Spent the afternoon reviewing some of my older writing from a year or two ago. Some of it (most of it) is really good. Whether the topic was creativity, technology, or techno-philosophy I made clear points with coherent logical prose.
I asked myself: why didn’t anyone read it?
Platform and audience.
In the last 2 years, I’ve shared most of my writing through X/Twitter, where after showing up daily I found little traction.
For this and other reasons, I decided to officially move away from X/Twitter as my primary social platform. My social media focus is now on Substack and YouTube.
What prompted the move?
My patience with the shifting mechanics of the software and culture of the platform finally buckled and snapped. It took two years, but I realized it’s not the right channel for me or my creative work.
Videos, podcasts, animations, songs, trailers, entire books – I’ve posted all of the above and more on the platform at almost daily rate. And the result -while not completely ineffective- hasn’t been nearly proportional to the effort.
Plus there’s all the changes that have taken place over the last year that have diminished its effectiveness for spreading messages and connecting the right people to hear them.
In 2024, a bot account is more likely to engage with posts than a human. It’s a fight for a fraction of the reach I was getting in 2023 when I had hundreds fewer followers. Link deboosting is heavyhanded and kills any opportunity to connect with people who are interested in learning more about my work from finding it. Larger, verified accounts fear loss of digital and social reputation from engaging with smaller unverified accounts – the very accounts that make them big in the first place. Small accounts don’t grow at any sustainable or perceivable rate unless they resort to the standard pay or say the most engagement farmy platitudes or polarizing “hot take” tactics.
All this sums up to a place that feels like a visit to a not so friendly foreign country, where the air shakes with anxiety from a populous oppressed by the very measures that were meant to free them.
The country analogy works well here. Because like any newly formed nation, an ambitious leader sits atop it all.
In the case of X, of course I’m talking about Elon Musk.
Now let me begin by saying I don’t have a personal issue with him. But spend a few weeks on the platform (or in my case years) and you’ll quickly understand how much his presence influences everything from what is said to what gets shared.
Creators large and small invoke his name for a tiny boost. He’s regularly tagged in posts meant to praise and point out the failings of the platform. In the buggy Spaces, creators call his name as almost in prayer – hoping to spread the word. Musk-maxis while away hours on spaces circling complaints and congratulations on his genius, foresight, and (increasingly) politically adjacent stances by primarily conservative proponents of the platform.
Encountered individually, each one of the above were minor annoyances. But when considered in sum, they make the platform hard to exist in for a regular creator.
Why?
Because they take the attention from creators. They turn engagement into a reward for only those who pay monetary or complimentary tribute to the clique of Elon. Nothing else is effective.
This is the culture of X in 2024. A place where talking about the platform (positively) is the quickest way to grow your account, AI-powered bots engage and interact more than humans, and the church of Elon gathers worldwide 24/7 for service. Most big accounts who live on the platform think it’s normal – a sign of the future potential of X to be the center of the world (just you wait!). But close the app for a few days, you’ll quickly see how backwards it is.
Building or supporting a small business under these conditions is similar to attempting to grow a tree in hard malnourished earth. Not impossible, but unlikely without paying a tidy sum for external intervention or praying for rain from an unaware and uncaring god that will likely never arrive.
Things as they are, I’ve decided to move away from it as my primary social media platform.
As with most dealings with large companies these days, the loss of one consumer means nothing.
But, I know I’m not alone in what I’m seeing. In the last month I’ve seen a greater number of “Is this worth it?” type posts among my sphere. People I know personally are spending less time on the platform in all forms, unable to commit to the time it takes to make a difference for their goals. Even growth gurus are posting less, because there are fewer new accounts to bring into their ranks.
The number of regular spaces has declined. Many are questioning the bold dream the mighty Musk proclaimed for the platform when he took over.
Social media has increasingly become a treadmill for endless content. On X, the burden feels greater due to the restless pace of the platform by nature and many are fatigued with running. I know I am.
