engagement is the near enemy of connection

the venn diagram between our yearning for numerical engagement and our desire for connection is very close to a circle.

i don’t think i know anyone who writes on the internet who’s never fallen for the “i write for myself” affirmation trap. on this platform, however, it’s on a whole different level.

i get that we all had to start somewhere - usually from the bottom. just today i read someone’s first post that is all about committing to “writing for the audience of none”. the other day i read another post that addresses the tension between writing for the self vs. publishing for the audience. every day i log on to this platform and there’s always at least one post that questions the nature of their intention of writing online, not that there’s anything wrong about it - there seems to be quite an audience for the topic, too, which is great. but there is just something incredibly fascinating about being in an ocean full of talented writers, and each of them constantly repeats the same thing like a mantra, as if saying it out loud and putting it down to words would keep them from breaking the spell and uncover the ugly truth that deep down, maybe, what they really want is for that numbers to rack up.

here’s what i know: it's perfectly valid to want people to like and engage with what you write. in a general sense, when you create anything, you do it to share with other human beings. art, craft, food—anything you create is a way to connect with others through our shared humanity. and wanting someone to like or read your writings is part of that. it’s just that in this world we live in, so enormous and so crowded and so lonely, on top of social media algorithm constantly messing up with our own psyche, it can be easy to look for connection in ways that aren’t healthy.

everyday i thank brené brown for coining the term near-enemy because it’s become increasingly clear to me that engagement is the near enemy of connection. it’s important to learn to decouple the two, because underneath the debilitating shame to admit that we are yearning for engagement is usually a genuine desire to connect and resonate with others. it only truly becomes a problem when people try to substitute engagement for connection because numerical engagement is the only form of online interaction they’ve been introduced to that gives them a sense of connection.

if you think about it, it makes sense why some people couldn’t find it in them to decouple the need for engagement from the desire to connect. modern social media has always been designed largely to sell ads, so everything in it is carefully built and crafted to keep users on the platform and come back for more. this includes funnelling our means of communicating and form of appreciation into micro-clicks and smaller vessels like likes, reblog/repost/restack, and shares. but real connection doesn’t happen over these buttons. to social media companies, the time people spend fostering genuine connection with others is the money they’re losing when these people could have been spending time scrolling and getting sucked into their platform instead.

on top of that, social media has also skewed our ability to perceive numbers. 10 likes online feels like only 10 likes because our brain might not translate that into 10 actual people connecting with our work. but if you imagine yourself standing in a room with 10 different people, that room is crowded! it’s why i think we should try to find communities outside social media to belong to, online and/or offline, because just 5 other writers telling you how interesting your work is will always feel better than 100 people pushing “like!” and disappearing into the internet void.

that being said, i can’t blame anybody for thinking that writing for engagement’s sake is a problem when we all technically hang out on a space that actively encourages it in order to be seen. but implying that the answer to that pain and dilemma should be “so we should all just write for ourselves and look down on anyone who does otherwise” is stupid, when we should instead be questioning why the most popular writing platform is also leaning towards adopting the social media structure and why we live in a society that doesn’t foster and in fact actively supressess genuine connection through art and words.

so here’s my invitation.

• for casual readers and enjoyers: use your words. as human beings we’ll always be wired for connection, but connection as a skill isn’t something we inherently born with. so build that muscle and make time for leaving comments when you find something you really enjoy reading. let the writer know which part resonates with you and what your takeaways are. don’t let that “like” button trick you into thinking it’s all you can do to convey your appreciation. practice beyond clicking and go as far as thanking the writer in their DMs or email.

• for writers: it’s okay to admit that you want people to engage with your work because the origin of that desire is a genuine connection. but also understand that connection can happen way before the writing even starts, and that you don’t need to wait until you hit publish/share for your writing to be an engine of connection. instead, find a beta reader or a coach. join writing accountability groups or form one. talk about what you write on a zoom call. the solution of our loneliness and insecurity is and always has been genuine community, and by actively searching for it outside what social media offers we’re making that change to decouple the need for engagement from genuine connection. they’re two ideas you have to keep separate, but you are still allowed to have both, and one is much more important to the creative process than the other.

thinking in movies

the reason why i’m saying all this is because i’m not immune to engagement, too. i’ve had my own fair share of virality, both on tumblr and twitter. mostly on twitter.

when i tweeted this video clip of top secret! (1984) back when i was still a prolific fan tweeter and the number of likes and retweets shot through the roof, you have no idea how much it reconstructed my worldview. i remember feeling all sorts of excitement - addiction, in a way. some sense of connection. i had people from different generations reaching out to me that they were nostalgic for young val kilmer (i don’t blame them).

to an extent, i guess i WAS making connection with these people through a simple caption and my knowledge of this particular scene of top secret!. it only became insanely dreadful to me when the engagement died down and i was back to being alone as the interactions didn’t continue. that’s how i realized that i was mistaking shallow interactions for genuine connection: an object of value to a company that wants my genuine appreciation for this movie to make other users stay on their platform for 0.1 second longer.

to echo this wonderful essay by

lou

:

Substack is not the savior of anything. Not of writing, not of you, me, or anyone else. It’s ultimately a money-making machine like the rest of them, with strategies and schemes to hold your attention as long as possible. If my putting Substack on a pedestal is all that's taken away from this, I’ve been misunderstood. My only argument is that it is a social media platform with an emphasis on the totality of writing that’s become an alternative space for an underserved group of people to enjoyable spend their time.

i’m older and wiser now, so when this substack note of mine found its target audience this week i knew better than to let it consume my attention and eat me up from the inside. i did, however, made the intention to check it back regularly: not to worry about the numbers but rather to reply to interesting comments and reach out to writers who i wanted to connect with.

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YOU’RE INVITED!

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