
I Deleted All of My Social Media and 60,000 Followers - SamWhited
https://petapixel.com/2019/02/19/why-i-deleted-all-of-my-social-media-and-60000-followers/
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et1337
I took a photography class from this guy! Ohio represent!

On topic: I've experienced exactly what he's talking about in the field of
indie game development. The entire gamedev industry is on Twitter. It was an
endless treadmill of validation seeking for me. At first it's screaming into
the void, then it's strategically following and unfollowing people, then
eventually it's one mega tweet that gets retweeted by your childhood hero or
one of the cool indie illuminati kids. It's never enough and you're never
happy.

There's a super indie hip event in LA called IndieCade that I've probably
spent $250 in application fees over the years trying to get my game into. I
was devastated every time I got rejected. A couple months ago I got tickets
for free, and coming from a fresh perspective outside the industry, it was
shockingly underwhelming. There was a dad with 13-year-old daughters showing
off a painfully amateur interactive fiction they wrote as a family. I couldn't
believe THIS was the thing I had cared about so much.

Whatever industry bubble you're in... it's not that important and no one
outside the bubble cares. And when I realized that, it felt like a huge burden
lifted. :)

~~~
behringer
I belonged to an indie game community where the only people making money were
the ones making development tools and selling it to the community.

If you want to make games, really what you need to actually do is make a game
and don't stop until it's done, and wrap yourself up in your customers, not
other game developers.

~~~
rangerpolitic
I agree with you. The biggest challenge I have is wrapping myself up with my
customers. I have no idea how to go about doing that. Any ideas? Resources?
Tips?

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hirundo
Here's [0] the conclusion of a paper on optimizing population sizes in genetic
algorithms:

> The use of smaller populations result in lower accuracy of the solution,
> obtained for a smaller computational time. The further increase of the
> population size increases the accuracy of solution. This effect is observed
> to a population size of 100 chromosomes. The use of larger populations does
> not improve the solution accuracy and only increase the needed computational
> resources.

The same effect may be what this article is describing, applied to culture. As
the audience grows, the neural resources applied to judgement grow, but after
a point the accuracy does not. A larger population does not translate into a
more thorough search of the solution space compared to the same population
divided into smaller niches that do not communicate.

I doubt it would be a great improvement to divide the population back down to
the tiny tribes of prehistory, but the optimum is likely somewhere between
that and our global melting pot.

Inclusion is a modern creed and battle cry, but to a point exclusion also has
its place in increasing innovation, in that it creates independent niches that
each attempt to climb different maxima.

[0] [https://annals-csis.org/proceedings/2013/pliks/167.pdf](https://annals-
csis.org/proceedings/2013/pliks/167.pdf)

~~~
pmoriarty
_" The use of smaller populations result in lower accuracy of the solution,
obtained for a smaller computational time."_

Here's a different view:

 _" Small Populations over Many Generations can beat Large Populations over
Few Generations in Genetic Programming"_[1]

The results of AI research is often very problem-dependent, as there are so
many variables that vary between problems, and many ways to tweak the
algorithms themselves. They're also often not reproduceable. So I take their
claims with a huge grain of salt.

[1] -
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.7...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.7326)

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no_gravity
What I find interesting is what he says he loses by doing so.

60000 followers.

No word about losing business. Or interesting discussions. Or inspiration. Or
meeting likeminded people. Or getting feedback. Or anything.

I think many people come to this conclusion over time. That the number of
social media followers is just a number. With little to no real world impact.

~~~
taude
I'd be curious if Instagram is actually a lead gen for a photography business?
Or many small businesses. Might be a quick way to maybe see what someone's
posted as a portfolio, but i'm pretty sure more people would just go to the
artists website to see their actual portfolio work.

I think Twitter even less so.

Facebook might be convenient for people to message them? But even then, I
imagine it's mostly over email.

