Why Write?
Part 4: Why Tolerate Getting Fucked by The Overlords of Content Like I'm On a Heavy Combo of Klonopin and Phenobarbital?
First of all, it’s always my initial inclination to assume every problem I personally encounter is all my fault, so just know I’m pushing past that trauma-informed predilection to pen this article. It’s not just my imagination that if you go back to any time before the internet, you’ll find a much more robust selection of rockstar authors. The further back in history you go the more we held societal prominence. I’m aware the gender and race ratio were also more fucked the further back you go in history, so I'm not suggesting we return to some kind of nonexistent Renaissance. I'm saying that in our hearts of hearts, writers have always simply been etymological artists whose often painful inner monologue would not shut the fuck up once it got started. We only feel whole when we engage in a trance-like translation of the cosmic signals the collective subconscious sends to our antennae for the beyond. Only when we become one with the story being told as we tell it will the howling hounds of hell in our heads give it a fucking rest for a bit.
Once upon a time, it was more likely you'd be given fame and fortune if your written voice was profound enough and you had the right connections. From what I’ve been told, if you want to pay your bills by writing you have two main options. You can either gig at a publication that has advertisers to please and thus certain expectations of your content, or completely sell out and start copywriting garbage to market some soulless corporation’s products. A few months back, a copywriter living in New York City messaged me on Instagram specifically to tell me that I had what it took to be one, which she assured me was a compliment. She went on to say she made good money, and at some point, I remember asking her if she enjoyed it. Somehow that led down conversational a rabbit hole that concluded with me accidentally convincing her to put in her two weeks notice. My perception of the editorial landscape is admittedly sparse, so perhaps there is an abundance of super easy ways to make a substantial amount of money as a writer while retaining your integrity and focus. Maybe there are plenty of financial opportunities for creatives and I just haven’t come across them. Granted, I’m only a middle-aged former junkie bartender. I’m 4 years sober, and sure, that’s a hell of an accomplishment. But I’m still poor as shit and Uber driving to scrape by, so what would I know about economics?
What I see all around me is a waning interest in reading novels. Or novellas. or books of poetry. At this often-perturbing point in history, it’s probably much easier—and definitely more enjoyable—for most people to play a game of Candy Crush than to read some odd collection of nonsense sentences or a long-winded story. Reading comprehension and writing proficiency have both drastically decreased in all American elementary schools across the country. That’s what a quick google search I’ve conducted just now has sharply warned me. Call me a Luddite or a technological alarmist, but I think it has something to do with everyone always having the option to check out with some mindless content in their pocket. With the advent of the smartphone shrinking everyone’s attention span to less than what a goldfish can manage, it's not necessarily an advantageous situation if writing thousands of pages about your own emotional nonsense is your calling. At least not if you're in it for the prospect of being famous or financially prosperous. Seeing as I’ve never even tried to submit my own work, this opinion was mostly formed from what I've been told by the freelance writers with whom I've had this sort of discussion. Up until a couple of years ago, I was too terrified to show my poetry to loved ones much less attempt to land some sort of public gig or get published. Based on what I've been told—and I understand this is a generalization and therefore technically wrong—it's almost always less challenging to generate capital out of creative outlets when you're wealthy and connected, as much as we all balk at the thought of it. All of your favorite rags-to-riches stories are the exception to the fodder. They tell me “That's just how it is—we can't all be Nicholas Sparks.” I'd happily settle for a net worth of someone like Charles Bukowski, honestly. I don't want much more than to travel and not be pumping out cortisol over imaginary numbers constantly. Even though it exploits most people's lives—including my own—an economy is such an absurd collection of ideas to be beholden to that with the right mood lighting its pure comedy. Then a wave of hopelessness follows. Then it's infuriatingly unfair and horrible. Then there's another wave of despair mixed with sorrow. Then I worry about how I’m gonna pay rent this month. Then I shrug it off. I owe a lot of that ability to the regular practice of mindfulness and the instruction of Buddhist masters like Thich Nhat Hahn. Even though I have no money, I still feel supremely lucky to have these little moments in my day where I’m just a wave of consciousness. To appreciate being alive costs you nothing. Regardless of how great that sounds on paper, it takes incredible concentration for me to regularly shed enough of my concern over petty irritations to cherish the gift of life—and a lot of it. So much of mindfulness feels like periodically reminding myself to stop and notice my existence. When I meditate it feels like I’m engaging with perception simply for the sake of it and, not to brag, but I’ve had entire hours where I was totally noncognizant of being a pawn for capitalist profit.
Fuck writing, though—it’s hard to make a living from your creative work no matter what it is. You could stitch the most artistically significant sequence of sentences you’ve ever scribbled in your natural born life together then pit it against the most fatuous selection of Tiktok content you could come up with and it still wouldn’t win. I tried to make a go of it as an influencer in the Instagram meme space for a couple of years, but ultimately, I just couldn’t psychologically hack it. Especially after receiving information from an industry insider about how the “algorithm” is more like a slot machine that’s been rigged. They sell you your own dopamine back to you like a shitty carnival prize in a near-constantly dissatisfying rhythm to make content creators constantly scramble for their next hit.
