The leading cause of enshittification of the internet is that the very people who use services like social media or crowdfunding platforms are now what’s being sold–not the service itself. We’ve gotten away from selling goods and products to selling people and information. If you think that sounds harsh, look at how much money Meta makes from ad revenue and agreements with third party companies. That’s you being sold.
It’s also the leading cause of burnout. When you/your data are what’s being sold, then the product no longer becomes the service you’re using. It’s you. This leads to more fractured social media environments as we race to find the “next big thing” that will be what will bring us riches, or at least a livable writing income reaching lots of readers, only to find ourselves bombarded with ads for courses, all three and four figures of course being sold as if those were “the key” to everything, AI scraping our data to use, and more frustration and disillusionment than ever.
Sound familiar? I know it does for a lot of authors. And if that’s you, I want you to know you’re not alone.
The truth is, when you’re what’s being sold to (instead of readers) that increases the chance for burnout. Instead of focusing on how to optimize that platform, making it work for you, you’re often looking for the next big thing, chasing after “shiny objects” rather than doing what you want to do and that’s write more books.
Instead of chasing that platform that’s going to fix everything, or promises to upend the paradigm (how many times have we heard that?), let’s focus instead on what is working for us. Where are we reaching readers? Are we writing books that we want to tell or looking at metrics and numbers given by someone who wants to charge you a few hundred dollars for more secrets?
Let’s think about that this week. It’ll be time well spent, and it will help you step back and do the most important thing–take care of you so you can write. The world needs your stories.
