A few months ago, I posted a rant about something that was very near and dear to my heart, something that has personally affected me for a long, long time. It was called “The Gatekeeping of Poetry,” and it’s below for any of you who weren’t here, or maybe missed it the first time around.
The Gatekeeping Of Poetry | 7.21.24
I spoke about how “capital P Poetry” has long had a wall around it, it’s been a tightly secured community where only those that were long-established members were allowed in. If you posted your work on Instagram or social media, you were an “Instapoet” and would never be spoken of with any kind of seriousness or credibility. Anyway, click above and you’ll get all my thoughts on the matter, but today I wanted to follow up with this on a rant of another sort. This is about something bigger, and this about something that I worry will have dire repercussions for media as a whole. Hell, I think it already has, and will just get worse.
Not long ago, right around the time that first post was posted, my lovely agent and I started putting feelers out for a new book of poetry, as it’d been a few years since my last book, Illumination, had been released. After having 6 books published, and selling quite a few damn copies (please know I’m not bragging about any of this, just setting the stage and using this as a tool to understand the state of things) all over the world, including having some of the books translated into 6 or 7 other languages, I think both my agent and I assumed that we might have some luck in the fishing for feelers. Here’s where things got interesting, and to be frank, a bit heartbreaking:
Almost universally, they all said they were “super excited” about the idea, loved the work being presented, but were pretty sure they’d all have to pass for one very specific reason: “Tyler’s Instagram engagement rate and social media power just isn’t as strong as it once was.”
They were worried, it seems, that this lower engagement would been lower sales, and lower sales would mean they make less money off of my work. I understand business, I understand the disgusting machinations of Capitalism, but to hear that social media and engagement—especially in a day where everyone, everyone knows that it’s all pay-to-play now and the algorithms truly reward those who pay for it—is being used as one of the guiding metrics for what is worth of publication, is to be plain spoken, Terrifying.
This isn’t about me, this isn’t about another poetry book, this is about what happens to culture, to the arts, to the process of creation, when it’s guided almost solely by social media metrics, by engagement rates, by TikTok audiences, by some AI algorithm in some Silicon Valley data center. We are, once again, being forced behind gatekeeping, only this time it’s dictating the books we read and find on bookshelves, the music we’re hearing, the art we’re seeing, the movies being made.
If it doesn’t pass some popularity test of engagement, it won’t see the light of day. If there aren’t enough viral videos about it, we may never be blessed with it being available for our enjoyment. Gone will be the indie movies about something other than superheroes, gone will be the small bands playing small clubs and then building grassroots fanbases that are rabid for the next thing they put out.
All things are aiming at the middle, the muddy, beige, uncanny valley of sameness where all things sound like all other things, all stories have been told, repackaged, and then told again. The top 1% will still get their deals, make their millions, and we’ll see another dozen Marvel films, or Star Wars movies, or Atticus or Rupi Kaur books of poetry, but, and this is so heartbreaking to me, but that’s all. That’s it.
Maybe I’m being dramatic, maybe, it’s been known to happen, but I need you to understand that none of my concern has anything to do with my own ego, my own belief that I deserve another book or should be afforded the opportunity to publish again. I get it, acutely, that just quite perhaps the world is still sick of hearing from a straight, white, male living in the mountains of Montana, and the fact that I’m neurodiverse really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I’ve long posited that I, for some reason, was born almost entirely devoid of ego, and I stand by this. Those that know me, those that love me true, know it to be accurate, so I’ll just have to hope you trust that when I say, it’s not that. It’s bigger than that, it’s always been bigger.
I am truly worried about a future that’s dictated less by artistic merit, less by the ache, the wonder, the beauty, that a piece of art chronicles or highlights or expounds upon, and more by the chance at virality (is that a word?) or the instant-algorithmically-friendly engagement numbers that surround it. Won’t we all be consuming the same tired tropes, won’t we all forget what it is to find something new, something fresh, something with a viewpoint not already regurgitated and made redundant by the over-saturation that comes part and parcel with that aforementioned virality?
What becomes of smaller creators? What becomes of people with those who don’t play the insane game that is social media every day? It is true, I’ve seen a massive downtick in my social media engagement numbers, and this is mostly because I’ve stopped worrying about it, stopped posting so much to it, stopped holding myself to the fire for posting 3 times a day at optimal times to try to make sure the highest number of people see it. They weren’t seeing it, after all, so what was the point in the end?
I created this place, this Signal Fire, as a way to get far away from the evils that is social media, and I am so happy I did so. I would rather have 10,000 stunning souls that are engaged, on a deep level, with the art I create, than a million that washed up on the shore of some random viral post that said nothing, meant nothing, and stood for, well, nothing.
I’m sure there are some of you here that have more experience with the inner workings of the publishing world, of the in’s and out’s of Hollywood, of the music industry, and perhaps you can ring in on the driving forces that force them to choose what they choose, omit what they do, and what your secret thoughts are for what this could mean for the future of this whole place we all collectively call home. Please, do ring in, and illuminate us.
For now, I will find hope that there are still publishers out there that value the work over the algorithm, the community over the flash-in-the-pan push for a viral moment that probably never translates into sales anyway. There’s more to art than the Hawk Tuah girl making t-shirts and cashing in on her moment in the sun, there has to be, and I just want to make sure that fact is not only remembered, but prioritized.
Here’s to this place, to all of you that prove that social media is a fast-track to a world I am really afraid to live in.
We’re the antidote to the poison, I know it now more than ever, and I am so thankful you’re here.
Art must be bigger
than an algorithm’s choice.
We can’t allow this.
When Social Media Engagement Dictates The Art We Allow | 9.15.24