. There is no shortcut. There’s no “one size fits all.”
Make a painting, a photograph, a sad song, teach a course, call an old friend, dance like no one’s watching, cuz no one cares more than you do, so you might as well get to it.
Rather than driving traffic to their own website – a place where they control the branding, the story, the message – they settle for this:
“But Seth, if someone wants to know more they can just click the link!”
That post on Twitter has basically 3 MILLION VIEWS, and if they’re lucky 1% clicked that link, which is 30,000 people.
On the internet you get ONE SHOT to pull someone. Making them click a link to somewhere else might sound like it’s not a big deal, but you can’t be clicking links all day either – there’s just not enough hours in the day.
I’d like if I could just send the link to the Procreate page, so a friend could check out that video, or at least skim the text to see their stance on AI.
I bet Procreate would like to have 3 MILLION PAGE VIEWS, too.
But Procreate will fine. They have lot of smart people working on this stuff, I get it.
So, let this be a lesson for you as a smaller business or artist—your video probably isn’t getting 3 million views, which means you won’t get 30,000 clicks to your website either.
I’m not saying don’t post it on Twitter, but put the video on your website, too!
P.S. my god, the video isn’t even on the Procreate YouTube channel (they haven’t uploaded a video in almost a year), which is only the second largest social network on the planet.
Self promotion* is masturbation. Now, self destruction?
Yes, that’s a *slight tweak to the original dialogue, but in the spirit of my anti-social media mission (and the founder of the Social Media Escape Club) I’ll allow it.
At this point, it’s not even self-promotion – it’s tap dancing, juggling, or card tricks in Times Square, along with 900 million other creative people doing the same.
