2022-01-26-1

Even though i try not to make art for the sake of posting it, I always end up seeking the gratification of getting likes and engagement with my posts and find myself unmotivated to draw if I don’t expect a piece to do well. It’s always nice to have people notice your art and engage with it, but with the way social media works and the pressure for artists to monetize their work to survive, the “likes” and engagement begin to feel artificial. Sometimes a stranger will like my 3 most recent posts or follow me without engaging with any of my posts. Often I’ll get mutuals liking every post I make. After a while it makes me wonder if the likes and follows are even real or if we’re all trying to compete in a system that prioritizes the quantity of engagement over the actual content. I feel like my art is constantly violated by the Optical Content Recognition algorithms that scan our posts to analyze for patterns for the sake of optimizing consumption. Is anything real? At this point I’m just posting for the occasional comment or interaction and hopefully people like it