How can I be less competitive about social media engagement?

lemmy_throwaway_1154@lemmy.ca to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 61 points –

Posting from a throwaway because this is something that embarasses me a lot. I'm an artist who posts fanart on social media but as much as I remind myself that fanart is just for fun, I should just enjoy myself and not worry about engagement, I can't get myself out of the competitive headspace against other artists who create content for the same media. I find myself getting angry at more popular artists who only do lazy doodles, yet they get showered with likes and adoring comments. It makes me feel like I have to strategize posting times, engage with popular accounts so that they will promote my work, draw what the fandom likes to see and not what I want to draw. I become a lot more negative and stressed out when I actively use social media, but without social media engagement I feel less motivation to make art. I have no economic incentive to become a popular artist, my career is unrelated to art, but the compulsion is there anyway.

I started to overthink online interactions because of my competitiveness. It makes me insecure when I see cliques of popular creators who are friends with each other and share/praise only each other's work. When I reach out to them, just to get to know them and not for self-promotion, they don't respond and keep talking to their clique. I know that they simply don't have anything to say but it feels like they are deliberately ignoring everybody who isn't a part of their clique. I know about extensions that hide the numbers but I care more about the absence comments and interactions compared to the popular creators. How do I get less competitive about this?

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I'm not saying you should do this but it would have been really funny if you just deleted your account lol

That would indeed have been a power move. But let's be real: I'm as addicted to this stuff as the next one. It helps to know how it works to keep it in check.

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