2️⃣091: Creators...the Death of Creativity 🥇

Don't lecture me about the ancient posting ways.

I was there when the first "Top 5 Friends" were listed 📜

I wasn't on "The Facebook" as it pettily rolled out across college campuses in the US. I was much too young for that at the time. But if you think about it, those of us who came of age during the early days of social media had an experience that will never again be replicated in all the days humanity has left (however many or few they turn out to be).

What I mean by that is that in the earliest days of social media, no one knew what the fuck they were doing.

We'd never had such a tool for communication at our disposal. Sure, we had instant messaging applications like AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, etc., and we spent time on forums and random chat rooms talking to people who should've ended up on To Catch a Predator. But no one knew what "posting" was all about.

Not in the way we know #Posting today.

We treated the first Facebook wall comments like extensions of our instant messaging apps. We had entire (meaningless) conversations back and forth on each other's walls. We commented about our homework, things that happened that day at school, and regurgitated stupid jokes we'd been telling each other in person for weeks.

Commenting on each other’s Facebook walls was a way to talk with your friends when you weren't physically around your friends. Although it's no big deal to us today, back in the late 1900s (as Zoomers now refer to the '90s), the idea of being able to speak with anyone anywhere in the world at any given time with just a few clicks was a crazy thing.

Before it became standard for everyone to own a personal satellite communication device, we had to call a girl's landline and hope her dad didn't answer the phone if we wanted to talk to her.

You had no idea what people were doing throughout the entire week. The only chance you had to talk to someone you were interested in from another school was on Friday nights at the mall when everyone went to the same movie theater. That was like our Stories. Instead of people posting what they were doing, everyone just went to the same place, hoping to run into other people they knew (or people they wanted to get to know better).

It went like this for a long time. Maybe you didn't experience it, but you understand the references. Boring food pics, classic Instagram filters, or Facebook status updates unironically letting people know what you were doing at that moment.

Speaking of Instagram filters, shoutout to Nashville, X-Pro II, and Lord Kelvin.

No, seriously.

There was also that time in my life when I was really into editing every picture with the Fade effect because a photographer I looked up to always did it (shoutout to Van Styles aka @stephenvanasco).

Somewhere along the way, all this fun posting and sharing about ourselves online morphed into something different, something sinister, something less about why we were doing it and more about what we were getting out of it. It became about the numbers, the views, the likes, and the engagement.

It stopped being fun and started becoming a business (a "Side Hustle" 🤢).

We weren't just sharing pictures and telling people about our days any longer. We were posting #Content. 

Somewhere along the way, it became less about love and imagination and more about money and fame 📈🤑📊

And that's where we are today:

The Age of Content🤳 

An age where that awesome video you saw of someone teaching you how to re-purpose old coffee grinds for a parabens-free shampoo & conditioner is secretly a sponsored ad meant to convince you to purchase the new Hyundai hatchback whose engine is powered by Dyson™️ technology. No, I don't know how that crossover makes any sense, but I'm sure it'll happen sooner than later.

What we used to see online was shared mainly because we thought it was cool enough to tell other people about it. We saw some awesome shit and wanted our friends to see it too.

Now, people share with the intention of having you respond. With the intention of being the person who you saw share that one thing everyone is talking about. With the intention of having so much "content" out in the world that it's impossible for you not to come across them on your feed.

Nowadays, people don't share with a purpose. People share because they feel compelled to do just that: Share (verb) — the act of sharing for the sake of saying you shared.

But don’t take my word for it 🤓

And this isn't referring to that one person you know from high school who posts way too much on their Facebook page.

You know exactly who I'm talking about. They were (kind of) cool but also (kind of super) weird. They had friends but were also a loner. People liked them, but they were also annoying. They had potential, but you couldn't quite figure out how or why.

That person is probably working some blue-collar job like a mechanic or budtender, where they spend most of their downtime on the phone reposting 20 news stories and 17 viral videos a day adding their own colorful commentary. They seem mostly harmless, but at the same time, they think the woke mind virus is destroying our military potential by lowering our enlistment numbers and putting us at risk for the eventual WW3 against China (also they respond to news stories about celebrities dying with “vaxxed???”).

Mostly, you ignore them and think it’s not a big deal. But you also question that notion when they fervently post that jaywalkers should receive the death penalty (if any of this describes someone in your life, send me a screenshot of their recent Facebook posts so we can bond over their insanity).

No offense to the crazy people I described above. They are some of the last true Posters left. They don't Post for the clout, fame, or all the money they could get from engagement.

The post for the fucking love of Posting ❤️

Do I like it? No.

Do I support it? No.

Do I get it? I wouldn't do it, but I understand why they do. And I respect them doing it for the love of the game.

What I really don't get is the point of sharing major news events on your IG story for no other reason than to let people know, "Hey, this is something that happened."

When that explosion occurred at the grain silos in Turkey a few years ago, it was one of the biggest stories in the world. It was all over every major news network. But many people still felt they had to do their part by putting up a @ComplexNews post on their story.

"Here's the biggest story in the world right now. I know you probably got 20 notifications about it on your phone. Still, I'm going to share a headline from a pop culture brand historically known for interviewing rappers and discussing streetwear to let you know it happened and people have died."

That’s what goes through my head every time I see a story like that.

They share this news without a call to action to do something about what happened. The event has no direct ties to the person who shared it, their career, brand, or personality. It feels like they shared it simply because it was a big news story and they wanted to add more content to their account.

Listen, I understand if your favorite sports team wins a championship, your candidate wins the election, or you're so excited about new music from your favorite artist that you want everyone else to enjoy it, too.

But when a tragedy happens with absolutely zero connection to you, and you're doing nothing to help (not that everyone needs to; there's not much most of us could've done for the victims of the blast apart from maybe a charitable donation), what's the point of even putting it out there? People are going to find out eventually. You're not doing the world a service by telling them before someone else does.

Not everyone is Jared Leto on a 90-day silent retreat that started on March 1st, 2020.

This brings us to the point of this essay, or our Thesis Statement as my English teacher Mr. Tifft would say (yeah, out of all the English teachers I had I picked him, I hope you’re living your best life somewhere in the mountains of Aibonito running illegal cockfighting rings, Daniel 👨🏼‍🦰)

People aren’t sharing things on social media because they’re driven by a creative passion to do so. They’re sharing because it’s the popular thing to do.

Today’s humans have an unrelenting need to fulfill the act of "sharing." The act of being involved in the conversation, of participating, even if their participation is passive and provides nothing to the conversation, to themselves, or to the world. We’ve gotten to the point where people believe they must share not because they have something important to say, because they have valuable insight, or because they’ve been asked to share by the masses who lust for their opinion. They share because they can, and if they can, why shouldn’t they?

And when there's no big news story to share? Then, we share anything we can think of. Again, not because we're passionate about it, but because we must fulfill the urges of the content-consuming machine.

The content monster is eating up your posts like Pac-Man swallowing little white squares and cherries without chewing. Except, in this world, the users sharing rarely get power-ups.

No, those are reserved for the stockholders and "genius" business owners who think they're the only ones smart enough to make the decisions that guide billions of people's lives.

If you want to personally enjoy some of the benefits of sharing all this content? Well then, you must become a Creator.

But what exactly is a “Creator”?

(Dragon Ball Z Voice)

Find out next week on 2UESDAY