[A Love Letter to Creatives] ‘If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.’

Every creative person I know feels disheartened when something they’ve made ‘tanks’ on instagram.

The problem with creativity being filtered through social media, is that it’s already had to survive schools + sceptics and work places + wankers, that stigmatise failure. Before we’ve even had a chance to grow up, we’ve had half a dozen institutions reprimand us for making mistakes. We’re literally taught to fear failure.

The disappearance of our chronological feeds royally fucked over every creative on this application.

Everyone used to have a chance to be seen. Now, if a tiny segment of your followers don’t immediately connect with what you’ve shared on here, IG doesn’t show the other 90%.

Social media platforms, like scary English teachers and cranky employers, also train us to fear making mistakes. We’re being rewarded with a tiny spike of serotonin when something does well, and punished with a manufactured rejection (ie- not showing the rest of your audience and having a post ‘tank’) when we colour outside the lines. So we get scared of colouring outside the lines. We fear rejection. And we feel pressured to change our art to suit this space.

Being a creative means being brave enough to fall down, fuck up, fail spectacularly, put yourself back together and try again. It’s getting harder to be brave, but we’ve got to.

To my fellow artists, I’m asking you to continue creating the work you want to create, in spite of the changes happening online and on platforms. Be brave. Be a freak. Be goddamn magnificent in all your strangeness. I know it feels awful when something doesn’t perform, but I promise you, it’s the platform, not you. Put your work out there any way you can. Just make sure it’s still you, and not a trend you feel you have to keep up with.

We NEED YOUR WEIRD SHIT.

The weirder, the better.