Posting from a throwaway because this is something that embarasses me a lot. I’m an artist who posts fanart on social media but as much as I remind myself that fanart is just for fun, I should just enjoy myself and not worry about engagement, I can’t get myself out of the competitive headspace against other artists who create content for the same media. I find myself getting angry at more popular artists who only do lazy doodles, yet they get showered with likes and adoring comments. It makes me feel like I have to strategize posting times, engage with popular accounts so that they will promote my work, draw what the fandom likes to see and not what I want to draw. I become a lot more negative and stressed out when I actively use social media, but without social media engagement I feel less motivation to make art. I have no economic incentive to become a popular artist, my career is unrelated to art, but the compulsion is there anyway.
I started to overthink online interactions because of my competitiveness. It makes me insecure when I see cliques of popular creators who are friends with each other and share/praise only each other’s work. When I reach out to them, just to get to know them and not for self-promotion, they don’t respond and keep talking to their clique. I know that they simply don’t have anything to say but it feels like they are deliberately ignoring everybody who isn’t a part of their clique. I know about extensions that hide the numbers but I care more about the absence comments and interactions compared to the popular creators. How do I get less competitive about this?
I think that’s pretty normal, honestly. Especially for an artist where praise is the only reward, having low engagement can be depressing. It’s just what it is.
I don’t have any advice, and I don’t think advices “think of…” or “take it as…” are any useful. Maybe I can say try to do the art primarily for yourself rather than for others?
Or if you feel like it, you can try doing more niche/different stuff. People who like very specific, oddball things, tend to be more appreciative, and there’s less “competition”, if you will. And challenging yourself to do something different and new can be good for you too, but it depends on what you wanna do.
I can only guess it’ll eventually bump out, maybe you’ll post less, or find a small hardcore audience, or maybe stop caring about it. Or not. An artist’s life is weird.