trying to reconcile with being a creative person online
I'm trying to reconcile with some aspects of creating. Similar to what I was saying before, about the pull of social media and sharing your art and wanting it to be seen. I started a blog on a site that is extremely barebones and is designed to be a corner of the "slow internet" or the "indie web." Anyway, despite this, despite me just throwing words on the page and posting it, I still felt the urge to keep checking after I posted to see if anyone had visited the page or read my work. That's a problem in of itself, this constant battle that I'm having with validation for the things that I create. But the part that I'm trying to reconcile with, or rather understand, is how the modern creative/artistic person comes to grips with their place in the attention economy and the issues it brings. Phone addiction is clearly a thing, attention spans are getting worse, don't even get me started on most of the evils that spill out of Silicon Valley and the hell it's causing to our privacy etc. So if you want to be an artistic or creative person, and you don't want to keep it to yourself, even if you're not trying to monetize your work or to cultivate a large following, sell your art, all that; how are we to come to terms with our art, if we choose to use conventional platforms, contributing to the overall decline of the human psyche? Even if you're posting very slow, intentional, thoughtful content on a platform like instagram or YouTube and have no intention of trying to chase trends or play any algorithm games to try and make your work see more people; are you still not part of the problem? I'm not trying to say that even most people on those platforms are ill-intentioned. I have my own personal artists and creative people that I follow and love their work. But I'm also a person who doesn't keep social media apps on my phone, I only check on my computer. I carry a notebook with me to track my thoughts so I can remember them or to jot down stuff that people tell me. My phone is a 2018 iPhone that I have no intention to upgrade until it literally will not charge anymore. I prefer reading physical books, I have been collecting dvds from thrift stores, I try to do most of my shopping for clothing through thrift stores or eBay because I don't want to contribute to the wasteful cycles. So when it comes to wanting to share my photography or writing, when I feel the desire to create a community and a place to connect with others, if I decide to try and share my work online, am I not being disingenuous to others because I am perhaps contributing to the issues that I stand against and don't want to be a part of?
Yes, there are people who use those spaces and make them less awful places. However, there still is the real concerns over data privacy, training of facial recognition software, the possible leak of sensitive data just because a sign might be in a photo somewhere. There still are real issues with social media and valid concerns for using it. So even outside of the objective nature of whether it's a character flaw to use them because of the way they're used by influencers and the attention economy, capitalism, whatever; there are the real moral qualms that come with what those tech companies are choosing to do with your information and data.
I'm not trying to say that I'm morally superior, or that I think that I can be some 100% purist. We have to make compromises within the systems that we exist in. I still have to drive a car given the climate of my area and the distance it takes to not living in a major city, despite my concerns for the environment. But this still weighs on me. And there's always that feeling of whether this is genuine concern, or if it's me making excuses to not share anything. Is it just anxiety? Maybe. Who knows.