A Large Online Following
Why I want one and why I probably shouldn’t
The only thing worse than being ignored on the internet is not being ignored on the internet. In recent months, I have found it soul-destroying to have put so much work into my output and apparently experience no organic growth to my online following.
My average tweet gets viewed by fewer than 30 people and liked by no more than one or two. This bothers me, but the cure is probably worse than the disease.
The Perishability of Internet Success
In the early 2010s, I had a talent for tickling the internet where it liked to be tickled. I wrote for a website called The Nanfang, where my job was to translate news stories from Chinese. I caused the site’s traffic to skyrocket and on one occasion, even made it crash because one of my pieces was so popular.
I got cited in the world’s biggest publications, and was followed on social media by most China correspondents and many ambassadors. This culminated in being the subject of a feature in China Daily for my Chinese-language songwriting. This also happens to have been the lowest point of my adult life, as I was underemployed and drinking every night.
I was massively active on a website called Shenzhen Stuff and sometimes its sister site Guangzhou Stuff, the kind of multimedia local fora from a time when the internet was freer and funner. I had plenty of great online and offline relationships through those sites, but I let the trolls get to me more than any rational person would, and did not have the confidence to fully work on myself.
By constantly seeking validation in the form of positive internet attention, I lost sight of the crafts of creative writing and music that were what really mattered. Now, it would take a committed cyber-sleuth to find any evidence that either The Nanfang or Shenzhen Stuff even existed.
I should be old enough to draw a distinction between what appears on screens and what is real. If one were to believe everything they saw on Instagram, then married life is all about looking divine while on a family holiday, and parenting involves nothing but play-barns and petting zoos.
When in my twenties, images of other people’s success used to make me feel inferior. Now I have the experience to consider the underlying hardship. Whenever I see footage of someone enjoying a luxury overseas holiday, my first thought is: “Whose chest did they have to shit on to afford this?”
Finding Music amid the Noise
The internet has a lot in common with a brothel, and to win attention on it requires demeaning behaviour. One of the early metaphors for the web was that it was like a city. The earliest cities after the Industrial Revolution were violent open sewers racked with crime and venereal disease.
If that is so, then Twitter/X is a rough inner-city where you must have your wits about you, Facebook is a posh suburb where everyone is outwardly polite but secretly judging each other, and 4Chan is a third-world slum.
I would like to apply these metaphors to my own approach, but most social media posts that get an enviable amount of likes and comments involve unenviable (and frankly unimpressive) things.
In 2023, I read Damien Keyes’ ‘A Rule-Breakers’ Guide to Social Media’. Keyes lists things that are currently popular online. These include engaging with celebrities, jumping on viral memes (eg TikTok dances), and having an instant opinion on every news story.
That year, this meant speculating over the fate of Nicola Bulley, later it was gloating about the Titanic sub, then it was moralising about the downfall of Philip Schofield. Almost all of this content is destined for the dustbin of history. It is great that some people can make a career of spouting unedited gibberish into a webcam, but having an instant opinion about everything is just not me. I’ve barely formed an opinion about The French Revolution yet.
The world has had its share of bad newspaper opinion pieces, but at least these are approved by an editor and proofread. Now everyone is free to air an opinion about everything, and as Charlie Brooker wrote in the greatest opinion piece in history:
Increased Attention Means Increased Negative Attention
There is a quietly wise line in the movie ‘Cool Runnings’, where John Candy says: “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you feel worthless without one, you’ll feel worthless with one.” I feel a similar way about fame and fortune.
When disparaging Twitter in 2012, Jonathan Franzen said at a literary festival: “People I care about are readers … particularly serious readers and writers, these are my people. And we do not like to yak about ourselves."
I wouldn’t put it in such lofty terms, but what excites me is not attention, it is craftsmanship. That is the journey from an abstract idea to a magical onstage moment, or a literary work one can be proud of.
I still care too much about validation, and for that reason, if I were to become anything resembling a celebrity, I would probably be overly bothered by online hate comments. One should not forget that internet trolls are the scum of the earth. I miss the old-fashioned kinds of haters, who ran the risk of a punch in the nose.
Both the world and the internet are vastly changed since a decade ago. It's pretty evident to me that the main and only deeper purpose to me of it anymore, as it continues to degrade into self-referential AI bot wasteland pointlessness, is to use it as a way to get offline as quickly as possible, and serve as a pointer for real life connections and experiences, that's mostly it at this point. All signs point to analog. 3 cheers for the destruction of the fake internet!
“A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you feel worthless without one, you’ll feel worthless with one.” This is such a powerful quote, and the parallel you draw to fame and fortune is one so many of us can resonate with. You've put into words something I've been thinking about but unable to articulate for quite some time. Nearly a. year ago I made a conscious decision to cease active engagement on social media, which meant no posting, commenting etc. For me, the only purpose it serves now is as a digital bill board where people can find my stuff, as a messaging service where I can communicate with other creatives and fans who engage with my work, and occasionally as a medium for discovery, where I passively (but mindfully) consume content and find new things that interest me. The key thing for me is to cease active engagement (for the time being and possibly the foreseeable future), and while this comes at a cost in terms of limited opportunities to promote my creative exploits, the benefits to my mental health and well being are immeasurable. When I think of the cost-benefit analysis this way, it's a no-brainer.