Something I noticed as a consequence of online culture and platform design, especially on social media:
It is very common online to follow an account not for the person behind it, but the way they present and discuss a topic or niche, even if they aren’t doing this with a professional intent or style. Then when the topics shift or we get tired of the person, people try to find someone else that scratches the itch.
It’s like we use people online to engage with topics by proxy, and they are rather replaceable. We don’t just watch crochet videos, we watch this specific person crochet, but not for her as a person, and so on. People seem to have roles to fill in terms of who they follow, and they’ll move on if the role is no longer adequately filled, or the roles change. Feeds are highly curated; too many posts considered off-topic and you are ruining the vibe.
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I can imagine feeling pressured to post often enough on the right topics and with the right voice. It becomes a positive feedback loop where your have to keep performing to maintain your audience, and in some cases income. I feel like that’s a driving factor to so much garbage on the internet — instead of posting when they have something to say, people look for ways to feed their audience. It makes the internet shittier all around — maybe the internet doesn’t need 10,000 hot takes on a subject, maybe just a handful would cover everything that should be said.
But that’s just my hot take.
