The Offhours #33: Content Machine
Thoughts on design, art and living life while being a creative human.
Ships in the Night
The great departure from instagram.
I’ve been thinking about the time period where the people that cared to follow you could see your posts, and they weren’t considered just your audience. Posting didn’t feel forced or calculated— just sharing and self expression, trying to make sense of the platform out.
Good times.
A tidal wave of substack and other articles have been written about the challenges and impact on artists trying to get eyeballs on their work with diminishing returns from Instagram and others alike. I’m not here to whine about for-profit companies changing their algorithms to boost their profits. It’s a by-product of having a captive audience. Instagram is (was?) a solid medium for the creative community to gather.
I used to post a lot, and I’d never seen myself as a content creator—but then again that phrase didn’t even exist back then. In their infancy, Instagram and Twitter are how I gained access to a broader designer/artist community. My visibility on these platforms and being within different creative orbits helped me gain friends, connections and freelance projects.
Instagram meant something, and it’s really silly to say out loud. At first as the algorithm and other metrics evolved, I thought for a while about leaning into the changes—but was I to become a content machine and play the game of the algorithm overlords to stay with it?
No thanks.
My priorities are different, and so are my goals. I favor the slow down, the reconnection with the real. I’ve discovered over the years the effects of workaholism and burnt out. The addiction to success is fleeting. The more, more, more nature of these platforms as they speed toward a plateau, is a rollercoaster I know I can’t remain on.
Folks who choose to go all in and flex with the times—go for it. No judgement on someone else’s choice to do what they do. I know how life was before platforms like Instagram were around, and I’m very ok with getting some of that back. Time will tell.
⏰ Linky Links - A mixture of articles, news, videos and stuff you may enjoy.
→ Listening: “Astrid Stavro on the Nice Work Podcast”. Stavro is a power house, she’s a world renowned creative director filled with gems.
→ Reading: “The Truth About Money for Kidlit Authors” on Janet Fox’s substack. I’ve had many a dream of pursuing publishing with an imprint. Excellent break down.
→ Watching: Artist Hugh Hayden in Studio with “An Adaptation of the American Dream”. I love how different sculpture artists approach their material usage.
→ Liking: “The Re-emerging Artist with Elizabeth Wickenden McMahon” on Finding Creative Ground. This post really resonated with me.
👋🏾 Hi, thanks for reading The Offhours, a newsletter on the creative experience outside of full time gigs, deadlines and self imposed schedules. You’re amazing, tell a friend. Stay Wonderful.
Loved reading this, Vaughn! It resonates so much with me. I met so many cool folks in the early days of Twitter and IG (including you!). But as things have changed with social media, I hit a point where it was no longer fun/helpful and was starting to severely harm my mental health, so I opted out. No exaggeration—one of the best decisions of my life.
I do miss some of those connections I made on there, so I'm happy I can still keep up with you and others via these newsletters. I've always appreciated your thoughtfulness about design and life, so getting these longer reads from you has been great and feels like a much more intentional way of choosing what online content I allow in my brain.