Turning My Back on Big Daddy Algorithm
Growing my Artist Platform Independent of Social Media
Now, Instagram is just a graveyard full of AI that’s been programmed to censor women’s voices and nipples, and sell you products you don’t need.
I started this blog 7 months ago, on the very day I got deplatformed from Instagram for speaking the truth.
Since then, I’ve been on a journey to rebuild my platform as an Artist and Writer.
I’ve been exploring what methods work best for me to organically grow my audience, with respect to my personal values, vision, and my understanding of what feels authentic and sustainable for me as a whole person.
In our modern-day culture, there is so much emphasis on social media as being the holy grail to grow and develop any business or creative pursuit. We’re flooded with ‘musts’ about our usage of at least one major Big Tech platform to give us the space to grow independently.
Social media is framed as the free resource that any and everyone can use—to find and connect with “our people” without the oppression of a traditional gatekeeper. And, historically, there have been many success stories.
Naturally, we default to social media to platform our work. Especially work that pushes boundaries, and which doesn’t fit into mainstream spaces.
But what happens when that resource shuts you out?
Where do you go? What do you do?
I’d like to talk about my current feelings about social media, what I’ve learned about it since being deplatformed, and how I intend to amplify my voice, amidst a culture of intense censorship.
Naturally, some of my exploration in growing my blog has included revisiting social media and trying again.
A couple of months ago, I gathered the courage to create a new Instagram account with a slightly modified username, and started from scratch after losing my 3k+ followers.
I repurposed some of my Blog posts into shareable quotes, and planned to repost some of my old Artwork.
A handful of my old followers re-followed me on my new account, and engaged with my posts, but it just wasn’t the same.
Recently, I wrote a note to myself about how it felt to be back:
Returning to Big Daddy Tech and asking for space after being de-platformed kinda feels like going back to an abusive boyfriend and begging for scraps, trying to pick up the pieces after I got kicked out of his house—after he threw all of my cherished belongings away, tore down my precious artwork from his walls and everything.
It’s the “I made you who you are, and gave you relevance.”
It’s the “You can’t do it without me, and you’re disposable” energy, for me.
Maybe that was a piece of the underlying hurt I felt after putting so much hard work into promoting my blog on social media and consistently coming up empty. Being sold a lie and constantly having these doors closing in my face.
As much as some recent subscribers only know me for my gender-critical writings, I am, first and foremost, an Artist.
When I joined Instagram 8 years ago, I did so with the sole intention of sharing my pole dancing videos, and connecting with my favorite Pole Artists.
I regularly shared my dance practice videos on Instagram, and later expanded into sharing my visual arts, writing, film, fashion design, and performance. I moved over from Youtube, and made Instagram into my main platform. This sort of Artwork made up the bulk of my page.
So when I lost 8 years’ worth of curation because I spoke up for black women who have been hurt by gender ideology within just a handful of posts…I lost my entire Creative platform. I lost the avenue that I was taking to transform my Art into a thriving business. I still had my Artist website, but I lost the platform that housed my engaged audience…my primary access to the people who supported me and my work.
Being deplatformed made me hyper-aware that I had been sold a lie.
I took for granted that I could even exist on social media, without developing methods to grow and reach my audience independently. I trusted Instagram enough to invest time, energy, and work into it.
And that trust has been broken.
Twitter wasn’t any better. In fact, it was worse.
The feeling of shouting into a void, and being completely invisible, even to my own handful of followers, was miserable. I also don’t like the messy format of Twitter, and, in general, the platform just feels like a low-vibrational space. The one thing that concerned me most about Twitter was how it would affect my mental health.
Every time I logged into that platform, even to check up on people whose work I appreciated, I found myself bombarded by unwanted content: violence against women, grotesque imagery of men smearing their faces with makeup and wearing tight miniskirts, bombings, fires, strong language, arguments, trauma…
It felt like everyone was in survival mode, and it was too much.
No matter how much I tried to filter what I saw, I just couldn’t. I found Twitter to be a hopelessly toxic online space—and one where I found it extremely difficult to gain any sort of traction.
Despite writing some blog posts that a lot of Twitter users could probably get on board with—it wasn’t versatile enough for me to share all of what I have to offer. I couldn’t see myself sharing my beautiful pole dancing videos, or samples of my lesbian erotica, or tidbits on wellness and self-love.
I always felt like I had to put on an armor on Twitter, and only share political things.
This is one area where I preferred Instagram, because at least the algorithm serves me cat videos!
But even with that—in considering my recovery from Internet Addiction, I questioned how addictive these platforms are, and how much they are designed to distract us and draw in our emotional attention.
I questioned how dependent I wanted to be on major social media platforms to market my work and grow my businesses, and how engaging with them might affect my mental health in the long run.
Eventually, I began to feel confident enough in my I.T. recovery to at least try and find a healthy way to make social media work for me, if they are, in fact, worthwhile tools.
As an interlude, I want to note that I have explored some independent, women-centered social media networks, like Spinster and Monocle. I love that gender-critical/radical feminist women have created these outlets, and I champion their existence. I am still on Spinster, and I share my articles there from time to time.
But the caveats for me about these online community spaces are that, for one: they are too white, and I found myself alienated (socially, intellectually, spiritually) from much of the culture and conversations in these spaces. Also, my Creative work spans deeper than just gender-critical conversations, and I need to find ways to reach a wider, more diverse audience. This is what led me to re-examine the major social media networks.
However, there are a still few core reasons why I have questioned whether major social media networks are healthy, useful, and reliable tools for an Artist like me.
Aside from my own personal experience this year, I’ve done some research about the evolution of these platforms, and how they work. In doing so, I’ve discovered some realities about social media that impact my ability to build and thrive within them.
I’ve also mapped out a few methods I’ve personally tried and tested to grow an audience for my creative work and generate an income without social media.
I share all of this here, for those of us who are interested in liberating ourselves from the nasty grip of corporate social media, but who still want to use the internet as the valuable resource it truly is, to propel our purpose forward.
This is all business in the front, heart at the core…