The Cost of Constant Content
The reason why I'm here (on this blog) has much to do with a disillusionment of social media as a whole, and while my general beef with it can be the subject of many posts, there's one thing that I don't feel like is talked about enough: the emphasis on quantity over quality. That alone is something people commonly complain about, but I'm talking more about the nuance of it affecting your ability to follow and engage with creators themselves.
Creators are incentivized to operate based on the idea that they need to compete for attention, which oftentimes means posting 3+ days a week, and if they're very diligent, multiple times a day on multiple platforms.
YouTube is an example I'm most familiar with, and it has been notorious anecdotally for suppressing upload notifications to subscribers. Just looking up an article to link to, I found out they're actually doing MORE to silence notifications, this time from "inactive" channels… And what happens to the YouTubers who upload maybe once or twice a year? They're silenced too.
So it creates this weird duality that you either need to create low-effort stuff just to get by, or invest in a high-budget, documentary-style production that even YouTube can't dismiss. Most people aren't going to have the resources to do the latter, so it means the former: short-form content, reaction content, anything provocative that can get people to click. A lot of creators do a hybrid model where, in between uploads, they turn their videos into shorts and proliferate them. There are also livestreams and just anything else to keep the momentum going.
…But what if you could hypothetically get notified every time they upload?
Well, that was a lesson I would find out when I discovered the existence of RSS feeds (like what I have below!) For the uninitiated, at their core, they're a text file uploaded to the internet that will update to coincide with any updates made to a blog/news site/podcast of the feed's choice. While many (like me) may not have noticed them, they've been around since 1999 and remain a very easy and reliable way to keep track of various feeds across the web.
Now here's the thing: YouTube automatically generates RSS feeds for every channel. I was overjoyed at that prospect, because I was sick of getting my notifications silenced, so I copied my subscription feed over. To my horror, I was absolutely buried in notifications! It was then that I first realized creators weren't creating with subscribers in mind. If they had, they'd know that posting 8 shorts a day, doing livestreams, and all this supplemental content would scare subscribers away. They're posting because the algorithm is the main vehicle as to how even their own subscribers are notified, and they need to churn out this stuff so people remember them.
So I gave up on the notification thing, and fast forward to recent times, I was reminded of that fact when I tried to use Tumblr, where it was FAR more noticeable when people bring that algorithm mindset to a chronological platform. On Tumblr, I started to follow blogs that caught my eye through the algorithmic discovery feed. However there was this one blog in particular that I followed… They'd post 3D renders of their mascot character every single day.
Soon my (chronological) following feed got clogged with this account's stuff and it choked out everything else. As a result I had to unfollow this person and hide their posts.
That really struck me, because these two experiences showed me that in a system that notifies you as you're supposed to, you're actually PUNISHED for following creators you like who have optimized their posting for algorithms. I don't think YouTube is that smart, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was partially the reason why they don't show you everything subscribed channels post, because if they did, you'd hate it.
It helped me realize that algorithmic posting is only meant for reach and not real, meaningful interaction. And it sucks because it WORKS. That's probably why I don't use Tumblr that much, even though I have very positive things to say about it overall.
It's for that reason I don't think the algorithm will ever go away short of data centers spontaneously combusting and leaving, like, a Mad Max internet of scattered forums. As things are, reach will always outcompete engagement in a system where people forget things in two minutes.
So if you want to cut the algorithmic meddling out of your life, but the algorithmic infrastructure is too steeped in everything, what should you do??
The easy thing people will tell you is to live like a monk, and being unable to do so for ANY reason is a moral and personal failing. We're human beings at the end of the day, we can't be 100% independent. And say that we do? The people around us won't be. That'll just make you miserable and fall back on it with the force of a thousand suns. Also isolation from greater society shouldn't be the goal—we have enough of that already.
What we CAN do is de-incentivize these negative patterns by scratching that itch with something more constructive and healthy. In this case, it's finding spaces within our lives that provide investment AND meaning. For many that's finding irl spaces around common interests (or a healthy online equivalent). For me right now, it's going to dinner shows and community theater.
In regards to the internet itself, find ways to interface with it that you (and your livelihood) can stomach. We can't change how these people post or how our systems want them to be consumed, but we can change our relationship with them.
The RSS feeds are imperfect as I've said before, but they're still really good at helping me collect and sort creators of interest. I've also pivoted to podcasts and TV shows more, and they've helped me regulate my media consumption by being abundant but easily paused to do something else.
Will there be a lot more friction involved doing this stuff rather than doomscrolling on your couch? For sure, but the best things don't come easy.
The common thread in this is that the answer isn't to torch the algorithm (impossible), say creators are the problem, or believe that Newgrounds/Bluesky/Mastodon will become the new normal. It should be by focusing more on YOU and YOUR life, and doing the things that will more immediately improve the quality thereof.