8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Tag: the socials

Chapter List

  • Permission Trap Branch · Part Two

    We’re all frustrated with social media these days, and sometimes the only recourse seems to be to point at anyone even tangentially involved and yell “Stop!”

    That friend who posts a little too much: STOP!

    That coworker who is oversharing: STOP!

    The relative who can’t seem to look at a comment box and walk away: STOP!

    As someone who posts routinely I get my fair share of real life people questioning my participation: it’s not directly telling me I shouldn’t, but it is a subtle dig and a semi-revocation of permission.

    Once, long ago, we all joined these networks and connected to each other in this giant circle of digital trust. I’ll connect to you, we said, but you need to be respectful of that.

    Then the algorithms filled those feeds with advertising and slop and rage bait and memes, and we shrugged and said, well, I can’t yell at Zuckerberg or Musk or any of those assholes, so—

    —so we started revoking permission from our friends. And we almost do it unconsciously: we scroll past the stuff from people we know just like it was part of the rest of the mess, not recalling that the photos and words and stories and messages from the people we connected to were the whole damn reason we downloaded the app to begin with. We ignore them, just the same.

    The result is a great big gap where there was once celebration. There is a quiet rule that social media sucks, but a rule the neglects to differentiate between content from people we know and like, and content that is overwhelmingly corporate, influencer, or algorithmically generated.  

    We lump it all together and shout STOP! But we keep loading the apps—to find only our friends heeded the request. All that is left is the slop. All that is left is the ads. All that is left is the manufactured reality that doesn’t care if you want it or not, and shrugs when you push back. 

    We scolded the wrong creators.

  • Political Abnormal

    I need to remind myself almost every day lately that there is more to making the world a good place than overtly fighting evil.

    We live in complex political times. As I write and publish this initially in late-2026 the political landscape of my home in Western Canada is undergoing a nationalistic push to secede from the Canadian confederation. We are in the midst of a referendum… and this post is not about that, but it is about something parallel: that being someone who makes stuff, writes stories, draws pictures, and posts introspective daily essays on navel-gazing topics can feel monumentally inadequate to the moment.

    Look no further than social media. The click rate on my posts are trivial for my creative works compared to when I go online and start engaging politically. And it can feel like a kick to the chest to try to rationalize that the attention of the population is nearly entirely consumed by a tidal wave of political rhetoric and partisan conversation.

    Particularly right now it feels like the last thing anyone wants is a short story by an amateur science fiction author.

    …or some autumn photography.

    …or screenshots from a video game I’m working on.

    …or a sketch of a funky tree in the park.

    …or—hell, the list could go on forever.

    How do creative people stand up in the undertow of the ebbing and flowing tide and find a role in all this that is more than just another screaming voice.

    But like I said, there is more to making the world a good place than overtly fighting evil.

    A picture of a beautiful autumn scene, or a clip from the latest build of my indie game, or some simple sketch-work passed into someone’s social feed is not a distraction from something good, it is a diversion from the darkness. It is a reminder that among the so-called important conversation there still remains people holding a beacon light for humanity to navigate it’s way back to normality.  

  • Permission Trap Branched · Part One

    I fell deep into the permission trap while on vacation recently. 

    We went on a summer trip. It was exciting. It was picturesque. It was the city of lights and every turn seemed like a new reason to point my camera and click the shutter. I took a lot of photos.

    So of course… I posted a few of the best pics on Instagram so that my collection of friends and fam who follow on my private account could enjoy those same photos.  And, genuinely, the first day that I posted the response was overwhelmingly positive. 

    But… well. I posted more pics on the second day, and a couple more on the third… 

    The following days were less positive. People had tuned out.

    Fair enough, I suppose. Vacation photos while everyone is back home getting ready another work day. The patience for that is limited. I get it.

    But we are funny to each other this way, aren’t we?

    I’m not saying this to dive into a pit of self-pity about my social engagement. There are an array subtle social cues that are conveyed by modern interactions on social media platforms, and being shrugged off by one’s own friends and family, and I would suggest that a big one is the subconscious permission structure around sharing.

    People are online. People are on these apps. People are scrolling, looking at advertisements and AI slop and influencer drivel, so in my own mind I am considering that I can offer something better by sharing: Me, a real person that the people on my private account all personally know, travelling the world and sharing his photos.

    But then the permission trap emerges from the inaction of the masses: a fraction of the likes and indifferent shrugs and my anxious, approval-seeking artist’s mind reads that right to the thought of least resistance: people don’t want to see it. I’m oversharing. I’m boasting. I’m swamping the feeds of friends with a reality that breaks their comfortable slop-ridden, algorithmic vibe and I don’t have their permission to break into that for more than a single post.

    I’m overthinking it, of course. Because that’s the trap.

  • Influence Less

    Look, it’s a blurry line between being someone who wants to make stuff and share their creativity with the world on one side and being someone who wants to be the main character of the internet on the other.

    Blurry, but not invisible.

    I personally struggle with my own identity on the modern internet. I make stuff for the joy of making it. I write stories because I feel the very human need to be a storyteller. I draw and make music and build games because I am compelled to use the half of my brain that is steeped in creative urges to do those things. 

    The tepid pool of what becomes popular for all the wrong reasons, though, is a little sad.

    I see reels that are staged or commercial or generated or simply rage bait.

    I see posts that reek of corporate pandering or identity grooming or culture shifting.

    I see profiles that are bots or resume acts or cons or worse.

    It’s all fake.

    What is to be done about those?  Nothing, maybe, but looking away and being better than that, not stooping to that grade of duplicity, treating people everywhere—your audience and the people around you in real life—with the respect they deserve. Maybe that will help a little.

    It’s old fashioned, but here’s the real:

    Be genuine. If you are out there making stuff that is fake or even whiffs of influencer-grade performance, just… don’t. Be better than that. 

  • Duty Bound 

    Reactive sharing killed my motivation for a while. 

    I was making art through a prolific period of newness. I was amped about sketching anything and everything. I was painting daily, though so little of it was anything but practice art and rough drafts.  But I was damn proud of it, and after I’d finish a piece I’d lay it out on a table and snap a pic with my phone and upload it to Instagram.

    Reactive.

    Oh sure, I got likes. Mostly from impressed family members or friends who were easily impressed by student-grade art attempts by someone they knew.

    None of of it was terrible, of course, but none of it was gallery grade either.

    I wasn’t sharing my best. 

    I was sharing everything.

    Reactive sharing.

    Draw, paint, dry, pic, post. (And sometimes I barely even waited for the dry.)

    It killed my motivation.

    Posting became performance.

    Performance became duty. 

    Passion became obligation to feed the algorithm.

    I remember going for a long walk one chilly winter evening because the pressure had built up in my heart around this sense of responsibility I felt to the dozen or so people who were liking everything I posted, and it was driving me nuts. I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore. I was walking and thinking, thinking and walking, and I decided there in the snowy streets that I was going to break the thread. I was going to stop posting art.

    I wasn’t going to stop making art, but I wasn’t going to push it out into social media because doing that part of the creative process had gotten out of hand and was ruining the joy for me.

    I still draw. I still paint. I still make something that I’m excessively proud of and I’ll post it, but I do it for the right reasons, I think, and skip the duty to perform almost entirely these days.