The problem with social media for artists & creators

on my social media platforms i would say that i have a decent amount of following it's nowhere near as high as some of the most popular people in the industry the online community or just social media influencers who are also in the same field but i would say that it's more than enough for someone like me knowing my personality and knowing my own personal goals and being focused more on my personal and artistic growth rather than letting numbers of likes and shares value that for me and now that i know what it's like to sort of have a more public platform i've personally faced the problems and the burden that comes from social media and i assure you a lot of these may sound like social media confessions [Music] hey guys it's cynical pinto and today i'd like to talk about the usage of social media for creators and in this video i'd like to talk more about the problems that can arise from social media first of all let's acknowledge the great things about social media it's great for exposure proving that you exist you can find a community that's like yours and in other ways you can actually build a community you can find career opportunities for yourself and you can bring awareness to problems to things that are happening in your line of work you can also express opinions and viewpoints that can also be supported social media has given me the opportunity to focus on my own projects to gain supporters for it and to find ways to make a living outside of my professional job many creators both professional and independent talk about the benefits of social media for their line of work always encourage it and i've encouraged it in the past but social media can also be really detrimental to our line of work too social media is undeniably addictive there'll be times where i just wake up in bed i turn on my phone i load up twitter and i just surf through all these tweets and comments and posts and i'll just keep scrolling and scrolling liking images finding funny images finding cool art and it gets to the point where i actually lose track of time sometimes i'll be in bed for like 30 minutes straight just surfing through social media and it really isn't just about keeping up with the news it's really just about mundane things like seeing someone post about their cooking or a doodle that they did time that i could have used to basically warm up for the day maybe go out for a run or maybe even just be productive at the end of the day i don't really remember most of those things because they weren't really significant to me they were just a time drain and if you're familiar with how social media works the media that you are exposed to cater to what you actually look at based on your interests the information that you gave the things that you've looked in browse for a long time it'll just relay more on that to you and can keep you glued you start defining the value of likes and followers to validate your actual skill or how good your work is there will be times where i submitted a piece of drawing that i'm not really proud of but it'll get like over 3 000 likes on instagram and then there will be an artwork that i was really proud of i worked really hard on and i would get less than 2 000 likes on instagram and i admit there were times where i really thought about things like oh man was this not good enough was i doing it all wrong did i just get worse in my artwork or in my art form and then i start thinking about the things that i wasn't really proud of yet it would get tons of likes and i would gain a lot of following through that and then i would remind myself this isn't something that i would see myself doing all the time it was just something that i just did and people ended up liking it i personally don't think doing the things that i don't want to do just for the sake of retweets and likes isn't a good way to view how i approach my own work but maybe the individual is only doing the things that get some more likes and retweets for a business plan so if it's just strictly for business of course you'll do something that'll keep that business afloat but if it's for artistic growth that's different and you should not let those numbers affect what you learn out of doing something if you just want to grow and learn just focus on that and this can also apply to whoever is following you so let's say you're being followed by a celebrity or maybe you're being followed by some really talented folks or some of the well-known people in the industry and from there you can determine how good you are based on who exactly is following you which i think is a pretty flawed view and it's also going to distort your perception of other people too and how you tend to favor or prioritize different viewers or followers in your social media if they're following me but they're not famous they're not worth it sometimes i see artists brag about this that some well-known industry person is following them back and they'll talk about that person as if they're friends like yeah we follow each other sometimes this might affect the way you do your work too so you might do the work that caters to them or the type of work that they're into some people are pretty desperate and i've personally been in communities where there was a rock star in this animation community so everyone just started copying his or her style and literally just tried to get their attention also you'll notice some really amazing artists out there who do great work but don't get as much likes as someone who is either mediocre or just sucks that's just further proof that skill does not always equate to the amount of likes and retweets that you get and the thing about likes and retweets and getting a lot of praise it's temporary that dopamine only lasts for like maybe a few hours to a day and you'll notice that even after that short amount of time you'll probably want to crave it some more it's addictive so you might fall into the habit of doing something just for the sake of likes faves and retweets and praise if you're not really careful it can start to slowly distort your perception of