To be free from the algorithm

It's not as simple as I thought.

Let’s reminisce on the old days of Instagram — posting multiple times a day, using the Kelvin filter with abandon, hashtagging our posts #haha #lol #insidejoke without a care in the world. Before the days when affiliate links ruled and #ad appeared near the start of the caption of every other post in your feed? We all collectively long for it, right? Sorry, I’m asking too many questions. But those were the good days. We weren’t focused on curation or reach or aesthetic. We just…were.

But when I really think about it, I don’t know if it was that simple for me. I’ve been self-conscious on social media since the days of the Myspace bulletin. Even then, I felt anxiety about how I was perceived, usually by my crush of the week, whose last name I imagined next to my first. My password was once “iloveguys” — no need to mention any in particular, just all of them. I practiced a demure smile to hide my braces, pink rubber bands and all. As my friends and I took pictures on Photo Booth, I subtly jutted out my collarbone to make it more visible. (It starts so young!) And after we uploaded the photos — first, we used Xanga, then Myspace, then, eventually, Facebook — I’d excitedly await the likes and comments. If the post didn’t get a response, or worse, didn’t get a response from the right people, disappointment would follow. And I’d consider deleting it, but wouldn’t that look a little desperate, and usually settled for pretending it’d never happened.

circa 2009

It was nothing like the social media that today’s kids face, thank god — truly, if I’d been young when Snapchat became popular, it would’ve broken me — but we had our own unique pressures. Find me a high more thrilling than realizing you’d moved into the top slot of someone’s Top Eight ranking — or a feeling more humiliating than realizing you’d been cut from the roster altogether. In retrospect, none of it matters. Everyone was once a teenager. We all embarrassed ourselves.

Except I still do the same thing, nearly twenty years later.

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Last week, I decided on a whim to share a few recent outfits I’ve liked. The post wasn’t perfectly filtered or lit; a few years ago, I would’ve laughed at the idea of making it public. But I’m trying to be chill about social media, because there’s nothing more chic than not caring. So I scrolled through my camera roll, picked a few mirror selfies, and hit the post button. After sharing, I immediately looked away from the app, an old habit I can’t shake. When I picked up my phone again and pulled down on the screen, I saw twenty-six likes. I shared the post five minutes ago. Five people every sixty seconds. Imagine if, in five minutes, twenty-six people stopped you on the street to say you looked good. But my stomach sank. The first few moments tell you everything about how a post will perform, I thought.

Perform. What a word.

When I took a step back from influencing last year, I felt relief that I was no longer beholden to how many likes or comments a post received; no longer panicking if my link clicks weren’t up to par. More than once, I ended up doing more work than initially agreed upon during collaborations— a brand would approach me to let me know they loved my post, but it didn’t get the level of engagement they were expecting, so would I mind sharing something extra to make up for it? I always agreed, maybe even with a smiling emoji, even though I raged internally. After all, I can only do so much to make toothpaste sexy.

My last paid collaboration concluded last May, so it’s been fifteen months without any brand deals. As I’ve shared before, there wasn’t a dramatic moment where I decided I was done with it. The offers just stopped coming in, and I realized I didn’t mind the opportunity to focus more on writing and less on deliverables, talking points, contracts, and, and, and. The shift changed everything for me, especially financially — I felt embarrassed the last time I sent a quarterly report to my accountant, wondering if she’d think she used to make so much more — I wonder what happened? It’s all in my head, I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

As difficult as the transition was, I wasn’t beholden to the algorithm anymore. I could post whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without wondering whether I’d regret it later. (More than once, I worried that my personality was too fiery, my content too divisive to appeal to a corporate brand.) It’s freeing. But it only lasted so long. Weeks after I stepped away, I fell down Google deep dives on authors and social media and how many followers you need to sell books. Apparently, there’s no magic formula, and yet.

I look enviously at my husband, who works in tech, and logged off Instagram at the beginning of the year with no intention to return. He talks about the free time he has now that he’s ditched mindless scrolling. The dream! I love the work I do, but I constantly feel pressure to churn out posts that are funny without being niche, sarcastic without being mean, and genuine without oversharing. The stress is mainly self-imposed, but it’s exhausting.

That brings me back to the outfit roundup, which ended up garnering a respectable seven hundred likes. WHY DOES IT MATTER is the question that echoes in my brain. I desperately want to be a person who doesn’t worry, who recognizes that I’m no longer fourteen years old, and isn’t it kind of cringe to obsess over social media stats when it’s not even my job anymore? But it’s so deeply ingrained that I’m not sure how to stop. I’m still thrilled when I post an Instagram Story and a lot of people respond with the 😂 emoji. And I can’t help but feel a bit stupid after sharing something and receiving zero responses. Who wouldn’t? (This is me hoping this is a universal experience.)

A long time ago, I tied my worth to how other people perceive me, and I’m having a hell of a time undoing that knot. It’s present in real-life conversations, but being online magnifies all my insecurities. In some ways, it’s worse than it used to be. Back when I was focused on influencing, I viewed it all as part of my job. Paying attention to numbers was part of the gig — all in a day’s work. Now that social media doesn’t matter as much, I obsess over it all without a rational reason other than wanting to be well-liked, which is embarrassing. (It’s not entirely for fun, given that I have a book to promote, but there’s a lot less pressure than there once was.)

Every time I take a break from social media, even for a few days, I marvel at how much better I feel. And yet, I always come back. I say it’s for the same reasons that everyone does — to keep up with loved ones, stay informed, and remain creative. But a small part of me acknowledges how much the validation I receive means to me. I don’t think it’s all bad, but I don’t like the version of myself who fixates on how many likes I’ll get. This is all deeply shallow and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. There are bigger problems to solve, and I know it, but it still bothers me. One day, I’ll break this habit that’s plagued me for most of my life — I really believe it. Until that happens, I’ll roll with it and try not to wince when, as the kids say, I post something and it flops.