A 22-year-old artist and the era of no attention spans

When I’m in between work days, trying to let myself relax, I get antsy. I like to be working on something, and when I’m not, I feel like I’m wasting time. I’m not exactly sure why I’m like this, aside from the fact that it is how I’m wired; I thrive off a “job well done”. Or perhaps I’ve been allowing a social media presence to be the main driving force behind my level of motivation. Sometimes I wish I didn’t get like this, but I also think it’s really motivating to feel some invisible pressure to get things done. 

I can certainly find good ways to waste time when I’m bored, though, like scrolling on Pinterest and listening to music (the music part is never a waste), but I can never waste time and feel good about it. I don’t necessarily feel like it’s a restful experience, because I’m not consuming anything worthwhile that will stick with me whatsoever. 

This is quite ridiculous to me at times, how easy it is to sit and scroll while I am obsessed with so many things in this world. Why can’t I scroll a Wikipedia page about something I love, or just pick up a book? Or even watch a show? Because Instagram is easier. Stupid videos that make me giggle for a few seconds are easier. There are a handful of reels that do deserve attention, to be fair. That stuff really does make me laugh. 

I think one issue is that I am overwhelmed by options. I like watching movies, but I barely ever do, because I get so overwhelmed by which movie to watch that I’d rather just sit in bed with my headphones on instead. The same goes for books. My sister explained it to me well the other day when I told her this issue: opening a book and committing a few weeks, or maybe even a few months to it can be extremely daunting, especially before you know if you’ll like it, or be able to take anything away from it. It seems like a huge loss of time to read an entire book and decide you hate it. Watching a movie is a commitment too, but only about 2 hours or so, so that’s a little more acceptable. Same with a show. If you don’t like it, just ditch it after a few episodes. Sure, you could ditch a book too, halfway through, but what good is that? I just left half a book unfinished and now I feel terrible about it and feel like I can’t read and that I have no attention span and that I’m dumb and boring and disconnected from anything and everything in the whole entire world. But oh, Instagram reels are acceptable. Right. 

And why am I overwhelmed by options? Why does it seem easier to mindlessly scroll on Instagram and overload my brain with information? Consuming too many 10 second videos feels better than focusing for 2 hours on a movie. It’s addictive, and that’s what most of us are accustomed to now. But I am not always consciously aware of how overwhelming it is to use Instagram. If I’m gonna waste time, why can’t it be artful? Why can’t I take something good away from it?

Some days I come very close to throwing my phone in the nearest body of water, but the other side of the social media coin is that I rely on it for my career (or whatever you want to call it). Posting my artwork online has given me countless exciting and fulfilling opportunities. And no matter how hard we all pretend like we’re gonna get rid of social media and dumb down our phones this year… we’re not going to, because the world is not going to. Everything exists on our phones. I still need my phone to use maps in the car, or as a safety precaution any time I leave the house. And anyways, Instagram is supposed to harbor connection and community. But nowadays, does it really?

Lately, I find myself interacting with very few of the accounts I follow on Instagram. Maybe my attention span is totally wiped out, or maybe it’s how the content is fed to us. I see a handful of people I want to see on my feed, who show up regularly because the algorithm knows that’s what I want, and then I get sucked into reels of people I don’t even know and don’t want to follow. Why am I watching that? Why are there so many ads? Why don’t I feel inclined to watch stories anymore? I remember when I first got Instagram, which would’ve been 2016 or so, I would sit and scroll my entire home feed to catch up with everyone I followed. And then when new posts ran out, I stopped. That was that. It took 15 minutes. Now there’s so much explore-page content on a constant, endless cycle, that I somehow can’t even see the people I’ve followed for years. 

Because of this overload of explore-page and reels content being fed to us, my own content is being shown to fewer and fewer of my existing followers. Some people have followed along for years, and probably rarely get shown my content. You may be rolling your eyes, saying, “Maddie, why do you even care about numbers? You should be glad people care at all.” I am grateful and I am lucky, but I know this isn’t how it should be. It shouldn’t be this hard if I’ve spent years building an audience. Does any of this really, actually matter? No. But does my ability to build a career doing something I love become hindered by my inability to understand the ever changing, soul-crushing algorithm? Yes! Becoming “successful” as an artist by using social media is such a new concept, and I already feel like that is being taken away from me as I am approaching the time in my life where it would be the most beneficial to me. I know I should make art for myself, and not worry about what others see in it, but I want to make art AND pay my rent. Why are musicians allowed to want commercial success with album sales, and viral songs, while visual artists are seen as vain or artificial if they want to sell paintings? My talents exist in making things with my hands, and I have to chase those, because they indeed have value in the world. 

Another subject of this whole matter is being totally ripped off, because none of your images actually belong to you once the whole internet can see them. Back in December I posted about this regarding the fabric crowns I make, and that platforms like Pinterest and Tiktok—that rely on users’ reposts of other peoples’ photos and content—have continuously ripped me off, for a few years now. Many people had my back, which was very validating, but it also upset a lot of people. The negative comments filled me with so much dread that I had to turn off the comments, which definitely showed me I need to learn to let things roll off my back a little more? No matter how far you explain yourself, there will always be someone who just wants to argue with you. I don’t really know how those people aren’t more embarrassed, and I also don’t know how much longer our brains can all handle living through platforms as divisive as Instagram. It was so strange to me that people could find an issue with me wanting credit for my own content, but the way these platforms are structured has taught people that it’s fine to steal. Things move too fast to even wonder about any single image, and few see an issue with that. 