friends and people in general and i admit i've fallen into this trap many times too where i thought oh if this person isn't following me they don't see value in me as a human being and there were times where i see friends who follow other friends of mine but they don't follow me so i'm like wait if we're friends how come they're not following me back whether it's intentional or unintentional validating your friendship based on if they're following you back or if they like your work is also a really messed up thing if you think about it there were times where i made unpopular opinions and i've noticed my friends start to unfollow me and basically sometimes block me one thing you have to understand is people treat social media differently so if i have a certain point of view and i keep preaching the same thing again and again that they don't really agree with of course they would unfollow me because they don't want to keep seeing that on their feed but they'll still view you as an acquaintance or a friend it can work both ways too where if someone starts to follow you and they start to talk to you they're immediately a friend somehow that's just the fault of being too friendly or just being too trustworthy so because i personally face backlash online i have a very strong viewpoint on friendship and again it goes beyond more than just people praising your work who is liking your work who's just reaching out to talk to you friendship is deeper than that it's way beyond social media unless you're looking for more crazy dirty little social media can cause some unwanted anxiety there are many different things that i get anxious about when it comes to social media the first one is probably comparing yourself to another artist whether it's skill career or just life in general maybe you get some harsh feedback or really blunt criticism about your work that isn't really all that constructive at all and only kind of just builds up that anxiety maybe you're wondering why a post isn't receiving a lot of likes or comments or praises compared to other posts you made in the past or maybe other artists post or maybe it's just rottenness on the online community whatever the anxiety is is just making you procrastinate from you being productive and i realize a lot of my anxieties such as comparing myself to others thinking about what's going on in the world getting non-constructive feedback those are circumstances i know i can't control but the only thing i can control is to limit my usage on what's causing that anxiety and for me it usually comes from social media so i want you guys to think about what makes you anxious and if social media plays a huge factor in that like all the things that make you anxious comes from the social media scene or platform then it's probably good to limit the usage of that backlash social media has been a great platform for me to express points of views and to get support for it but at the same time i've also expressed some unpopular opinions too whether it's career related it can also relate to political views views on life and views on certain people i've made statements myself that didn't come from a place of malice or discrimination but it definitely came from a place of ignorance and because of that i still got fried for it i personally think that everyone should go through backlash at least once it's a very tough and hard lesson but it kind of does force you to reflect on yourself and really look up the things that you are ignorant about and it also determines how you decide to handle something like social backlash if your ego is too high or sensitive you'd be defensive and you'd attack the other person or you can be more humble and just move on and the thing about backlash is that it can spread especially in a social media platform so i know people from work actually look at my social media they look at my youtube videos and they look at the things i post and share and the more followers and people i have looking at my social media platform the more exposure it's gonna get and therefore it might be shared across the community i have a lot of personal opinions about politics about my career about my community but sometimes you have to ask yourself is this worth sharing how strongly do you feel about sharing this point of view at most times social media isn't the best platform for that and you might find yourself in unnecessary battles it can all eventually lead to ego addiction ego addiction can fall into many different categories being egotistical means that the world basically revolves around you or to put it in a more blunt way to be completely self-absorbed in this case ego addiction can fall into numerous categories the first one being you kind of favor your points of views more than others and in most cases you generally think that you're in the right the other is how you're perceived in social media or in the public eye the limelight whether people admire you whether they like you whether they look up to you you can also be obsessed with making sure that you're seen in a good light or how you want to be seen and in an egotistical artist's case putting value in your work by just the number of likes retweets comments and praises that you get on social media of your work another egotistical move that someone would do on social media and i'm guilty of this by the way is virtue signaling it's when you publicly say things that is meant to put you in a good spot in a good limelight to really show that you're in a good spot in the moral compass that people know you're a good guy or you're just a dirty little another egocentric thing that a person would do is to pick fights that they don't really need to be a part of and maybe they name drop and get their friends involved too this is actually quite common in the animation or art community but the thing about social media is that it can create things that aren't really that big of a deal or aren't really there so let's say if i send someone a message and it says that they see my message but they don't respond then i get all these weird thoughts saying oh this person does not like me this person hates me