the undercover creative.
Pivoting in the digital sphere after my love for Instagram officially died
My social media tastes never quite evolved from 2017. That year, my freshman year of undergrad, my best friend and I started an impromptu Instagram page shockingly entitled Sheer Creativity. We both took turns sharing mini poems that were often conceived in phone calls we shared due to the distance between our colleges. I think that’s when my love affair with Instagram began.
I gushed over the likes and comments (most of which weren’t driven by bots at the time) and I relished in finally having an avenue to share the content I had piling up in the confines of my notebooks for many years. My best friend and I were affirmed in public what we already perceived in private: we were some good poets.
As college progressed, I began engrossed in writing and sharing poetry as a source of healing from the woes that a sheltered girl who never left the comfort of her home might feel out on a college campus. My best friend then encouraged me to take on the Instagram, thus signaling a chain of events that would soon include my podcast for creatives and coincidentally, this newsletter you’re currently reading. However, before these ideas came to fruition, my Instagram page transformed from pretty poetry on a color background to photos of me embracing my first love: nature.
The 2+ years of staycation we all endured birthed a passion of photography within me. At the time, my poems always shifted toward metaphors of natural concepts: the beginning and the ending of seasons, the fluidity and wandering of the wind, and the heavy weight of rain. Throughout the months of mundanity, I created moments where I could go outside with my tripod and recreate nature with me as the focus. It was as if I embodied the poem, experiencing the same changes that the world experienced. I loved posing with a fresh bouquet or fake bouquet from Dollar (.25) Tree and posting the best shots on social media. I had soon created a curated natural page that felt authentic to who I was as a person.
Then Instagram attempted to be TikTok.
My nature posts became a relic from the past as I worked on how to reach my fellow adventurers/outdoorsy folks who love poetry, which already seemed to be a small niche to work within. In order to find my tribe, I’d have to pivot to become someone more trendy, and someone more able to capture someone’s interest in less than three seconds. With the “end” of the pandemic, crashing engagement, and a voice persuading me to apply for jobs, it didn’t take long for me to pull out my tripod less and less, to embrace nature less in order to sell myself to algorithms more. Truth is, I’m tired, and I miss my tripod, and I miss my bouquets. While I could still bring my tripod outside for a photoshoot, I know I wouldn’t love it as much as I did when I wasn’t wondering if anyone would even see it beyond their Reel scrolling.
I’m tired from all angles of the scenario. Of course, I’m tired of minimal engagement, but I’m also tired as a creative who finds love in one area only to find myself foraging for another avenue to fulfill me later. I’m tired as a dreamer with a full time job who doesn’t have the time nor the bandwidth for social media strategies after 5 pm. Most of all, I’m tired as a person who is sick of the inhumanity, the comparison, and the strive so prevalent on social media accounts that it makes me question why I’m existing in this space.
Is there a world in which creativity can exist without the dependence of social media to share content and gain monetization? Well, I guess that’s why I’m here. So far, I enjoy the humanity of Substack. I enjoy long-form writing about anything that matters to me, and I don’t feel closed into an algorithm struggling to get people to notice my work ethic. I know that those who have subscribed and will subscribe in the future are meant to be here because they value my thoughts. Perhaps this is where I’m meant to dwell digitally.
I think I’m gonna like it here.
What does Laraya like this week?
What I’m reading on Substack: Ex-influencer Lee Tilghman provided a thoughtful look on the mixed feelings newsletter into whether deleting social media would make us more happier individuals. I agree with her sentiment that sometimes, the answer lies in the inbetween.
What I’m reading: Currently The Mothers by Brit Bennett.
What I’m listening to: I get excited when I hear unique voice qualities, so when I listened to Revenge of the Dreamers III in 2019, I was instantly drawn to Baby Rose’s voice on Self Love. Her newest album, Through and Through, is complete sultry and smooth R&B. My favorite song on the album is Dance With Me.