I think there's a pretty big illusion that social media sites add tons of
value to a lot of small mom-and-pop businesses. A good website, email, and
word of mouth, and in-person contacts, is likely more effective...

~~~
RandallBrown
My fiancée found most of the photographers we evaluated for our wedding
through instagram. I think her friends have done the same.

~~~
jamiepenney
I'm looking at tattoo artists and judging them on their Instagram photos.
There's a few things like this I would check social media for, but mostly I'm
looking at reputation (reviews and writeups) rather than photos and other
social presence.

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lkrubner
The energy that goes into writing tweets is also energy that could instead go
into works of lasting value. I've noticed that with all of my favorite
writers, the moment when they turn to Twitter seems to be a moment when their
production of high quality books/essays seems to go into decline. One of my
favorite economists had a 10 year streak when he was absolutely on fire, then
he started tweeting on Twitter, and his production of books and essays almost
vanished. When it comes to fiction writers, I could also put J K Rowling into
this category.

Everyone should beware of small, frivolous activities that keep us from
achieving our life goals. And it seems Twitter is almost uniquely destructive
in this regard. Not quite as bad as meth, but not a whole lot better either.
And social media, in general, sucks up too much time, for too many people.

If you want to do something great with your life, be careful how you spend
your time. If you'd like to create a great game, or a write a great novel, you
need to focus on that. Don't waste your energy on Twitter.

~~~
yesenadam
I guess HN is like that too. _goes back to work_

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socrates1998
Yup, very true for small businesses. I get almost 100% of my clients through
client referrals (I own a test prep company).

While I am not rich, my businesses is growing really well and I feel confident
that we will reach my goals for the company in the next year or two.

And all of this without almost any presence digitally.

We have a website that is actually more extensive than most tutoring/test prep
companies our size (I did some freelance Wordpress stuff), we get almost no
business from it.

I tried doing some Facebook ads a while ago, but it just seemed like more work
than it was worth. It's better for me to focus on making sure my students get
their scores than to drum up business from spending money on Facebook or
whatever other social media.

I feel like getting business through Facebook or Google or Instagram would
just take way too much effort, time, energy and money for me.

I would rather keep improving my test prep courses than do that.

And if you get students the scores they need, not only will it change their
lives, they will give your name and number out to everyone they know.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Agreed in general, but don't feel it needs to be either or. An assistant could
handle it and other time sinks.

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anniesm
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only thing cooler (in this age)
than having millions of followers is not needing any followers.

If you care about and are trying to improve your number of followers, you
clearly haven’t made it. If you’ve made it, you don’t need followers. You
probably won’t even have a social media account at all.

~~~
ddebernardy
If you've made it, whatever that means, you probably have a large rolodex of
connections and/or clients, an industry-wide reputation, a widely read blog, a
large newsletter, a large social media audience, or something else to that
effect. In every single case it's about followers in some form or another.

~~~
anniesm
Exactly. Social media will be your least concern, if at all

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DoreenMichele
And yet he blogged about it and the blog has _share_ buttons.

Trying to figure out which connections matter and how to get them is always a
challenge. I'm always bemused by pieces like this because it describes a way
of relating that is alien to me.

My experiences on Twitter have been overall pretty positive. I don't have a
lot of followers. I'm still working out how to interact constructively with
the space. But I fundamentally don't do social media the way so many authors
of pieces like this describe doing it. I imagine that's somehow pertinent.

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ghostbrainalpha
So social media is good for marketing, but bad for true creatives trying to be
innovative.

That makes sense. I've heard a lot of film makers and authors who don't really
watch movies or read others books so that they voice will be unaffected and
stay unique.

~~~
leejo
> So social media is good for marketing, but bad for true creatives trying to
> be innovative.

I dunno, there is some interesting and innovative work being posted to the
likes of Instagram, etc, you just don't see it so much in the explore feed or
hear about it outside of the fine art photographic circles because it's not
the kind of work that attracts tens of thousands of followers.

