The problem with not posting

I’ve not really posted much lately. (As for why, maybe another time). But one thing that has depressed me, trying to post again – to write again, to meme again, to emerge from the chrysaloid of invisible (and yet undeniable) creative work into the public world – is how fucking hard it is to get anybody’s attention attention back after being away. I mean that in a literal sense: the algorithms that now decide what you and I get to see prioritise volume, which is to say constant, unrelenting engagement. It’s not enough to post; you’ve got to post, and post, and post, and keep damn posting, all year round. Crank the chain, otherwise the algorithm will forget you. And once you try to get back on, you’ll suddenly find that reaching the same eyeballs is all but impossible. Attention is hard to win, but even harder to win back. 

This experience is familiar to anyone who creates, whether you’re a writer, a Youtuber, or a pop star. It’s the fifteen minutes of fame thing; it’s also the story of a lot of modern media brands. (Even Taylor Swift is churning out albums every year.)  

The invisibility effect is particularly depressing for those of us that used to have an audience, but seen those platforms fall under the control of bad leadership, or AI-powered fascist slop. On X, where I spent more than a decade building over 10,000 followers (OK, that feels pathetic to write, but trust me reader, it felt like a lot), my tweets now might as well be vape smoke in the wind. On Instagram: nothing. On BlueSky… well, is there really any point? 

If you’re a creative person, being invisible is basically tantamount to being dead. Your continued economic survival relies on the attention and largesse of editors, clients, hirers, and other decision makers holding the purse strings. Want an assignment? A job? A book contract? A record deal? Your posts better be doing fucking numbers, my friend. What is valued is no longer talent, but audience, ideally with a parasocial relationship that verges on restraining order. And to maintain that audience, hoo boy, you gotta churn, and churn, and churn. 

I thought about this recently, when IMAX tickets for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – a film already dissected and devoured through countless “leaks” and paparazzi photos – went on sale a year in advance, alongside a hilariously vague teaser trailer. (No please, remind us what The Odyssey is about again?) The tickets sold out. The same thing is happening right now with the new Spider-Man movie, which is filming in Glasgow, and being essentially liveblogged by Disney’s massive PR apparatus. The intent of both is the same: to feed the beast, to stoke anticipation, in order for audiences to still care about you in a year’s time.  Even Christopher Nolan apparently isn’t exempt from the ravaged attention spans of the algorithm. In today’s world, you’re posting, or you’re dead. 

The downsides of this (other than depression and burnout) are manifold. But the main one is opportunity cost: if you’re posting, most of the time you’re not actually doing the work. In Hollywood, trailers are now being cut before the script is even finished. In my own work, the amount of time I spent on Twitter in the last decade probably cost me a book or two. The very act of writing this post is distracting from any number of other, potentially more valuable endeavours, like working on a book proposal, or seeing my kids. 

But there’s another side effect that to me underlines why the slow creep of churn, this desperate clamour for attention, is so depressing: few of us actually ever benefit from seeing the sausage made. I don’t know about you, but if leaks tell you everything there is to know about a movie, most of the time, I’m less inclined to see it, not more. Books publishers know this – any good publicist will warn you that, while a extract in a newspaper is a good thing, doing too many will put off readers, who have no reason to buy the book afterwards. That’s why serials largely died with Dickens. A little mystique is important.

Who does benefit? The social media companies, making a killing off that ravaged attention span. That what makes the churn insidious: by prioritising volume, the platforms are essentially locking you, the creator, in to making content for them. Like Uber punishing drivers for missing shifts, you’re coerced into working for them, only without the benefits.

I understand the irony: this post is me feeding the algorithm. Maybe I’m ageing out of social media, or whatever we’re calling media these days. You might hear more from me after this. Maybe it’ll Do Numbers, and the attendant dopamine will have me chasing this high again for a while. Or, more likely, you might not. I might be invisible, but I’m done feeding the beast. It already ate me alive.