Social media is the long con
When did we all become shills?
Everyone is promoting something. Their personal brand, their services, their book, their side hustle. I am too. I get it.
Personal brands now mean more than accepted markers of excellence like experience, ability or education. And social media success has become the stand in metric for actual talent for those too lazy or uninterested to assess genuine merit.
Why work for free?
Many people don’t have the time, inclination, interest or capacity to become content creators on social. Because they have jobs and kids and/or prefer to not spend their life looking at a device. Others intentionally avoid spaces that can be toxic. Others have followed Tricia Hersey’s suggestions (on social media) to stop pretending like you work for these social media companies when they aren’t paying you. Her book, Rest is Resistance, is all about the long con of capitalism, built on white supremacy.
Why are we working for free? Why are we acting as if this imaginary compensation – likes or follows – matters in the long run? Social media is the most egregious of the long cons of capitalism. It is the ultimate expression of extraction economics. “Let’s get people to do work for free, to spend hours and hours making content that we will monetize, and manage, and in return we will give them nothing. We’ll create an ego-based currency with likes and shares and follows and heart emojis and tell them it matters. We’ll fracture their intention and focus so they stop writing novels or books and just churn out aphorisms in a strict word count. With images. We won’t moderate the content since that might throttle our profits, even when it’s clear we’re damaging the psyches of millions.”
There’s no shame in selling. I spent decades selling airtime, new technology, advertising services. For which I was paid in actual money, not likes or emojis.
Shilling on social media isn’t selling. Ideally, selling involves benefits on both sides. I will give you something of value in exchange for something of value. My clients got advertising, marketing, technology. The company – and I – got money.
Sometimes people on LinkedIn post information that is useful or interesting. But mostly it’s shilling, a slightly cringy formulation of words or ideas laid out in an easy-to-scan way with a picture of the person’s face, often an attractive face, that isn’t in any way connected to the content. Here’s an idea! And here’s my conventionally attractive face and body! Because people look at posts with pictures! Watch me shill!
One of the definitions of a shill is a decoy, a distraction, a participant in a con. Look over here at my pretty face! Ignore the fact that I have no actual ideas of interest.
In lieu of
A friend reminded me of the cultural trend in the last few years to disregard traditional markers of authority like education or experience. It became prevalent during the pandemic when many people stopped trusting public health experts. Instead, they trusted social media influencers advising them to take ivermectin, a horse de-wormer, to prevent or treat COVID. It’s still happening; people take medical advice on supplements from people without any medical education at all, because that person has a good sales pitch or personal brand, or a big social media following. If you have a good sales pitch, people will overlook actual credentials or experience. And they’ll buy your stuff. But that doesn’t make it good stuff. Which makes the promotion, the “personal brand” more important than experience, wisdom, research, education.
It's risky. Social media is notoriously fickle. Tik Tok is the center of the universe right now, but it might go away. You can have a strategy and great content and a big following and then see it implode – see Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Social media can be a great place for political conversations. But Meta is now choking political content. Emily Amick, @emilyinyourphone on Instagram, posts wonderful content about how to get politically active in your community. She has taken to posting extensively about her needlepoint projects to thwart the algorithmic policing around her political content. I am fully opted in to receive political content in general and her specific political content, but I’m not confident that Meta is honoring that.
The origin of the rant
This screed about shilling was inspired by a spate of rejection letters I have recently received. To be fair, I’m pitching quite a few pieces of writing; a book manuscript, a new podcast series, various articles, speaking engagements. Which means I’m pretty much asking to be told no, repeatedly.
Recently I got the best rejection letter ever, from a publisher who loved my book but didn’t think it was a fit for his press, so he referred me to a literary agent he knew. This morning, I got a response from the agent. And yes, nod of thanks to people who actually respond, and don’t just ghost. But. She said I was ‘a wonderful’ writer, but I didn’t have enough of a social media following to guarantee ‘a predictable path to book sales.’ So, yeah, no.
I know that agents are salespeople, they need to know that a book is going to sell, and it’s certainly not news to me that big social media platforms make it easier to market everything, including books. I know that. But.
I’m not limited in my social media usage because I’m lazy, or don’t understand how it works, or don’t care or think I’m above all that. I have other priorities. I think social media is suspect at best and destructive at worst. I engage with it as a necessary evil, just like I participate in the capitalist shit show of corporate America. But I’m never pretending it is fair or healthy.
There was this revolutionary moment in publishing a few years back where people could get noticed on tumblr or gain a following on Twitter (before Musk murdered the blue bird) and then get attention from mainstream publishing houses. This opened up publication to writers who didn’t have the MFA or the connections, or the fancy education or any of the constellation of privileges often seen in published writers.
It didn’t eradicate those barriers, they still exist, but now there’s another one - being social media famous. Almost every publisher and agent asks how many social media followers I have, some before they’ve read even a cover letter, let alone the actual book. The quality of what I write is not deemed germane, only the “predictable path to book sales.”
What are the metrics?
How do you know someone is good at what they do? How can you tell a good writer, or painter, or filmmaker or poet? Certainly, some people still care about ability and talent. But mostly it’s how many units can you move. How well can you shill. And I can understand why thinking algorithmically makes sense in a world stuffed with algorithms. If this person has Y followers and Z% of them will pre-order a book then it’s worth investing the time and energy to make that book.
But, hey, we can do that math too. Plenty of authors can and do publish and market themselves and keep all the money, right? And plenty of authors sell books and then build the social media following because people liked their books.
There are good things about social media. One, the baby pictures. It’s how I stay connected to my very large and extended Italian family. (Kelsey’s twins, right?) Two, the new perspectives. My understanding of the situation in Gaza and other parts of the world has been revolutionized by people I follow on social media. Some of them are friends, but not friends with whom I would necessarily talk about politics. One friend said she had been posting about Gaza extensively and was frustrated that she didn’t receive any feedback on her posts, and I told her I read every single one of them and have been deeply impacted by the information she provides, even if I’m not responding. I’m reading. It's changing my mind.
That’s part of my frustration, that the potential of an open forum in which everyone can participate without the interference of capitalistic, controlling powers choking off access is so appealing. I can still find those spaces. But I think we do ourselves damage if we don’t name and acknowledge that most of it is really just a long con.