The original post, somewhat ironically cross-posted to the largest
photographic news and blog post aggregator on the web today, seems to be more
a case of redefining success at a tangent to what social media defines as
success. There are plenty of photographers making a good steady living doing
what they do without worrying about follower count, likes, or getting on the
content treadmill. Arguably they have found success within their photographic
niche.

If you're really trying to make it as a photographer you're probably
concentrating more on calls for work, portfolio reviews, attending
seminars/retreats, building a body of work, networking with those in the art
world who can get your work in front of the "right" people, personal projects,
long term ideas, and so on. Social media won't help you achieve those things.

It seems that the author had the revelation that success on social media (from
a photographic point of view) is more an indication of how good you are at
marketing yourself and not necessarily how good you are[1] as a photographer.
Another example is YouTube, there are dozens of very popular photography
channels run by photographers that produce mediocre, uninteresting work.
That's not a bad thing, per se, but if it redefines what "success" is as a
photographer to those who go purely by follower counts, etc then, well, who
knows?

An analogy would be Red Bull: a hugely successful marketing company that
happens to also produce really awful soft drinks.

I should probably turn this into a blog post...

[1] Beyond the realms of the boring technicalities i should say. There are
countless photographers creating technically excellent, beautifully composed,
utterly mundane work.

~~~
NovaS1X
>Beyond the realms of the boring technicalities i should say. There are
countless photographers creating technically excellent, beautifully composed,
utterly mundane work.

This is the real definition of success in my opinion. A few years in, pleasing
composition and technical prowess is not exactly hard anymore. To create
something with meaning, or a real story behind it, that's the meat of
photography. I'm at this point now, and I hate it. I'm creating beautiful
photos of nothing. I think the author is seeing this too however. Social media
encourages you to make frequent, beautiful compositions that fit your brand or
style, and that often compromises the soul of your work. If you're thinking
about how your photo will fit on your feed, then you're victim of this anti-
creative pattern of thinking, if your intention is to create meaningful,
personal work.

~~~
dbcurtis
Certainly you have something to say photographically. Keep seeking. Recall
that the big names are all remembered for a tiny fraction of their work. Ansel
Adams is remembered for approximately 40 photographs, out of a lifetime of art
images and countless advertising photos from his commercial business that paid
the bills. Weston, Eisenstadt, Cartier-Bresson, Karsh, we remember them for a
fraction of their output.

As you point out, social media rewards what people want to hear/see, not
whatever it is you have to say. Mastery of craft should serve articulating the
message, and the message must come from within, not serve someone else’s
utility function.

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toadi
As an ex Agile Coach (currently back doing real work as tech lead) I used
twitter a lot. Could learn from people in my bubble and maybe teach other. For
the moment not working Agile anymore as most of the people I met on
conferences and on twitter are toxic. I cut down on the people I follow on
twitter drastically. Now just follow some people for fun and not too much for
work.

I also have a custom motorcycle shop and instagram/facebook are super
important for marketing reasons. We try to build an audience because people
will order a custom bike if they like previous work. Also I follow other
builders on these platforms to see what they are building.

I got into building custom motorcycles by my love for them. By getting
inspired by seeing what other builders are doing. Thanks to instagram I'm no
longer dependent on buying magazines and seeing what they put into it. Now I
can follow obscure builders and have a wider range of influences. By doing and
sometimes by copying you get better at the craft and in time you will find
your own voice.

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kowdermeister
> No social media account or agent or client is going to be your savior.

No, it's a tool, a channel to reach your audience.

> If I create something beautiful — something I am immensely proud of — do I
> need to share it on social media? Do I need others to affirm it?

This is strange, social media share are for traffic and engagement to drive ad
revenue. If done for affirmation, then it's probably not the best thing to do.

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sys_64738
They wrote a blog about it which has comments and that's a form of social
media. So they didn't really delete all their social media...

~~~
genericone
They are being more discriminating with regards to boosting constructive
social media and disregarding pop social media.

