Over on the clock app I’m participating in the “let’s pay each other’s debts off” trend by following people, watching their videos all the way through, reposting them, and commenting on some of them. Engagement. The idea is that creators in the tier that can monetize their videos (if they have over 10K followers) earn money with even short views of their content, and some folks have done the math to know exactly how many qualified views they need to get the money they need to pay off their debts.
I’m participating and hoping I can eventually get paid for views. It would take a big big push for me, though, since I started with about 30 followers. I’m about 10000 short, give or take, from monetizing anything on that app. So it sort of feels like buying a lottery ticket in terms of how likely it is that my barely-maintained short video platform account will ever reach the lofty heights where I could see money from the program.
But I’m one hundred percent OK with helping other people out, so I’ll do my part. As long as I’m scrolling the app, if and when I come across one of those videos, I will let it play, tap some buttons, and say hello before I scroll past. Is it an indictment of our society that the vast majority of videos I see are from moms who are women of color? Seems like an indication of severe wealth inequality to me. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the algorithm showing me a reflection of my own biases and whatnot.
I’ve never really pursused social media with the idea of getting a huge following. I’m not entirely sure what I’d do if I had one, or how I would react. I think the social media account I had that had the largest following was my Twitter account, which topped out around 1400-ish? And I only got there because I joined in on a follow-fest by a group of writers who would make pushes for members to get over 1000 followers. It felt weird and did not feel organic, whatever that means.
This might be the case where I judge others by their actions and myself by my intentions. There’s a term for that mental blindspot but it’s escaping me at the moment. What I mean is, I see accounts with lots of followers and assume they got that big an audience purely through creating valuable and engaging content, but when I see that I need to join in follow campaigns where I’m getting tons of followers just as a virtuous feedback loop, irrespective of my own personality or content, I feel shame because it feels slimy. Ugh. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself.
This blog is my longest-running project and I have no idea how to grow the audience. On the other hand, if I had to change what I write or the topics I write about in order to get more eyeballs, that would not be worth it to me. I love having a place where I can just write whatever I like.
I’m glad you’re here, in fact. Thank you for reading this. Say hello if you’d like.
I’ll confine my sell-out to the clickety-clock app, I promise.