Are you there Internet? It's me, The Failure.

On social media breaks, slaving to the algorithm and feeling like a creative failure.

Accountability is one of the toughest hurdles to overcome when you work for yourself. You’re the boss, you are supposed to be constantly self-assessing and looking inward; and that my dear friends, can lead to neurosis and borderline self-obsession.

Anyone who publishes anything— online or IRL— knows the feeling; every project, podcast, painting, or performance is only as good as your last. It’s something that’s part of the game, but when the inevitable happens, and your latest venture doesn’t eclipse the last, it can be crippling. You can spiral into a vortex of self-doubt and want to pack it all in.

Even though this cycle, is arguably, a necessary part of the creative process, the approval of our peers will always be more satisfying than patting ourselves on the back. This is why, I think, social media has become a kind of open-sourced assessment forum where we prove to everyone just how productive and accountable we can be.

Challenges like 75 Hard come to mind, where some of the most annoying people you know (jk, kind of) embark on a journey of knowledge, fitness and copious water consumption for 2 and a half months— and they insist on reminding you about it, every single day, “for accountability”, on Instagram. Your favourite fashion Influencer might do 30-day challenge to get their engagement and creativity flowing once again. I started this newsletter to try and hold myself accountable to writing every week—and I could have written every week and put it nowhere, but of course, I needed that dopamine rush of getting subscribers, likes, comments and public acknowledgement to make myself do the damn writing.

What I’m trying to say here, is I am no better than the gym bro making 75 Hard his new personality trait or anyone else engaging in a self-made “challenge” where they just post to Instagram every single day. And, just like many of them, I fell off. I failed, miserably. Or at least that’s how it felt for the last 8 weeks 11 weeks since I published a newsletter.

I came in guns blazing, convinced that like every other online endeavour I’ve entertained, I’d stay relatively consistent with it. I cannot stand people announcing their next venture only to let it fall by the wayside a week later, or in my case after a measly 4 posts. Pathetic really. It brings out the most judgemental parts of my personality, I will admit, but don’t worry I do not exclude myself from the judgements, if anything I like to save the nastiest insults for me and me alone.

The reason behind announcing to all your friends, family and followers that you’re planning on committing to something—be it a fitness regimen or weekly newsletter— is simple; embarrassment is a huge motivator. Social media makes us all feel as if we are the stars of our own reality show. There is an underlying feeling that everyone who watched your announcement story or liked that announcement post, are having secret meetings discussing your progress (or lack thereof) behind your back.

Of course, nobody notices. I‘ve never thought to myself “Hmmm, Jessica never posted her latest weekly recap of Veganuary?” but you bet she’ll post an apology for slacking off. Nobody will care, but Jessica will feel like a failure.

It reminds me of when fellow creators feel the need to announce their upcoming “social media detox”, or apologising for being “so quiet” on Instagram because they haven’t posted in 2 days. Nobody ever notices—so why do we feel the need to announce it? Why are we so accountable to social media when we’d happily leave our best friend’s WhatsApp unread for a week?

I guess it’s the grim state of affairs that today’s digital landscape has handed to us; creatives publishing online can very easily fall into the trap of spending more time nurturing the algorithm than their craft.

I recently joined Threads, Meta’s replacement for Twitter/X, and I already feel guilty for not posting there enough. My feed is very strange, I don’t know whether they’re testing a new algorithm but it seems like if you so much as glance at a thread about a subject, all you will get for the foreseeable are threads about that topic. Currently, I’m being bombarded with threads about “cracking the Instagram algorithm”, either by self-appointed experts or those desperate for answers. They all say much of the same thing, to make sure you are posting every single day. It doesn’t matter what you’re posting, just keep feeding that algorithm baby!

Of course, this means of production is incongruous with creativity, but nurturing an idea into fruition is an ancient concept these days, now you have to get it out ASAP. It also must be attention-grabbing from the first 0.3 seconds, not come across as too try-hard and feed into some algorithmic niche, or you risk a digital flop. Even if your piece of content is technically amazing or your best work yet, if it doesn’t make Daddy Algo happy, he’ll punish you by hiding it.

This battle between the creative process and the digital landscape always leaves me feeling a little hopeless. Sometimes I feel in denial because there are people who manage to stay consistently productive and creative. I see them on my feed, regularly, because the algorithm likes them and their work is great.

I can’t help but think that maybe the essence of creativity is just evolving, leaving behind those of us with the archaic audacity to need days, weeks or months to perfect something. Historically those afraid of change are left behind and refusing to adapt to a new landscape is your first step out the door—so maybe the creative process has changed, and rather than only putting out our best and most polished work, we workshop publicly and consistently.

I think deep down we are all afraid of being forgotten, falling off in relevancy and fading into the ether—and now it’s not just our peers who decide whether we deserve a redemption arc, it’s the algorithm too. When we lack creative consistency and beat ourselves up for doing so, or even make a public apology about it—are we frustrated at our creative block or are we just afraid of the digital punishment that could be coming our way?

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Thanks for reading Chronically Online by me, Jenny Claffey.

Feel free to share my piece if it resonates with you, and leave me a comment below—I’d love to hear from you 💕