A Love Hate Relationship with the Internet

I am not an internet hater. I’ll be the first to admit that without the internet I would have a much more difficult time earning a living from my little creative endeavors. In fact, it’s very likely I would need to go out and get some soul-crushing day job just to survive. But that said, being a creative in the internet age has its drawbacks.

I think the biggest challenge most internet-age creatives face is accepting that making art is just a small part of their job duties. I made this humorous pie chart to put things in perspective:

Yes, this little cartoon is a joke, but the truth is modern authors, visual artists, musicians and other creators are expected to also be adept at marketing, despite the fact that creating art and marketing art are two entirely different skill-sets. Much as many of us creative type wish it were true the Field of Dreams adage “if you build it, they will come” simply is not realistic.

Worse that that, we are tasked with putting ourselves out there on platforms where cute animals and stupid memes get the lion’s share of the engagement. Yesterday, I saw a talented painter lamenting the fact that a video he made of himself creating a beautiful work of art only received a fraction of the views of a video of a young woman doing a stupid little dance. The irony is that this artist is someone who has really harnessed the power of social media to sell his work. So, even the successful ones feel defeated by the challenges of self promotion.

At the same time that I lament the challenges of marketing one’s self and one’s work on the interwebs, I recognize that without modern technology I wouldn’t be able to earn a living from my little doodles (I’m still trying to figure out how to earn more than a pittance from my writing!)

I am a reluctant social media user, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what I’m doing. I have yet to crack the algorithms. I find my social media feeds overwhelming much of the time. It’s unlikely that any of my haphazard social media posting has led to a single sale of any of my works to a complete stranger.

So, if by chance you, like me feel lost and overwhelmed by social media and your task of marketing yourself on the internet, there’s hope. By some miracle I’m ekeing out a modest living from my creative pursuits, thanks to this miraculous internet thing. If I ever achieve Instagram/Twitter/TikTok/Whatever stardom, well, look out world! On the other hand, I’m not sure I really desire stardom. I suspect that might be an entirely different sort of headache.

— Alissa