Social Media Drains the Passion of Artists, Here’s Why
Apart from making our lives easier through video calls, social media made lots of things to our fingertips like shopping and of course, art. Despite art becoming more accessible to its audience, many artists are experiencing the negative effects of social media. Here are some ways in which social media drains the passion of artists.
Artists experience immense pressure to create consistently;
In social media, sharing the process of creating an artwork depends on the artist. Therefore, the audience may or may not have an idea regarding the time and effort it takes to finish an artwork. Because social media is a numbers game, as they say, artists feel pressured to create to garner impressions, likes, or reactions from their audience. In return, artists feel little to no satisfaction with what they post. They also feel the need to exert more effort with how they present their works – from the background of the image to the angle of the picture – just to please their audience.
Social media is more accessible, making the artworks posted online more prone to be stolen; and;
Artworks posted online are more prone to be stolen even if artists put watermarks on them. Besides the issue of stealing, some artists also experience their works being reposted without their permission and acquiring more attention. Over the pandemic, artists began marketing their services online, offering commissions. The problem with conducting the transaction over social media was that they became more susceptible to scammers. More often than not, artists would encounter clients who would refuse to pay the full amount. Some clients would also pretend to pay, then phish for the artists’ personal information.
The algorithm of social media affects the attention that artworks receive online.
All social media applications have algorithms based on numbers like the follower count and the number of likes and reactions a content receives. To explain it simply, online content appears often in a user’s news feed if it is popular. An artist’s work would be seen more often if it has a huge amount of likes and reactions. This is why most people refer to social media as a “numbers game”. While this type of algorithm makes sense, it also damages artists who do not have much following. It directly affects the artists who are just starting on online platforms. Moreover, the algorithm changes constantly. Because of this, artists who do have the following need to be consistent. They need to keep on producing artwork to post online just so the algorithm would pick their works up and place them on top of the users’ newsfeeds.
Generally, social media have both negative and positive effects. For artists, however, it keeps them from creating at their own pace. But just like any type of art, the creative process requires a lot of time, energy, and courage. These things are what social media is taking away from artists: the freedom to create whenever and however they want to.
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If Florence is not busy with her school works, then she is probably binge-watching TV series and films. She finds it easier to write with the help of playlists she curated. However, she is still looking for the balance between fiction writing and journalism. Because she likes both, she tries to do both even if their techniques and concepts could not be farther from each other.