The Validation Machine

I've mentioned to people that I've slipped (reluctantly) back into social media, mainly as a promotional device for my writing. Good or bad, we're in the era of talking about ourselves as content. Writers, being normally furtive, isolated beasts, aren't universally great at this. Judging from the number of people trying to teach (or sell) us ways to talk about ourselves, I don't think I'm the only author who struggles with the act of having something to say. [Gestures to this blog]

As part of the "well, I'm back on social media a little more now" conversation is the qualifier "but I'm trying to limit my own time on it." The machine has managed to dial in that sweet spot between our willingness to surrender our attention span and the ability to deliver entertainment. The landscape of my day job commute on mass transit has surely changed over the decades, going from a sea of newspapers and books, to texting/messaging, to pure consumption -- often with the volume up, so everyone nearby is involved in a shotgunning of sound bites. I definitely feel like the odd one out, usually working a sudoku on pen and paper. But judging from the number of other people who also have told me "yes, I'm trying to dial it back" it's possible we're approaching a bubble. From a promotional point of view, of course we all want those precious slices of your time, but from a human point of view, I'd just as soon seen someone else with their nose in a book.

I'm not immune to it. I've tried to be conscious when my "casual check on something" threatens to turn into "half an hour of swiping through linocut process videos and pottery turning." Even with non-toxic content like this, realizing I've lost a half hour of time to the old swipe-and-like is an empty feeling. And producing material that exists solely for other people to burn their time up feels equally empty to me. Is there real pleasure in feeding the machine and keeping the algorithm greased? If you're not enjoying it, why are you creating/participating in it?

We talk a lot about writing for the job of writing, not only because the reading landscape is shifting--books on the train are more rare than sudoku--but also because of the reality of connecting to people is just hard to do. You might toil away for a year or three on a novel and have exactly zero readers. Your opus may land before an audience of complete disinterest... if they can put down their phones and see what you've made. Swimming in the stream of content with the hope of snagging someone big is chasing validation from the machine, and it's a mug's game. As much struggle as it is, and it is a huge struggle sometimes, the act of creation in obscurity needs to be its own reward. Being at peace with that muffles the lure of the validation machine, of the drive to keep hustling content.

I'm paying more attention to those moments when my thumbs threaten to take over half an hour or more of my discretionary time. And I'm reminding myself that the pleasure is in the creating, but that I'm allowed to create what I want, when I want, for an audience of one, if necessary. 

🧩🦏