Yuck. Devoting real time and effort into something? Hard pass.
I’ve been contemplating devotion (love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause) as a concept for the better part of my creative career. It seems to be a counterbalance to the overwhelming surge of noise in an industry that is experiencing increasing chaos. The tension of art and commerce is crescendoing rather than subsiding due to obvious recent developments. Late stage capitalism, the surveillance economy and the rise of AI are all herding cattle into predetermined boxes. Extract what still feels human-ish, and discard the rest.
I’m often pulled between the transitory algorithmic based successes and the less appealing attempts at deep work. I find myself constantly questioning why I’m not a full blown YouTuber, shilling out every moment of privacy and personality in order to edge ahead. I find myself scrolling through endless reels, wondering why I’m not using the same templates and colors, locations and text. The obvious cinematic photo game and hashtag paradise. You can see what the furnace wants to be fed. It seems easy. Predictable. A pathway to success.
But we all know how hard it is. And in spite of this knowledge an ever increasing amount of young people want to abandon all other fields and vocations in order to strike BINGO on the game card of life. They want to emulate their digital heroes, regardless of the ever increasing churn of burnout, cancellation, and other fickle human variables. What seems viable becomes a Venus fly trap, sapping energy and the novel spirit of risk and creative appetite.
I have the tools, freedom and ability to pump out puppy videos. Roadtrip videos. DIY tutorials. YouTube shorts that recut and redistribute the ideas of others. I could make niche community work with my wife. I could push elements of photography that invite novice beginners into a new way of thinking. I could make reels with easily digestible words of affirmation and poetic uplift. I could spend each day wondering what angle of the Santa Monica pier would best attract the attention of an algorithm, yearning to be seen… but… by… who?
By millions of course. Billions if possible! That’s what’s promised, isn’t it? A personalized brand, safe and kid friendly enough, but cheeky and irreverent. Fashionably positioned to be on trend but fresh enough to set a new tone. Use the preselected music going viral - thanks to industry partnerships and backroom deals. Be informative and humorous but don’t go too deep. Criticize what everyone else is criticizing and either be fully political or apolitical. Do it all again and again for the rest of your life. Check the notifications and replicate. Repeat. Repeat until the grey takes over the color, put your child front and center. Make your grandkids relationship a fun part of your morning baking video. Share a reel of what concealer works best on your deathbed.
Everyone a brand. Always. All the time. Forever and ever. Amen.
Why not? If I throw myself into this slipstream of noise, I have a gambler’s chance at striking some kind of meaningful partnership. Financial stability. Wholeness in a time of great inflation and cost of living. The trade off is just my time, my privacy and identity. It’s harmless right? I’m just overthinking it. Do the ad. Be cheerful. Be grateful the machine picked you.
Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe the tech overlords really did give us something special. Quick dances and silly pranks. A rise. A constant never ending rise with no end in sight. Everyone can be famous. Pull the lever.
When I started this blog I asked on Instagram if I should write blogs or start a YouTube. The majority said start a YouTube. Hell, they were right. One of the things that actually motivates me to write this is that people don’t want to read. So I can go on sounding unhinged and work through these ideas, because chances are at most, the odd person (hi mom) reads it, and the rest (hi dad) are scrolling through reels or YouTube. Hell it makes sense. Who has time to read. Life is too busy.
Or is it?
So I’ll digress for slamming YouTube (since I love it) and sounding high and mighty about content (cause I’ve made PLENTY of it). What I want to say is that I miss devotion. I’m thinking about devotion. I’m longing for it.
Everything that has ever been made that you love; art, music, products, architecture, was only created by a searing, painful, loving devotion. Someone sat down for years and risked it all to try and learn to make something. Then they sucked at it for a bunch more years. Then they got a grasp on it while still mainly sucking. Then every once and a while, something they did was decent. And if they were lucky enough to survive an industry, their pride, their finances and their personal bullshit, they might hit genius once or twice. Maybe.
Wow.
I sit here writing this with hours of footage on my hard-drives. I used to make poetic pieces, travel pieces, camera tests and all that. I haven’t been able to bring myself back to them. There are two reasons why; one is that I keep being lulled into the idea of feeding the algorithm what it wants, and it haunts me. I shut down. I don’t want to do it if I’m trying to measure it by this ever elusive sense of bizarre visibility. The second reason is because I’m being a stubborn perfectionist who thinks my crappy handheld travel footage should look like Killers of The Flower Moon, or otherwise be trashed.
