SOCIAL MEDIA NOW LIVE SUMMER 2025
Spring 2025
Spring 2025
Saw the final launch, I think it was then, of my websites, this and my sister project based off of critical art and photography, kdutchak.org. Beautiful work, I might have made 4 times extra the amount of work I was willing to finally show on my website, and the changes still go on. It took me almost 15 extra years to put my work officially on a webpage, because, as a graduate of Visual Art in 2010, the internet and smart phones were still unfamiliar to me as a traditional painter and drawer, and the industry was only celebrating those graduates who were alienated enough to embrace Instagram right out the gate.
Woah, I wish I had, after the fact, instead I had tried networking and volunteering the old fashioned way, by going to industry events and finding non-profits to hang out in. Fun, I really recommend doing this, as it built some ultra reliable people that only all fell down in 2022 with the cyber attacks from over seas targeting artists in the Ukraine, myself included, with hate propaganda and funny messages that would close down any account. Horrible situation, and losing touch with a lot of old people from my life, but nowadays, social media’s attempt to address the situation, hopefully we keep seeing improvements, and my disconnection from my past has forced me to take initiative and get on the computer to try to branch out with real connections and people to start again from scratch. Other super famous illustrators, who are in no way as far down the ladder career wise as I am after saying no to those crazy smart phones conspiracy style 10 years ago, are around the same age as me, and they have, or seem to have, super healthy accounts ten years into posting consistently. After taking an online class in social media, it seems my whole framework as being mostly a consumer and not a showcase of real time artwork making is off, it seems that the best people use it as a healthy tool to express the loneliness and often segregated lifestyle of the artist to another person, not the fame generation cash machine it so recently turned into.
This has really changed my perception of online artists and the super well-received divas that really cornered their market early on. I have also noticed that some of these people are using linktree- I might be a tad late to the party with what’s new these days, but this social tool seems cool for artists in that it doesn’t want to make it expensive, the whole thing costs six dollars a month compared to six dollars an ad with Instagram, and it lets people buy right from their phone with a seemingly grassroots level download app, so if you have those people coming to steal your designs anyhow, linktree can at least offer them free with a metric that will track how many people are doing this, and if they are doing this, if you are having a hard time selling your designs like myself. At least we can say linktree seems to offer you a free download button, which may help that stuff get printed and into peoples lives as quickly as possible, making that project a familiar icon without you doing too much slogging.
Now, I have only just started this this summer, so I am not quite sure if it’ll end up with any more likes or traction, but it is easy enough to talk about. As well, it offers a social planning feature that will use ai to generate ideas based on your industry, so if you are like me, and can’t keep an idea in your head for more then ten seconds, then it’ll help your social media take on a more professional, less intimate, ‘I need social to live’ type feel, and more, this is me, my life, and I am getting the social therapy out of connecting all over the world without sacrificing my mental health. Professionally, I think we might be obligated, even people who have seen the worst of it and said no soonest, wonder how to operate nowadays, 15 years in, as the world seems to work with it embedded in it.
Hopefully new ideas keep emerging, and the online saturation that turned so ugly recently will fine tune into something more relatable and integrated as an industry. There seems to be a real fine line to have it work for you, and leverage your time and money investments. Anyhow, not crazy about ai’s impact on the lives on millions, but if it is going to be here anywhere, I think the best thing us artists can do is make sure our interaction with it remains civil and not blindly following, getting the best out of it without having to constantly be stuck in the worst. Thanks for reading!