Trauma for Sale, Part 2
It is not lost on me that my first part of this two-part piece concluded with asking for support. I do not like asking for support, contrary to what some people might think. It always requires a fight with intense shame. I'm writing this to draw attention to the absurdity of it. We have all become salespeople, whether we like it or not, of our hobbies and enjoyments. Even if there is some joy in the process, the pressure to survive saps energy out of the work itself.
I see it in the faces of the creators I follow, too. They are fighting to keep their content fresh, trendy, and non-political against cutthroat algorithms. It’s not that content consumers want to overlook their favorite creators. A common comment is “You stopped showing up in my feed, and I had to go find you again.”
The internet is an amazing way for us to communicate with each other, but it remains hyper-individualistic. We create content for each other, but we cannot keep up with all the people we follow. It is nearly impossible to get all of our supporters and subscribers to see everything we make. There's just too much being created. No matter what platform you're on (and most of us are spread out across many of them), each creator is competing for attention amongst a myriad of others.
We are serving ourselves up as an overwhelming buffet of options. I could not keep up with every creator I want to, even if I spent 100% of my time watching their videos and reading their posts. And that's just content creators, not the news or my emails. And don’t get me started on how much content online is AI slop now (51% of the Internet was AI in 2024, by the way).
We know what’s happening, and it feels impossible to stop running on the hamster wheel. It pays, but at the cost of our sanity. In the case of stalker fans, it can cost us our safety, too.
I’m not saying that I know exactly what it’s like to be a big creator. I’ve never really had a huge following. I’m just describing what I’m seeing from where I’m at, and I’m scared of going even a little viral at this point. My most viral moment was when I talked about my experiences with Reality TV, and it became clickbait for gossip.
I felt exposed and all the more disconnected from the rest of the world. I had not found the connection I longed for. My honesty had become a weapon, and again, I know I’m not the only one.
Juicy stories are perfect fodder for clicks, but I rarely see people stopping to ask who’s being squeezed for it.
The Internet isn’t as fun as it used to be. It’s also more addictive than ever. They want us hooked as the quality tanks.
As creators, we’re gambling with our time. Every time we write and record content, we’re opening ourselves up to ridicule. There’s also a greater chance, now more than ever, of being ignored altogether. Each time we choose to create, we must think about how to exploit ourselves.
The algorithm is punishing for all of us. It gives too many views to the people with the biggest followings, and those people are punished ruthlessly if they say anything out of line. Most of us smaller creators hardly find it worth the effort to keep trying to get by.
Our voices are being smothered. The Internet is less free, our content is harder to access, and there’s more AI and advertising than ever.
Truly genuine content creators are hard to find, and we are struggling to keep creating. It pays less and demands more than ever.
It’s been a fight to keep my integrity in a world that wants to chew me up and spit me out for the content machine.