The internet is oversaturated we are told. 97% of those on Youtube will never make a penny. No doubt that if you’re reading this, creating in the public eye may have entered your mind. Or writing in the public view, perhaps. But your work being in the public view, and being actually viewed by the public, are vastly different things. So, why even bother?
Why not just keep your work to yourself and wait until you have honed the skills, or maybe just don’t even work even work on them. The hyper-marketing requisite of social media, and more broadly online media, makes it difficult to get your work seen. Regardless of the niche. It is not the most talented musician that appears on our YouTube home page, it is the one who understands the mechanisms that lead a video to be placed there. So, not strictly a meritocracy – which is a shame. The best violinist may have an online presence but their ability to market their content is sub-par compared to the lip-syncing TikToker.
Was this not what we expected when we democratised content creation though? Previously, the institutions that distributed material gate-kept and cherry picked. Now, anyone can be a movie star. Andy Warhol’s claim that: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” speaks directly to our generation. Was the artist foreshadowing the blunting of the once gild-edged sword that personified ‘creation?’
Is it a race to the bottom, the common denominator that gets promoted online rather than creatives of any substance or ilk? Does the TikTok trend get hundreds of millions of views, whilst a cultural commentator’s channel warning of existential threats get hardly a thousand? Yes, it seems so. Still, this shouldn’t deter you from creating in public view.
The cultural commentator would have been forced traditionally to keep their thoughts to themselves with no outlet for them, so the novelty of having new avenues to explore differing narratives should encourage us to create. The legacy media perpetuating celebrity dramas and fear-mongering has less of an impact in an age of new media, with Joe Rogan significantly more viewed than CNN. So this democratisation leading to the New American Dream that: ‘anyone can get famous’ cannot only be viewed in terms of black and white.
Why does any of this affect whether you bother to shout into the void or not and use your precious vocal chords to scream into your pillow? Its that the opportunity to build, create and innovate in public view, not necessarily whilst being viewed by the public, is the definition of a dress rehearsal. There could not be a greater preparation. A chance to refine your skillset, learn how to pull the rabbit out of the hat and perfect your tricks. Then, the moment someone enters the room you leave them in awe. There’s a chance they paid to get in too. Then a row of people show up, clapping as you do it, The motivation is inspirational, you attempt a more flamboyant, audacious effort this time.
Its about momentum. The sustaining of energy, energy that is very willing to work in your direction now that you have mobilised it. Maybe you keep performing your trick and no one ever shows up. Like ever. But then you had the exact same experience as if you performed in it in your room, minus the potential for change. And sometimes the potential for change is all we need to create actual change. Not even necessarily in the same field. Perhaps that potential for people to come in and watch your trick is the probe that makes you realise you don’t want to be a performer. You want to be a surgeon, or a zoologist or a postman. Who knows. But if you hadn’t forced this potential into action, perhaps you would have wasted years coming to this realisation about what it is you wanted. Maybe, you never would have realised it at all.
It takes a certain ilk to get on the stage, ignore the fear of ridicule and present whatever narrow aspect of yourself you feel will be best received. It certainly doesn’t seem like anything you would regret doing if done mindfully, something that would have some transferrable skills. Again, if done mindfully.
Which a lot of the internet is not mindful. Notoriously so. Especially for children who have grown up not being able to remember a time a phone wasn’t glued to their hand. The danger of having fun and placing things into the view of the public can have lifetime long effects. In that regard, you hope that no one saw it when you grow out of the phase where you thought that behaviour was cool or appropriate.
But if you are engaging mindfully with the world, which I should hope we all are, then engaging mindfully with the amphitheatre of the internet can become apart of that curious engagement. Maybe it should. But don’t worry about perfecting your dance, stress about hitting every note before you tip-toe up the steps and belt your song of innocence. There’s plenty of beauty to be found in innocence, and the world needs as much of that as it can get. Even if you think no-one is watching.
The Will Connelly Blog 
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