By profession, I’m a voice actor. Outside of work I’m an introvert. I like my privacy and my space. My personal and my professional lives are separate for a reason. I like the anonymity of being a voice and not a face. And you would think that those two things would work well together. But that doesn’t always seem to be the case these days.
One of the things that I’ve noticed recently is that “visibility” in this industry sometimes can seem to be more important than talent or skills. I’ve talked about authenticity on social media before. And I still disagree with the artificiality of it all. But it’s moved beyond that these days. I suppose I’m a little old school in that I prefer to let my work do the talking. My job is to do amazing work for clients, and then move on to the next project. The focus shouldn’t be about “me”. The job is to figure out what parts of me I can bring to your projects to make them amazing. So, Why would I want to compete with my clients for that attention? My privacy and want of personal space really doesn’t have any impact on the work that I do.
Spoiler alert. I don’t want to complete with my clients for attention. I want to do my job in such a way that the client is the focus. It’s not about me. If you are paying attention to me, then I’ve failed. Because my job is to present the client in the best way possible and do that as transparently as I can.
Additional “stuff”.
The prevailing wisdom in the business now is that you need to be a “Thought Leader”, or an “influencer” of sorts to build up your visibility to keep your career moving forward. And I’m just not at all interested in that sort of thing. My opinions are my own. And at the end of that day it doesn’t really matter anyways. It’s not about opinions or thoughts or wisdom or any of that. It’s just a matter of feeding the machine. Social media algorithms are designed to keep you on that site so they can sell ad space. YOU are the product. It’s not really designed to let you get to know people and their work. It’s there to feed you more stuff and keep you on the site as long as possible.
There is a school of thought in the marketing space currently that you need to build your “know, like, and trust” on social media by posting frequently. Posting and commenting and generally being visible all the time. But I have issues with that. I’m old school, if you want to get to know me, then reach out and lets talk. Hang out with me for a while and figure out if we get along. Also, Trust is earned. You can’t get to real trust by reading carefully curated posts. Those curated posts are an idealized and often sanitized version of that person. It’s marketing spin, and not really reality. People only show the positive parts that they want the world to see. So you are left with a shiny, polished, professional, impersonal version of you. And it’s for the most part BS.
Details matter.
We are much more complex and nuanced as individuals than what we show on social media. And since nuance is kind of the business that I’m in, why would I want to show you an polished, perfect, prefabricated, static facsimile of who I am? Yep, I wouldn’t. It’s not authentic. And my business is bringing authenticity to your projects. And that changes based on who you are, what you need, and how we interact together. Like the rest of life, it’s situational.
Social media can’t give you a clear picture of who anyone really is because it’s all carefully crafted.
You can’t really “like” anyone from social media, because it’s not real. You are liking an image, a persona, a fabrication of sorts
And how can you trust someone when they are only showing you little bits of who they are?
Business visibility?
Social media seems like a terrible way to start a business relationship.
And what do “followers” actually get you as a creator or business owner? An ego stroking from follower numbers? What is the real benefit to living your life in the public eye? It’s creating more work for you to keep up with it all. And that social media time is taking time away from the actual job that you supposedly love to do. It’s also making us all way too accessible. There is no mystery anymore. And sometimes it’s not even about talent, its about numbers of followers. A metric that has nothing to do with the work or the craft at all. And that sends the message that you are only useful if you can bring a ton of eyeballs to the project. Maybe we should focus on making the creative work compelling, and interesting and good instead. Earn the views. Earn the trust.
You can hop online and learn whatever you want about someone. Form opinions about them that may not have any basis in reality. And for some people, form attachments with people that aren’t real.
I’m a human being. Not a collection of data points for an algorithm. Feeding the algorithm really doesn’t do much more than benefit the social media platforms. Since WE are the product on social media. We are the targets for their data scraping and ad targeting. So, why would I want to feed into that?
Before the internet, if you followed someone around and watched them without actually interacting with them, that was called stalking. And it was frowned upon. But now with social media things are different apparently. And I’m really not a fan.
So what do you think? Is social media actually beneficial? Do you live your life online? How do you feel about people that aren’t accessible and open books online?