As a result of my content being shown to less of my audience lately, I’ve tried to switch up how I’m posting a handful of times to add some variety, allow myself to post more frequently, and keep things more interesting for myself. Plus, I am going to change with time; I’ve been posting my artwork online since 2018. But when I want to switch things up, to allow myself to feed the beast of the algorithm, it feels like nobody cares. I find that sometimes, some of my following doesn’t really want to see newer content, but rather something similar to artwork I’ve posted previously, since that’s what they’ve grown to expect of me. But why have they grown to expect that of me if they don’t even know me? @aimeefrance said it very well here. If we change at all to make ourselves a little happier to post, or “rebrand”, people become annoyed, or confused, and you tend to lose followers. You’re not seen as a real person (which is also how so much hatred can form). 

I find myself wanting to post more about myself, and to not be shy to post a selfie when I have a cute outfit on, but then I feel like a fraud, or too vain for posting myself alongside artwork that I pour my heart and soul into. People don’t want to see my face. They don’t care. I also know that patterning or posing your images in a consistent way is beneficial to the audience, because your posts become instantly recognizable, but I find it very hard to be this consistent. I think this is because of the fact that I make mixed-media work; a painting cannot be photographed the same way that a garment can. I also don’t have time to post a new piece of artwork almost every day, and social media expects artists to be machines. Social media is the opposite of how artists tend to work. It doesn’t allow you to take your time. If we are trying to utilize it to find success, we either have to make compromises to keep up with the algorithm, or fall behind. If I disappear for a month, the algorithm will force my existing audience to forget about me. 

I often compare this concept to other art forms, especially the music industry (because in my heart, I think I was supposed to be a rock star). It feels like musicians and actors are allowed to be vain, and allowed to be “celebrities” alongside promoting their work. Now, I certainly don’t need to be a celebrity. I do think, though, that musicians, actors, and creators are praised for simply being themselves in a way that visual artists are not. They earn fans and an engaged audience through just being them. I don’t think visual artists are “idolized”; they aren’t praised in the same way, or made to feel that they deserve success or have done good work. Is that for the best? And why did it end up this way when (not to be biased) there are so many talented visual artists that deserve praise and fandom? 

I guess what I’m trying to ask with this is: can my identity exist alongside my artwork? Am I allowed to be part of the world I’m building with my artwork, because it’s mine? Maybe I only feel like I want to post more about myself because I think that’s how I should be deemed as interesting to my audience. Or to put more content out so as to not be “forgotten”. Maybe I just want to be a cool girl. Maybe I am an influencer after all. 

So what is the answer? Do we delete social media from our phones? Do I focus on sharing work locally and hope “it” happens to me the good-ol’-fashioned way? Whatever “it” may be? A “career”? “Success”? Do I disengage from all of it and shift gears to something else entirely? Do I go get a REAL JOB? I don’t know. It’s easy to get all existential and freaked out, isn’t it? That’s not gonna help anything, either. I already know that the “real world” is more important in the art sense, and probably every sense. Local galleries and opportunities will help me grow as an artist and individual. But hey, what if there’s some collector across the world that finds me because of Instagram and jumpstarts a steady career that lasts me the rest of my life? So, yeah, social media IS impactful and important here. 

Comparing again to the music industry, musicians have had to approach music through the lens of streaming. Even some of my favorite bands of the early 2000s had to be wary of illegal music downloading and Napster and the introduction of streaming services 20 years ago, but the radio was still king, and CD and iTunes sales were still how those artists made money. The old and new systems in the industry had a small window of overlap where they coexisted. I think that was what Instagram was back when I remember first having it, that 2016-ish era. You could see everything you wanted to see, without being overloaded with stuff you didn’t care about. There wasn’t short-form video content yet (I will forever denounce Tiktok and what it has done to this world), Youtube culture was perhaps at its peak, and you could still find new people and new content to follow along with at your own pace. THAT is what we are missing now. That was social media as it was meant to be (and everything that came before that as well… I yearn to know what it was like to have a myspace profile…).

Maybe all we can do is be unafraid to spend a little extra time looking for things we like, and shutting out the things we don’t. Well, that isn’t always good advice. In the case of social media though…yeah. Do that. I especially need to not care what anyone thinks of things I post, because at the end of the day, it’s all for me, on my profile. The people who want to care will care, and even if the numbers tell you otherwise, there is always at least one person who really cares to see stuff I post. That should be enough. So no more overthinking. 

But seriously, let’s all care a little less, and also care a lot more about things we love, and be a nerd about something, and soak up every amount of information on it that you can, so that next time someone asks about it, you can tell them something that excites you and makes your heart beat a little faster. And when you see something cool online, like it, and stare at it a little longer than your brain tells you to, and tell the artists you like their paintings, and the designers you like their clothes, and the musicians that you like their songs and share the songs you like with friends, and share a funny memory from high school with that person that was in your dream the other night. No, you’re not being weird. And who cares anyway?

Please take all of this with a grain of salt. I don’t know everything, and you don’t know everything, and this whole thing stemmed from a total stream of consciousness, so all of it could be debated much deeper. And I’m as much part of the problem as anyone else. But this is what I’ve got, for now. I hope this can spark some good reflection in all of us. 

We’re all gonna figure it out. XOXOXOXO