Since I moved to Los Angeles my primary focus has been writing. I’ve written more than a handful of screenplays, pitches, treatments, this blog and the outline of two books. I should be proud of this. I am. I think. But I’m constantly haunted by the fact that posting that on social media isn’t sexy… and that is absurd. Who cares? Well, I do I guess.
I want to post wins. I want likes. I want to be seen as productive, well on my way. Creative. I want to prove something, perhaps to myself first and then to others. Because for some reason, the way we validate ourselves now is through this metric of smacking our meaty fingers against a very small little screen, forgotten by the time the person is getting off the toilet. I’m hanging onto social media and these algorithms of meaning by my fingertips, but also wanting to let go, float in the dead sea of sameness, and collect my reward.
But… Everything I love requires devotion. The albums that I listen to while I write. The films that move me to pursue this career. The computer I type on and the chair I sit in. These people had to work in the dark for years and years to complete their masterpieces. It wasn’t highly digestible. It’s not cool to watch someone typing on a keyboard. Meetings and misery and revisions and heartbreak. A recipe for anything worth digesting.
The social media distribution model does not require devotion. At least not the kind measured in love. Sure things on there can be so fantastically inspired, so lovely and affirming. They can still give meaning, connect communities, and push the boundaries, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, more than ever, it’s a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.
Of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.
The way I think of social media more and more is that it should be a place where people share their devotion to whatever it is that makes them human. It shouldn’t be the ‘ends’, it should be a means to the end. Or rather, it should document the ends, and if we’re lucky, hint at the means.
What the hell am I saying?
I’m saying, I would hope that I could be brave enough to walk away from it. To not hold on by my fingertips, and to disappear for a while and make something worth sharing. Make something that shocks myself awake, and in turn provokes a jolt within you. Something that raises the hair on the back of my neck, so that it has any chance of moving you for a moment. I want to be bold enough to recognize that the platforms of social media should be a distribution mechanism that reflects my humanity off the platform, the pain and pleasure of my journey as a human, captured after the fact, not in progress. To strive to make things (and risk the very real reality of failing at them) worthy of sharing. I don’t want to make things because I am compelled to share them on some assembly line of constant content. I want to share something because it took me four years to do it, and show that four year idea was working suffering for.
I want devotion. Devotion between people. Communities, ideas and art. We can only measure devotion, like love, in reverse. You have to have something to look back on to see the fruit of your labor. The social media world of constant surveillance is the antithesis to this. It says feed me first and think about it… never. Just more. The gurgling of our hungry minds fed junk food filling in perpetuity. I’m hungry.
We are on the brink of what I believe to be an upcoming crisis in meaning. Maybe we’re already there. We have entire industries that will soon be wiped out by tech. We have rising conspiracy, perverted religious nationalism, and a gulf of division. We derive much of our meaning (sadly) from our careers, yet many are about to evaporate before our eyes. We seek truth on platforms that regurgitate lies. We are not going to Reel, or Tik Tok or YouTube or Snapchat our way out of it.
We need the poets, the philosophers, the artists and the builders, the meek, the wild, the sad and the strong to come together and sit down. To sketch and toil, collaborate and disappear. We need them to swim against the current and break down every square inch of the box.
Because if the way we are doing things is working, why is everything breaking?
I believe we can still dream and devote ourselves to that dream. I believe we can still use our humanity as a path forward, but only if it is rooted in devotion and fidelity with one another, blemishes and all.
I want devotion. I’m ranting to yell at myself, not you, unless you want to listen too. I want to bury myself in something that lasts, even if privately in my own heart, so as to not be swept away by the current, current. I’m thankful that in history before me there is a roadmap of those who devoted themselves to great works. I see it in their statues, in their cathedrals and capitols. The dusty books and the digital copies. The symphonies and the mixtapes. Casablanca and Mrs. Doubtfire. The poets and the prophets of comedy. I would be nothing without their devotion and the bravery it takes to swing for the fences.
May I be brave enough to believe in devotion. To be it. To fall into it. May you be as well.