Fear of irrelevancy on social media

I have a few rules when posting things online, at least two of which I am now breaking with this post. First, I apologize for not posting about my usual game development stuff! Second, the fact that I feel the need to apologize is why I’m writing this post.

I’ve built up a fear of sharing - a fear of being irrelevant. I’m trying to figure out a way to break out of it.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember I posted without hesitation years ago, about whatever subject I felt was interesting to talk about. If I worked on a neat little project, I shared it. If I took a picture that turned out pretty, I shared it. Plain and simple! That sense freedom I once had though, is now gone.

The performance anxiety of a growing audience

After gaining followers on Twitter and an expanded network of friends and colleagues on Facebook, my rules and guidelines were restricting me more and more, in direct proportion to the amount of followers and response my previous posts got.

If a tweet of mine made less than about 25% of my average like/retweet amount, or even worse, zero, it felt bad and often even embarrassing. If it gets no response within the first crucial 2-minute time-frame, I start to consider it a failed tweet, and its subject something I shouldn’t talk about ever again. Immediately, feelings of regret and failure strike pretty hard.

I don’t have that many rules for posting things, but the ones I have, have become rather restrictive.

The rules

1. It has to be relevant/interesting/entertaining to my audience
2. Never talk about social media, especially not the platform the post is on
3. The content has to be of high quality
4. Post when chances are there are lots of people online

This makes it near impossible to post about anything.
I can’t post about anything other than game development related things because of rule 1 and 2. I can’t post spontaneously, because of rule 3 and 4.

This is of course nobody’s fault but mine. I made these rules myself, to keep me from being or at least appearing irrelevant to my audience. I don’t want to lose followers, I see value in it, because it means a group of people found my content interesting enough to want to see more. It’s a very tangible way for me to see how interesting or not the things I post have been to people.

The trouble now is that the content of my posts is more and more controlled by the audience, not by what I want to share.

The things I never shared

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope estimation of things I remember not sharing, within the last few years. I’ve traveled to about 7 different places around the world. I’ve been working on 6 smaller personal projects on the side. I’ve worked on about 4 game jam projects with friends. I’ve done lots of small tech/code experiments for learning purposes.

That’s only counting the things that might have a relevancy to my audience.

On a more personal side, I occasionally bring my camera when taking walks. I’ve got loads of pictures of nature and various pets in my family. I have a pretty big interest in morality, psychology and science, having read about 12 books on the subject, and still going. I’ve started studying Japanese. I’ve played lots of games, such as Dark Souls I and III, Bloodborne, The Witness, The Witcher III, Firewatch, Hyper Light Drifter, Thumper, Dance Dance Revolution, and many more. I make music and remixes every now and then. I write blog posts that I never publish.

What all of these have in common, is that I wanted to share, but didn’t.

I felt like I had at least somewhat interesting thoughts and insights on all of these subjects. Pretty pictures to share from all the traveling. Projects that would be fun to see for others. Experiments of which the results would be interesting for other game developers. Thoughts on games and their design, aesthetics or technology. Questions I wanted to ask people, but never did.

I think it all comes down to the fact that I need to stop putting so much weight into the number of people who like my posts. Judging by my own experience, posts I find that I’m uninterested in doesn’t affect my stance toward whether or not I want to keep following that person, and perhaps others feel the same towards me, so why should I be so careful when posting?

I’ll make this my late new years resolution — to use these new rules:

The new rules

1. It has to be relevant/interesting/entertaining to someone other than me.
2. If that someone doesn’t exist, I’ll allow myself to be that person in case it’s really cool