I have a conundrum. Something that I've been contemplating recently that I wanted to open up for a discussion to you guys in the comments is: Do artists really need social media? I feel like the answer is yes and no.
Now, let me explain. If you don't know me, welcome to my channel i'm Sophia Mitropoulos, I'm an artist, I make videos about art and art related things, and also some videos that have nothing to do with art whatsoever and just stuff that I do. Moving on.
I have had a love-hate relationship with Instagram for a very long time. For pretty much the entire time that I had instagram, I had my notifications turned off and that was because I wanted to be in control of when I used instagram and I didn't want to be a slave to my notifications and yet. .
. I found myself checking Instagram so many times a day. I had to put a time limit on my Instagram for an hour a day and I would pass it all the time.
I would just hit 'Ignore time limit. ' I would just do that all day long and over the course of it all I would delete Instagram from my phone and not use it and then within a day or two I would download it again and now it's been several months and I actually deactivated my account altogether, so that has been so far the only thing that has really stuck. I've taken social media detoxes before and i've been off social media for a couple weeks but then I always go back and I feel like I have this FOMO and I want to see what I've missed and I want to keep in contact with the people, but having left Instagram all together and deactivating my account and it doesn't exist and nobody can find me, it feels freeing.
I felt free for the first time. I feel like in a weird way, it's like you're off the grid and you're not just off the grid, but like unreachable. It feels unreachable, when of course that's not the case, my website is up online, I'm on other social medias, there's ways to access me and yet somehow by not having an Instagram it feels like I've taken myself out of the game.
I think there's so many good things about social media like connections and potentially inspiration but I think in the same breath, there are so many nefarious things about Instagram and insidious ways that it gets into your life and kind of reworks the way that you make things. So for me as an artist, I felt like I kind of transitioned away from being an artist and was suddenly a 'content creator. ' I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments, let me know what you think, what your relationship with Instagram is and what your relationship with social media is.
Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you hate to love it?
I think for a long time I told myself that social media was inspiring in that I would go on to get inspiration, but the endless scrolling all day I think more than inspired me bummed me out because I would look at other people's work and I would feel like I wasn't making as much work as them, or as good work as them, or as polished work as them, and ultimately I would just spend all that time scrolling instead of making and even when I was making, I was always thinking about how it would perform in the algorithm. And then beyond that, taking time out of my day to post it seems like it would take no time, it would take just a couple seconds to post it to Instagram, but then I would spend the rest of the day checking the likes and checking the post performance and making sure it was doing well and I think that totally was devoid from the point. It became an addiction and it became a need for self validation and so I think by not having an Instagram it felt like I was able to just unplug from all of that.
And the first couple days where I didn't have instagram, I was a little bored, but I was able to do things that I had been putting off for a long time. I started reading again which is something that has carried me throughout my life and was absolutely truly replaced by Instagram. I completely replaced reading time with Instagram and I think back to maybe like 2011 when I had an instagram account and I still would read all the time so it's like how did I strike that balance?
and I think the answer to that is, it wasn't as addicting at that point. Things were in chronological order, you could catch up, now that there's that endless scrolling and the algorithm has shuffled everything around, there isn't ever catching up, there isn't ever seeing all the posts. I really enjoyed posting Instagram stories because i liked the temporal aspect of it, that it would go away and that it was this is what i'm doing in my day, and there wasn't as much pressure for it to be aesthetic or you know polished, there was just like quick fleeting moments, but I feel like at the end of the day it still felt like screaming into the void.
There still was this feeling that I had to put something out just for it to be out there, just for people to remember that I existed and I don't know if that's really worth it to me. I don't know if you know when I look back on my life if I want to know that I spent 12 hours a week on Instagram, or whatever the number was. Did I want to have spent all that time scrolling because I think there's something fleeting about the way that you take it in, and there's something fleeting about the way that it's put out.
Like if you think about a book, a book had to be written, it had to be submitted to publishers, it had to be accepted by publishers, it had to go through an editing process. I mean, it required an extended period of work to get it out there, and multiple levels of revision and clarification, making sure that it was just right. And I know for a fact that while there may be a lot of time that goes into Instagram posts, it's not the same as a book, so why are we treating it as if as if it's the same level of quality intake?
I mean I don't think that we're treating it that way necessarily, I just reached the point where I realized that spending time on Instagram and going on Instagram didn't feel good I didn't leave those scrolling sessions feeling inspired, I left them feeling bummed and down and then I would close the Instagram app just to clear all my apps and open Instagram again. It was just this endless cycle, it's like that meme of the guy pouring water on his face in the pool. And my question is, is it possible to be a successful artist without social media and without Instagram?