The fact is, I was pretty artistically successful within the medium. Every contemporary I respected was a mutual follower, and my work appeared in online spaces like the front page of Reddit and knowyourmeme.com. The problem—among a thousand—was my content was too disruptive for the algorithm’s liking, and I never made more than a modest amount of income from it. In my experience, it's not impossible to carve out a niche market online but it often takes way too long if you need the income to support yourself on it. Every possible creative market is over-saturated with content, so your best bet for engagement (AKA dollars) is to play to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately for my pockets, I have a brain that flat out refuses to play along with that kind of game for profit.
I had grown a following of over 130,000 people between two meme accounts on Instagram before one of them was disabled. The acid trip that followed led me to delete the app and go on an indefinite hiatus, but well before all of that drama, it was still impossible to properly monetize them. I was still regularly asking for handouts even with all that supposed exposure. Let's forget about the fact unless you're a celebrity they limit the reach of posts that are obviously some sort of promotion for a product or service for a moment. I want to continue to focus on my own problems. My content often skirted the line of acceptability in terms of the algorithms' antagonism towards any mention of sex, drugs, or controversial topics. They try to not-so-subtly incentivize you to adopt a less edgy online persona by either threatening to or actually taking away monetization tools after you get reported. Another aspect of my personality that cut into my earning power aside from a penchant for posting somewhat less digestible content than your average online shill is my disposition to defy authority. I constantly felt driven to wage war with the blatant censorship of the platform. It proves difficult to get a meal ticket when their algorithms operate like the fucking secret police of a shadow government. They were more or less constantly deleting my posts—even stories and comments—and my first response was always to lash out again. At some point, you get permanently put on some sort of secret naughty list. Every content creator on the platform knows it’s commonplace for them to delete even large accounts over nonsense. They placate IRL protestors in their direct messages with empty promises. If you’re not already a celebrity and you get caught uttering one sharp word, then that's it. You're permanently on watch. They will put you on a shadow ban, then deny it exists. Unless you’re Tommy Lee, then you can show your full cock on main without so much as a slap on the wrist.
It seems like the algorithm prefers messages that are positive. That is of course unless Meta needs to stimulate social unrest for Facebook traffic by fucking around with politics. The sheer number of charlatans running the blatantly exploitative machine their mobs of lobbyists have the balls to call the global economy can really bum me out if I’m being honest. Seeing gullible people getting taken advantage of can get pretty dark. I’ve felt a sort of impotent sorrow watching my conservative family members getting brainwashed by the likes of Tucker Carlson. Catching little snippets of my father yelling along with pundits on Fox spouting off intentionally fomenting bullshit on my way to the kitchen was not an experience I would call calming. But I digress, and besides, I’m not any better than him if I’m so easily tricked into throwing away precious years of my life in pursuit of digital applause.
All this stupid website has to do is take something you said out of context, then flag you as problematic. Now they have your back against the wall. Anything involving controversial topics, unpopular thoughts, or—God forbid—amplifying marginalized voices is denied any traction on the platform for the most part. Unless of course, it’s some boneless performative garbage designed to make Meta seem like a company that’s compassionate and honest. They rigged an election in Donald Trump’s favor 8 years ago regardless of whether or not their motivation was political, so how transparent do you think they’ve become since they were exposed and there were no consequences? How beholden would you be to toeing the line after you just walked out of the big bad courtroom with all the same people in charge? Even someone who’s barely tech literate could see those Boomers didn’t intellectually grasp the questions they were asking, and Zuckerberg invented fucking Facebook so I’m pretty sure he picked up on it.
I understand plenty of writers get paid well to write shit they don’t really care about. That’s not what I want. I want to write books of poetry and novels, and I won’t settle for turning something I love into a job. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it for anyone else, it’s just not what I want. I'm also not positing some self-defeating notion that no author ever makes a substantial amount of money off of their novels. Of course, hitting it big as a writer does happen, but it feels like the odds are probably somewhere in the range of winning the lottery. Even if it’s unlikely, I acknowledge that it’s possible to become a legitimate author who is compensated properly. I tell myself that perhaps I’m too fatalistic and it’s a breeze to write a novel that becomes a New York Times Best Seller without comprising your art. Immediately afterward I intentionally recall that it’s inconsequential whether or not my art is ever acknowledged. I always have to remind myself I write for the joy of the process—the bliss of letting my fingertips dance on a keyboard in order to feel God’s touch. That mindset has always left me poor as shit generally speaking, but I just can’t make myself care about making more money for some reason. Instead of rising and grinding, I wake up concerned with the nature of reality. Then—against the will of the rich people who own me—I put every ounce of energy I have towards my creative work until it’s gone, and I start falling asleep.
another prolific dissertation.
Such sonic articulation. Thank you
<3