shhh dont tell the algorithm 🤫
into the algorithm 🕳Â
looking beyond the 12 inches from my device and staring deep deep deep into the algorithmicless voidsÂ
Hi Friends! How has summer been to you? Have you taken time to disconnect? Sit in the summer stew? maybe even get close to a body of water and breath with it?Â
I had the immense privilege to getaway last week and not look at 2302809 zoom squares or Instagram squares or really any squares at all. Disconnecting from Instagram and social media felt scarier for me than ever this time. I just started a new business in the middle of a pandemic and I am about to ~step away from the algorithm~. It feels gross in my fingertips typing this idea, but it was a real fear of mine. I love taking social media off my phone and away from refreshing for a few days at a time but this time it felt like higher stakes.Â
Instagram is a bit of black hole and energy suck for me. During the beginning of the pandemic and the weeks following George Floyd's death, I couldn't walk away from my phone. I can doom scroll for HOURS. BUT ALSO Instagram has given me and helped me maintain most of my adult friendships. I think it is easy to shit on social media but harder to think critically about ~how ~ you want to appear and show up there. And after five days away from my phone (only 5 days and all this STRESS. I feel like quitting smoking was easier than this). Nothing happened. No one cared. The algorithm didn't come to me in the night and slap me on my wrists. Nothing!Â
Marlee Grace asked on her Patreon this week "How do numbers, follower counts, likes, shares, etc effect you and your practice? I feel as though this is filed under what is uncool to talk about but I'm curious how it shows up?"Â
What I find funny in this question is as artists (humans) we're expected not to care, to be to-cool-for-school, but I feel as artists (humans!) all we can do is care A LOT. Who's listening, who's following? (omg who ISNT FOLLOWING!!). So yah maybe uncool to talk about how numbers affect our mental health and capacity for creation. But I am not here to be cool for the algorithm. I am here to try and be a human in tandem with Instagram's frame blessing my life.Â
So for now, I am still on Instagram, I talk a lot there actually. But I am experimenting in ways in which I can communicate and be of service to my community in a way that doesn't feel like a black hole or void, as Tavi Genvenson wrote "Who would I be without Instagram?". More on these ideas in the next few weeks!!!! 🎢🕳
I love you all, look beyond your devices today.
xx
phoebe
p.s
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