I don't know if there's an answer and I think YouTube strikes a different balance. YouTube ultimately isn't really a social media in the same way that Instagram is because of its search engine, so because of that a YouTube video can have a life 10 years beyond, there really is an indefinite amount of time that a video can continue to show up in search, especially if you're making evergreen content that isn't related to the time or specific event or anything like that. Those things can live on for years and I think there's something special about that and valuable about that and I don't know if I can say the same about Instagram.
And beyond that we all know that facebook is nefarious. . .
I mean and it feels like when you get rid of Instagram that you're just unreachable, that there's no way that people can get in contact with you, when of course that's not the case my name is the same, you can google my name, you can land on my website you can send me an email, all of those things are the same, it's those like surface level interactions where you're talking to people that you don't have their phone number but you still have a relationship with them and I think that's probably the one thing that I miss the most is those kind of acquaintance Instagram friends I guess. Where you're friends because you respond to each other's stories but you're not close enough that you text or have each other's numbers. And that I miss, and engaging with other artists on the platform is something that I miss, but the endless comparison and the endless need to be posting and sharing things that I'm not necessarily even proud of just so that the algorithm can remember that I'm still there, I don't miss that anymore.
and I think about some friends that i've made in the past that don't have Instagram and that I don't necessarily communicate with on a regular basis but I see them every year and when I think about them I wonder what they're up to and then I think that they have achieved a sense of privacy because of their lack of an Instagram. They've achieved this level of 'I don't want to bother them because they're not putting themselves online like that' and I kind of admire that, and I kind of love that. I feel like it's kind of going off the grid digitally, and so what does that mean for my career?
I don't really know. But at this point I wasn't getting commission work regularly and I wasn't getting it from Instagram, that's for sure, so you know and it's hard especially now in 2020 because you're not able to make the same in-person networking connections as you could have pre-covid obviously because we're not socializing and networking in the same way, and without Instagram it's like how do you know about the zoom meetings? And what it ultimately means is I probably have to be more careful and more specific about how I'm networking with people and getting in contact with people and be more intentional about going to zoom lectures and trying to talk to people and stuff that maybe I wouldn't want to do because it feels like my social awkward.
. . you know my lack of desire for social interaction.
. . I don't know if i really have a thesis to this but unfortunately, the reality is that you do need to be online in some capacity as an artist, but I don't think there's one way to do that.
I think there's many ways that you can promote your work and be creative and become 'known' without Instagram having to be that thing and I feel like kind of the same goes for twitter, but twitter's not inherently a visual platform like Instagram is so it's hard to say that it's the same. And I'm sure like TikTok is probably the way to do it these days, like to get ahead of the game, if you just start making TikToks then that's the way to do it, but but even still TikTok still has that same fleeting energy of Instagram, you know, videos are very short-lived and things can come on to your For You page or into hashtags from a couple months ago, but beyond that they really don't have an extended life like a YouTube video does. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, do you have an Instagram are you thinking about getting rid of your Instagram?
Have you gotten rid of your Instagram? Do you get most of your work from Instagram? What's your deal?
Because for me I struggled with the Instagram algorithm for so long and even though I had my notifications turned off and even though I, you know, tried to be really regimented in the way that I used it, I became just heavily addicted to it, to the point where it wasn't productive for me to have it anymore, and by getting rid of it, I feel better and I don't think I felt better immediately, but I feel better now. I feel better now that it's been several months and i'm not scrolling on Instagram all the time- and yes, I do watch more YouTube now, but I also think, like I said, there's a lot more long-form thought put into YouTube videos, people spend the time to film and write scripts and create outlines and I don't think that Instagram posts have the same weight to them. Not that they're shallow, I think there's been some really impressive things that I've seen on Instagram that are not shallow and really insightful and really educational and inspiring, but it's like *snap* that and it's over you know, it's only a couple of seconds long.
You see the post on your feed and you scroll past it and you just keep going and that's something that's really frustrating as a creator to have your work be experienced in such a short form way, and it's frustrating as a consumer because it just feels like does anything have value? You know? Is there.
. . am I just?
I don't know. I don't know. So I would love to hear your thoughts, your opinions, your feelings.
Let me know in the comments what's your relationship with Instagram looking like? How do you feel about it, do you want to get rid of it? Did this inspire you to get rid of it?
Did you search up do artists need Instagram because you're trying to convince yourself that they don't? Because maybe if that's the case, you just start a YouTube channel. I hope this video at least provided some sort of new perspective, and I don't know it's something that I'm still grappling with, so I would love to hear your input and your advice and your opinions, and please give this video a like if you enjoyed it and you want to see more content like this where I talk a little philosophically- is it philosophical?
I don't know but you know where I consider things a little more deeply. And please subscribe to my channel if you want to see more art related things, art topics, art making, art theory, not really art theory but whatever this is- media theory media, conceptual exploration. There'll be more of that, so thank you so much for watching I'm Sophia Mitropoulos and I'll see you in the next one, bye!
