Social media is not for storytelling

I think about deleting social media and throwing my phone into the Themes every single day. I don't think this is an original thought; the name of the river probably differs based on where you live, but it is common to hate social media and not be able to live without it. 

Like many others, I miss a time when I didn't spend so much time online. Those times seem better and easier in my mind. But maybe I just miss being a child and not worrying about paying rent this month. 

Social media promises this incredible connection to everyone you could possibly think of - your friends, people you haven't seen in 10 years but miss dearly, strangers you find inspiring and strangers that make you want to gauge your eyes out - it's all apparently in our reach with online social platforms. But this wonderland isn't real; I don't need to explain that. We all have experienced the disappointments of these XIX-century connections. I often want to just disappear from the online world, but I know I can't. 

I don't document my personal life on social media, but I am running (or at least trying to run) a small business, and finding potential customers online seems like the most obvious route. This is where my beef with Mark Zuckerberg and all the other lizard people who own stuff comes in.

I should be so excited about promoting my craft on social media—this is where people find out about small businesses, support their favourite artists, and look for better solutions than supporting that one company owned by Jeff. So many small businesses have succeeded because of social media, especially TikTok. So why am I so salty about it? I should be jumping with joy that this endless source of people is available to me. 

Marketing yourself is the key to success. I keep hearing that "authenticity" is what makes or breaks your social media success, and you need to tell your audience a story that they will want to follow. And I want to believe I have a story - every single garment I make comes from a preexisting fabric that I sourced second-hand, and every piece of garment is inspired by something I enjoy looking at, something beautiful or just interesting to me. Sometimes I spend hours hand-stitching blue and green cotton yarn that I bought in a tiny village in Italy and making wave shapes reminiscent of the shimmer of a garden pond. I think that's a great story for someone who wants to listen. 

But most don't want to listen. Most people need to be engaged withing the first 3 seconds of the video they are watching, otherwise they will scroll away and never see your face again. I don't want to stuff the last 20 hours I've spent brainstorming, cutting, ironing, tracing, sewing and adjusting into a 15 second video. How am I supposed to make that "authentic"? It couldn't be further from the truth. I can tell you a good story, but you need to give me more than a few seconds of your time. 

Every single piece of media online is fighting for our attention. But I don't want that kind of attention. I want to be able to tell my story, express my thoughts, and not worry about whether I put enough cuts to make the video so as not to lose your attention. It's exhausting. Two weeks ago, I wrote an ode to slowing down, and now I have to make my TikTok shorter because I lose people's attention after 2.5 seconds. Can you tell I hate it here?

This is truly just a hate write; I find something so annoying that my instinct is to write 700 words about how much I despise it. Or maybe this is just a cry for help. But there are so many talented people that have made it, that have successfully told their story and not lost the plot along the way. Maybe I am just not one of those people. Maybe I am made to rant about silly things on a blog post that no one reads.