|||
I’m just learning about this and thinking about it. My move to reduce my time on social media and Substack has led me down an incredible rabbit hole. More and more posts keep popping up - not driven by an algorithm but coincidentally in my email (newsletters), the odd tweet and surfaced by Lightpage.
https://amiemcnee.substack.com/p/you-will-never-be-a-successful-artist
Amie McNee says:
I flew myself on my own dime to LA to be on the Jay Shetty podcast, and that podcast made NO discernible difference to book sales. I got so much attention. Texts from people I haven’t heard from in years, people were like “wow amie, you’re blowing up.” The publishers couldn’t believe I’d got the gig. Attention was abundant. The book sales stayed the same.
To a much smaller degree, we’ve done this sort of thing. Chris has been on TV shows. Everyone thinks it’s incredible that we’re on the TV. 1. They don’t pay you. 2. It’s never resulted in any sales. 3. We had a few emails.
I’ve tried to explain this to friends and family. They rarely get it. But attention on TV doesn’t pay the bills. It doesn’t move any dial. At public events we’ve had one or two people tell us that they saw Chris on a programme. I’m not even sure if it makes any difference to due diligence or credibility. It just looks good on Chris’ about me page.
Amie:
We are now spending whole careers trying to make the thing that best captures the most attention, without ever asking ourselves whether attention is the marker we should be striving for.
Attention does not equate to sales. Attention does not even directly equate to impact.
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
Social media firms are] coming for every second of your life…And it’s not because anyone is bad, it’s not because anybody in this company has evil plans or is trying to do this, they’re not even doing it consciously. Their entire model is growth. They’re coming for every second of your life. We used to colonize land. Then they realized [let’s go after] human attention. They are now trying to colonize every minute of your life.”
Keegan Kelly • Bo Burnham Has Explained the Dumpster Fire That Is Social Media Better Than Anybody
