Image by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels
Pulling this from my drafts of memoirs
Over the past 7 months of repeatedly changing my view, this is what I’ve come up with.
I got Instagram in March of 2023, just 7 months when I’m writing this (October 2023). In that time I’ve gone from being an absolute noob in understanding people on the platform, to diving into DM’s and chatting with them on a 1-to-1 basis.
And I don’t like what I’m seeing.
Getting into the grind
At first, I thought creating reels was a great way to get exposure. Sharing your business & having fun creating catchy reels, but after the high of fun times I had creating these reels, the more it became… bland.
Like, I had to continue to put out high-quality content that people wanted as eye candy. Not anything beneficial.
It became a chore pretty quickly. Not thinking out what I was doing, just spending hours researching ideas and editing the videos.
And you know what, the videos didn’t even get popular! I got (at most, if even this) 100 likes on a post with 2,000 views on only 2 out of 15 I had posted in around 1 month.
The style wasn’t me, I wasn’t inspired. It just wasn’t genuine.
Thinking from a 3rd person POV though, all of this happened quickly. Mostly because of my mentality to learn quickly before investing too much time into it. But boy, it was a quick period of time for me to get invested!
People using Instagram are 2-faced: on one end they’re caring about their followers, and on the other side they’ll do anything it takes to take control of their attention… and their wallets with it.
Meta is known to take control of people’s fingers. In fact, since Facebook — a new era has arrived of taking away Gen Z’s attention into meaningless nonsense.
With this comes the disillusionment that an influencer has everything.
Behind the curtain, however, it’s much more of a rat race for the influencer than the person viewing their content.
Being a slave to the algorithm, with their followers blindly following as if the influencer lives the same life as the crisp, warm footage they’re portraying.
Behind the camera, it’s time spent editing footage and following the whims of the trends of other disillusioned people, which only continues in an endless cycle.
Grabbing the attention, keeping it there… is this the only way?
The transition from video to written word
Medium has been an amazing avenue to keep genuine attention where it belongs.
Sure, there’s some clickbait out there, but with the blogging area tried & tested, the way of writing seems to be legit.
Sure, you could say that there’s a rat race when it comes to grabbing people’s attention with thumbnails and hooks on Medium, too. But the content is much more well-thought-out, and if it isn’t, well — the paycheck won’t be as large.
This differs from other platforms because the growth comes from the audience’s interest; serving the best intentions of your audience rather than pounding your interests into them by means of aesthetic filters and get-rich-quick metaphors.
It’s a veil, there’s no substance in it.
That’s why I’m turning to writing because I have a purpose to bring genuity to my work without spending endless time creating reels that don’t satisfy my true creativity.
Has Medium helped you satisfy your goals, or is there another platform that has been better?