how can i say things? (questions for your online brain)

I've found myself increasingly discouraged to say things online that haven't gone through days of me overthinking them. I guess I'm having a sort of crisis about my online identity. Who do I want to exist as online? What kind of person do I want to present myself as? What thing that I can do well is good enough to publish or even monetize online? 

Like probably everyone born after 1980, I grew up with the internet being ever present in my life. We had a home computer and later also phones that could access the internet. I consider myself pretty lucky that my parents waited until I was 12 or 13 to allow me to get a phone that could do more than send messages. My first contact with social media was my friends in middle school* showing me their instagram accounts and telling me I should get one, too. When I finally got a phone with internet access, I used the instagram browser version to make a secret account because my parents didn't allow me to get the app. In addition to it being a time of my life where I had just switched schools and wanted to reinvent myself as a girl like all the other girls in my day to day life, there was an expectation to also curate my online presence a certain way. It was super performative from the very start and I think what permanently burned itself into my brain was: what I post online has to be presented in a way that performs well otherwise its not worth posting. I guess that's also just what the instagram algorithm encourages you to do but I think the pressure of conforming was more sustainably effective on social media than it was in a school environment. Once school was over I could leave. And when I graduated I didn't ever have to come back. But escaping from social media didn't (and doesn't) feel as urgent as escaping from a physical space. I can just make another account, I can easily block people, I can use different apps and try different identities on and off much more easily than in real life. It doesn't feel as restricting to exist on and yet, sometimes it feels like nothing could ever be as restricting as social media. Choosing pictures for a post can feel like preparing for the most important exam of your life. I constantly feel like I'm archiving my life and every post that I make has to represent my personhood perfectly. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is: lately (but especially since getting on spacehey) something has made me reevaluate the way I want to be present online. But it has also shown me how much power the need to be seen and affirmed online has over me. 

Posting on instagram can be fun, because these days I mostly post on my personal account that only close friends follow. But even there, I have subconsciously developed standards for the posts I make. Despite the fact that I shitpost and spam a lot, I still strive to entertain people. When nobody likes my story about what I had for breakfast I instantly feel bad and debate deleting the post because I assume something must be wrong with the post or people are getting fed up with me. The worth of my online presence has become tied to my self worth and both now seem to be determined in large part by the engagement I get on my posts. 

I used to post my art on a public instagram account but stopped in 2023 and haven't picked it up again for a multitude of reasons unrelated to this issue. But even when I was still posting there, even if I was really happy with my art, if the post didn't get enough engagement I immediately internalized that and thought it meant that my art was bad. Logically I know, the instagram algorithm is just a bitch to small creators, but I caught myself thinking again and again: If my art was only good enough, it could somehow defy this evil algorithm. If it was only good enough, more people would share it. If it was only good enough, it would make me famous and I wouldn't even have to try. 

I think there is this belief (and i have no idea where it came from) that if your art (no matter what medium/creative industry) is only good enough, it will get noticed. As if great talent naturally attracted huge amounts of attention naturally. In reality, it takes a lot of work to make youtube, tiktok or instagram's algorithm work in your favor - work that I don't have the energy or motivation for. And doesn't that just feel like a bad excuse!? Shouldn't I do everything I possibly can to be noticed by as many people as possible? 

But why do I even want to be noticed? Why do I feel like I need to and should want to monetize all my creative endeavors? Why do I need to want to monetize my creativity in order to reach people? 

All I want is to reach more than a void. I want to talk to people online for fun. I want to post my art online for fun and have people see it for free. I want to publish my music and have people listen to it without having to make humiliating promotional tiktoks. I don't want to become a huge artist, I don't want to be famous, I just want to be heard. And still, when I see people post their art online and get tens and hundreds of thousand of likes, I become discouraged to post my own art, knowing if I don't post regularly, I will never reach nearly as much people. Social media has obviously become a workplace, that's nothing revolutionary to say. But how do I become heard and seen at this workplace without working my ass off? If i never or only rarely come to the office, how will I tell my coworkers about the progress I made when my only point of contact with them is our workplace? Is it idiotic to want my art to be seen but not want to invest all my time in promoting it?

How can I say things online with confidence without worrying about it performing well? How can I say things without feeling unworthy of taking up space online because I know it won't perform well? I don't know the answer and I will probably feel bad after posting this because not many people, if any at all will even see this post, let alone read the whole thing. 

I've said it now - and maybe I'm speaking into a void but I want to share this, to say it as loudly as I can in this space online that feels less scary than any other, in case someone hears it and feels heard in return. 

And to satisfy the part of me that prefers natural rambling over curated texts, I will only read over it once before I post (this is a dare to myself). 

*or: the equivalent of what would be middle school. we have a different school system where I live but I think when I say middle school, more people understand the approximate age I was at the time (because I don't remember for sure).