i'm annoying or maybe that person just really doesn't have the time to respond to the messages isn't really that much into social media or just through messaging through social media and even if they did have something against you maybe they don't see value in why they should talk to you then why should you let a person like that affect who you are as a person because you're constantly thinking that the world revolves around you that's what it means to be ego driven or egotistical and it'll build this unnecessary never-ending sense of paranoia you also have to acknowledge that everyone has their own lives they have their own way of dealing with things and if they don't want to talk to you that's more on them than it is on you let's talk a bit about exposure i get a lot of spam mails or messages from multi-networks on social media that asks me to join their network in promises for more page fees for more exposure for more followers that is just ludicrous the type of exposure that you get is not always ideal there's a general belief that exposure equates to getting jobs and getting opportunities quickly but sometimes i do get the wrong type of exposures i do get requests from really crazy people who are asking me to animate a full 30 minute pilot for just 400 or just shady business people and like i said the amount of likes the followers that you have does not equate to your actual skill and i have friends who have you know very little following on social media or who don't even have a social media but they get job offers left and right because they have a reputation outside of it based on their overall work experiences with different productions and with different people who maybe talk highly of this individual i also hate it when there are social media influencers that ask artists to do something for free or for cheap and just for the promise of giving them exposure to their line of work dude just do your own stuff and if you want to do fan art do fan art if that's something that you totally enjoy i would say make work that you want to do rather than doing work just for the hopes of exposure so if you're someone who is a creator who loves to animate who loves to draw maybe make music but also acknowledges that social media has been a problem to them then there's only a few ways in how you can solve it the first advice i would give is to just step away from social media and maybe not post on it for a month during that time i was a lot more productive i got to really flesh out a pitch that i really wanted to pitch around to studios for a mini series project i was also a bit more happier and less anxious because i started to see more value in my line of work and life in general outside of social media you should start to invest more of your life outside the social media scene whether it's sports going on long drives and visiting other towns playing video games with friends reading a book watching a show getting all these different influences and inspirations that are outside of popularity however this does not always mean that you can always do this alone have friends outside of social media i would say keep friends that are also objective to your points of views but also support your intentions and goals find goals that do not always favor social media that will not get you clout or will get you likes followers and retweets while that stuff is sort of nice to have that feeling that dopamine it only lasts for a very short period of time and it's going to be a rinse and repeat but the more you kind of step away from the whole social media mentality the less it becomes a thought and one final thing that should always be you know suggested is to undergo therapy or counseling all the time because you know there's more to it than social media there could be a more personal issue that you have going to therapy is not a sign of weakness maybe there's a really deep-seated thought that's actually causing you to procrastinate more or it's causing you to treat social media as this very anxious thing but it's also something that you haven't really figured out or really fleshed out in the past that needs addressing so to do that you have to kind of access it and talk through it and that's why i suggest therapy is a great one because these people are trained to talk to you and to point out several different points of views and to figure out why some of these thoughts create some actions and if you don't want to deal with social media at all get someone else to do it whether it's an agent of yours whether it's someone that specializes in social media marketing or even a spouse a friend or whatever a few of my close friends that i look up to who are really talented don't even want to deal with social media honestly it's not an uncommon thing it's becoming more common especially with people who are incredibly busy with their own line of work this video is not me saying that social media is bad but there are problems that can come out of it problems that a lot of social media influencers or artists or creators don't really talk about and instead they just keep promoting the idea of getting more exposure getting more likes do this to get more likes do that to get more views and following my final advice would just be not to worry about social media followers how many likes you get and rather just focus on yourself and what you personally want to do and the things that you personally want to do you'll probably do a better job at it and eventually you'll build your own community based on your own personality your own execution and your own methods not copying some tips that some person online gave in promises that you can get the same amount of followers too i also wish that artists who happen to be social media influencers do talk about the harsh reality of social media sometimes all i can tell you is to treat social media with moderation anyways that's all i wanted to talk about bye interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2d animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 75,288

Keywords:

Id: 7MeuVDmQBug

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020