If you’ve been following my writing for a long time - longer than growth on social media, longer than the LLC I recently incorporated - then you know I love the concept of living the questions. I first heard about this idea when listening to an episode of the On Being podcast, but it’s not a new idea. 

Here’s what Rainer Maria Rilke tells us about being less answer-oriented. 

“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” 

I open this article with this invitation to live the questions because today, I will not pretend to have the answers as we explore the intersection of social media and creativity. Social media is a necessary evil to allow creators to grow in the world and share their work. However, creativity paradoxically needs silence, inspiration, community, and other things that are often at odds with social media to flourish. 

So I invite you to journey alongside me in exploring this question of how the two can coexist.

Rising Tensions Between Creators and Social Media

I opened my business Instagram feed last Monday to an aesthetically pleasing video of one of my favorite fellow copywriters and brand strategists doing routine tasks. Brushing her teeth. Making coffee. Going for a walk. 

It was a fantastic video—I probably watched it two or three times, and not just because it was pretty. I’ll link it here for you to watch. 

The voiceover of this creator(@firstrodeocreative)enraptured me when she declared(I’m heavily paraphrasing here) that she was tired of the hamster wheel of social media. The push to always put out more content, to sell, and to compete with other entrepreneurs online. 

This person shared that she liked to create but didn’t understand why creating needed to be within the confines of an algorithm. 

I sighed, cried a few stress tears, and commented on the video, saying how heavily this resonated with me. Specifically, this one line: “I’m a grown-ass adult, and I’m good at what I do. I don’t need to compete with other grown-ass adults on here.”

I’ve been thinking about this all week. As I shared with a friend, this is something I think has been coming to a head for a long time: the clash between entrepreneurs who want to express all of their creativity while building online and the demands of the algorithm. 

I pointed out this was something I’d especially seen from women entrepreneurs.

I shared this video with my fiance. “I want to write again, just for me, “ I sighed. “Well, write,” he countered. 

“I don’t have energy after I’m done with client work,” I said. 

Truthfully, it goes deeper than that. In an ideal world, we’d be able to be good at what we do—whether it’s art, writing, design, or gaming—and have a business doing that thing without having to put a corporate veil on our social media accounts. 

However, I don’t feel like I can share anything “just because” on my social media—not on Instagram or LinkedIn. Everything I share is strategically planned as far in advance as possible. 

I share a personal glimpse into my life on Instagram every two weeks—enough so that people feel like I’m relatable and accessible—like there’s a face behind the carousels that my wonderful Instagram manager so carefully puts together. But not so often that you feel like it’s just a “me” account, or that the account lacks purpose. 

Let’s face it: If my business account failed to revolve around a cohesive purpose that could potentially better your life, my potential to grow would go out the window. 

I think most creators with businesses know their social media presence needs to run around obvious value adds for anyone who visits their page. This is where I think we start to get specific backlash. 

What about rest? What about a completely unrelated endeavor I’m just as passionate about? What about being more than my personal brand?

These are all refrains I’ve heard from business owners in the last few years. They are refrains I’ve uttered. Let me tell you a secret: it can only be so soul-filling to share a margin of what I care about in spaces where I try to have such a large presence. 

Why Not F**k the Algorithm?

So why don’t you give the middle finger to the algorithm? You might ask. 

Good question, I would respond. Here’s why.

Even writing this article feels like a risk. It’s a deviation from my usual newsletters. It’s basically like spitting on a marketing strategy. You know what feels good, though? Writing about something that I have a little fire burning about. 

I have spent years building the plane while flying, figuring out that a marketing strategy you come up with in midair will not cut it, and watching as loyal readers turned away when you wrote about a subject that didn’t interest them. 

If you do something you love, you have to make it marketable. Sellable. 

Which often means distorting what you love so that it fits other people’s ideas of what’s buyable. Of what will change their life for the better. I want to share beyond the confines of the topic clusters I’ve outlined in my marketing strategy. However, I also want to grow my business. Sadly, I don’t think I can have both at once. 

So, the question remains: Can I still find time to be creative, even if I can’t share all of that creativity with my audience?

Social Media Does Drain Creativity

Part of why I decided to explore this question in the first place was that research shows social media drains creativity—and I spend a lot of time on it. 

Social media breeds superficial boredom. Which is what, you ask? Best put by philosopher Martin Heidegger, “We are held in limbo by a situation that restricts us from doing what we want to be doing, while simultaneously being left empty insofar as the situation does not satisfy us.”

Boredom isn’t always bad - it can cause us to reassess our choices and what we’re doing with our lives. However, social media keeps the kind of boredom that sparks deep thought and inspiration at bay, always keeping us somewhat tuned in while leaving us running on empty. 

I think it’s possible to nurture creativity while keeping our social media presence two-dimensional and rather stifling. Do I think it’s healthy? Not particularly. Ideally, we post on social media from a place of inspiration and true creativity, without attachment to outcomes or what others think. 

That ideal doesn’t run businesses, though. Yet, as I log onto LinkedIn and Instagram to appease the algorithm and network day after day, I’m left with the sense we’re all shouting the same thoughts at each other, hoping to be perceived as experts. Perhaps we’re all even writing versions of the same article(none of us rockstars, ninjas, wizards, or even gurus yet in our fields), hoping to appease the god that is Google. 

Is This What Humankind Has Creatively Arrived At?

Can’t humankind be more creative than that? Isn’t that why we left our 9 to 5 jobs, freelancer friends? To be more creative than being the same as one another?

I want to be clear about something:

I love what I do, and I even love marketing it. My Instagram feed looks great—it even looks like me. However, the whole reason I—and several people in my industry—do what we do is that we love to write or make art first. Before we created for other people, we did it for ourselves. 

When you make something you once did for yourself, the thing you rely on for a living, it can become not joyless but not as magical as it once was. This is especially true if there are entire parts of that creative inside you that don’t get expressed—not on LinkedIn, not on Instagram, not generally.

That’s business! I get that. However, watching that video—wanting to get off the hamster wheel of social media—made me wonder when we can stop being so two-dimensional in how we market our businesses and, essentially, ourselves. Don’t you get tired of sharing your routine or what you struggled with on LinkedIn? 

Two-dimensional content sells because it’s easy to digest and actionable. I just can’t help but wonder what it says about us—humans and creators—that we’d rather digest two-dimensional content than interact with more nuanced ideas and people. 

I also can’t help but wonder if this tension between creators who are so much more than their personal brands and the demands of appeasing your audience on social media will come to a head in a way that will allow all of us to finally be more than a logo, a set of brand colors, and some limited ideas that we spit out year after year after year.