every like kills

Not a very well structured text this will be, I am afraid. Just wanted to say that one sees today too much activity that seems centered around gaining the approval of others, and too little around developing oneself. Which, I reckon, limits radical (or fundamental, or substantial) innovation.

Apparently this era of social networking and obtaining likes and reposts, fuelled by the attention economy business models, has turned its back on helping people (or at least giving them space to) grow and nurture their own selves. "Content creators" looking at analytics that tell them what is more engaging with the general public working to create content that caters to that general sentiment about what is worthy of their attention. The general public, on their side, focusing more and more on the content promoted by attention-economy driven algorithms which is just a feedback loop on the things they liked yesterday. Filter bubbles, we used to call them in the day, have completely taken reign and mediated our online lives. Only that it's not the online lives, but the full extent of our existence. As these dynamics play out, they carve more space in our brains / selves to make sure we live an existence where the only thing that matters is external approval, either via creating for the likes of others or liking what others like so one is not "the weird one". Where is the individual spirit? One sees mirages of such a thing when a dissenting voice shows up here or there, but is it really dissenting, a true expression of an inner idea or opinion, or is it just yet another attempt at gaining social traction? Skewing opinion towards a different "like farm"?

I am dedicated full time to art now, but I used to work in innovation and strategy at a large financial firm. I delved a bit into startup territory and saw how certain ideas such as fail fast and learn fast (lean startup concepts), find product market fit and other things were king and actually contain some interesting truths, probably. But it is not separate from the culture of finding what everyone likes, being blind to the fact that everyone likes what they are told to like. What might make sense for large companies, where everything moves slow and carry a large responsibility, is / was the mantra of those who where / are trying to create the next step for humans (now humans / machines). I do believe one needs to build services and products that are meaningful and create real value (not just for the shareholder or the founders' pockets), which means taking calculated risks and advancing little by little, but at the same time I find that there is too much focus on looking around instead of looking within. We lack people with a vision. And probably we will lack more and more because we are replacing singular, bold visions with an average of opinions. Average is pretty bad.

This that I saw in the corporate world, I see in the art world. While I may understand the motives that each one has in their own role (artists wanting to create something that is either sold or recognized because they need to make a living, collectors trying to figure out what is important and what isn't, galleries trying to promote artists who will help them make a living, etc.), there is again too much emphasis on "the likes of others", on looking for external approval, and too little of "this is what I believe in". In a creative activity, where 100% of your labour output is an expression of what you've got, it's specially hard to receive harsh criticism or to find outright rejection at what you do. Which has happened for the entire history of humanity, but probably we are increasingly more ill-equipped to face this and separate what is an area for our own improvement vs. what is a lack of understanding or rejection due to the viewer's own motives, problems or, basically, need for self-assurance. Leaving aside the more common and obvious difference in taste, which is ok but is also becoming increasingly more difficult to bear because we only accept the stream of average (read: mediocre) human output that floods society at every level right now. What we don't understand we fear, and it's hard to not let fear slip into rejection or straight anger. This signals a need for self-assurance which we increasingly fail to understand to be our responsibility and not that of the others.

This problem is exacerbated by the silly nature of those platforms we use to communicate nowadays. Short messages abound, and if short is king then silly is the norm, and the chances of content to follow the herd increase to make sure nobody will be put off by a message that can't be understood because it doesn't fit the spatio-temporal short in which we are forced to live (short in words, short in attention span). Short does not leave space for nuances, which we are made of and it's where the interesting stuff lies and helps people advance. It's sad to see the lapidatory "the medium is the message" be so ever present. Whatever you try to say gets flattened into a limited char count or limited seconds count, which is what most will give to what you have to say. Every now and then there are interesting debates over several messages, but it's more an anecdote than anything, and even a long thread or a ping pong of messages are, honestly, quite insufficient (yet better than nothing). But this is a whole different topic and I don't want to digress (too much).

If humans are to keep evolving and maturing as a species, we need to come to terms with our own inner selves, individually. Understand that our value is not determined by others, but by ourselves. Understand that if we don't build our value from within, no external force will either. Understand what is our responsibility and what is others'. But surely understand that it is our responsibility to build ourselves and to find what's next. Don't look for it in your closest algorithmic recommendations, "for you" or any other such list. Do your work.