hether we are aware of it or not, we spend our lives consuming the creations of others. This goes from food, to clothing, to technology, to films, to books, to art, and on. And where there are creations, there must, of course, be creators to produce them. We are currently living in the most interconnected age that humanity has thus far seen. One where the internet has facilitated the provision and exchange of ideas, information, and creations on a global and instantaneous scale. There is no denying that this is an amazing resource which has freed up and broadened access for and to many areas and industries, lowering barriers to entry for artists, and increasing the reach that creators have to audiences.
However, there is a flip side to this – always being accessible to your audience has its cons as well as its pros, and the speed with which we are able to access and consume media today is unprecedented, and creates a huge amount of pressure. Keeping up with this frenetic pace is not something that is physically possible for most creators and creatives, and attempting to can have some real ramifications.
But how does it all happen?
Anyone with access to the internet and some minimal funds can start their own shop or business online, anyone can share their artworks and sell them, anyone can blog or have a podcast that brings their thoughts and knowledge into the lives of listeners. The reach that creators now have is global, and harnessing their target audience or market is all about cracking the nut of marketing and providing value-adding content, items, or services.
Skipping past the immense amount of work that it takes to successfully market and identify a niche that you can fill, and the fact that going viral to a large extent is up to chance, what I want to focus on is how this immediacy of access and, in some instances, the direct and constant contact that is possible with the creator, has also changed how we consume, interact, and create, and the implications this has for creators.
The internet never sleeps. When the primary platform of access is the internet, shops are able to be open 24/7, blogs can be read and podcasts or YouTube videos watched whenever is convenient, and time zones are not a problem. Although books are far from obsolete, and pretty much all of us still utilise newspapers, brick and mortar shops, and the TV to access news, new media, and products, vast quantities of what we now consume does come to us via the internet. Because the internet is always available, everything is always on, so to speak. The only limit to your speed of consumption is your internet connection, and how quickly you can read, view, or listen. These are all things that it is possible to fast-track to greater or lesser degrees, but creation tends to be more limited in this regard.
For any creative or creator, there will always be a sense of pressure or expectation for what your next thing is (whether that be your next book, video, product, et cetera), regardless of your platform. This can come from ourselves as well as external sources, particularly if you are accessible through social media. An internal drive to achieve and create is, of course, necessary to get things done. When taken to extremes, such as having unrelenting high standards, or excessively tying your achievements to your self-worth, then this drive can become problematic and a source of great stress. This is not new information.
However, what I want to focus on here is the external pressure. To have your shop sell out, or the hit counter steadily ticking up is, of course, a wonderful thing. If people are commenting or able to write in to you, their feedback and excitement can help propel and invigorate, providing some extra galvanisation for the work. Having a direct connection with your fans, viewers, readers, or customers can be a fantastic source of encouragement and support. As a writer of fanfiction I have experienced these benefits. There is a but, however.
From what I’ve seen, social media or an ability to directly communicate with creators is where things can start to become a bit unstuck. Engagement is one of those key words that anyone creating something wants to see. You want to see your work being engaged with, your product being enjoyed, your services used and appreciated. For the most part engagement will come from people speaking with enthusiasm, eager for your next creation, which can be buoying and build you up. Nevertheless, this does add to the sense of pressure. You want to do right by them, you want to produce something new for them to be excited about. There is nothing wrong with this.
However, some percentage of engagement will not be phrased in such uplifting ways. It may be point blank demands for more, frustrations at the speed you are working at, words that come from their desire to have more now without consideration given to what it takes to produce more. Trolls and flamers, should, of course, be immediately discounted (sometimes easier said than done) and are a separate issue, but their presence also adds to the load. Demands of this nature, whilst not unexpected, do add a very negative additional pressure to all the other sources that are going on, and can erode desire to continue with a blog, YouTube, or even a TikTok account – especially on platforms where it’s very personal content creation.
But why is it that people can feel so entitled? And why is it that they feel like they can make these demands?
The easy answer is, of course, that they simply do not understand the amount of work or effort that is involved in creating a piece of media or product. I have seen countless videos and posts of artists and creators who are bombarded with the “but why is it so expensive” question, explaining how much time, effort, and expense they put into creating their items, in addition to valuing their own time and charging accordingly (as all artists should). Having to explain why your work has a specific value is its own draining experience, but it is not the only reason why people may make demands.
The immediacy with which we can have so many things now, facilitated by the internet, means that in many regards, I believe we are losing some sense of patience. If I wanted to, I could jump on the internet, order a bicycle, and have it delivered the next day. I don’t have to wait for weeks or months or even years for it. If I want to find out information about growing apples, I can Google, and have a wealth of information immediately at my fingertips without having to go to a library or find a particular book to buy. This erosion of our threshold for waiting is not that we are all suddenly impatient. Rather, this immediacy of having results in different expectations of speed, and I believe contributes to some of this impatience that creators can experience from their audience.
This is not the only element to this, however. So much of our lives now are conducted and mediated through the internet. Our phones are not devices that we just call people on, they have replaced our watches, calculators, diaries, laptops, notebooks, newspapers, TVs, and cameras, and in addition to that the vast majority of our social interaction takes place through them. With so much of our lives on our devices and on the internet, we are constantly being bombarded by the torrents of information that are available. In order to stay afloat we have to either adapt or reduce, and very few people are going to delete all their social media. So what do we do? We process information faster. We skim article headings instead of reading the article itself. We quickly put a little reaction image on something.
The slippery slope of speeding up our consumption due to the sheer amount of information we are inundated with is that it starts to leak into other aspects of our lives, and to affect our general attention span for things. Reading a whole book seems like a mammoth task, perhaps, or waiting for a parcel for three weeks seems like an ice age. There are so many demands on our time and attention that we are forced to curtail how much time we allot to things. And with this brevity of experiences there comes a lack of depth, obviously, but also a lack of quality of experience.
And so, to pair this habitual speed-running of consumption with such things as a lack of understanding about how much time and effort is required to produce an item, a piece of art (be it music, artwork, book, or the like), a video, or a podcast, it becomes very easy to see where difficulties lie for creators. Whilst it is relatively easy to speed up our consumption, the creation of what we consume cannot always be accelerated in a similar fashion, and in my opinion nor should it be.
This is not to say that things produced quickly must all be bad, or that it is inherently negative to do so. The industrial revolution is called a revolution for a reason, and a lot of society today is the way it is because of that. Mass-produced clothing serves its purpose, but so too does a painstakingly created unique garment. The two can co-exist. Despite this, the expectation that something must be available now if not sooner is still something placed on creators, and it is not something that can always be achieved.
So what is the result of all this pressure to create and to create faster?
There are two sides to pressure. In once instance, a deadline can force us to stop dithering and to sit down and get the work done. It can be helpful and productive. It depends a great deal on your ability to handle pressure and how you work as an individual. On the other, an immense weight of pressure or judgement can severely hinder the creative process.
The first thing that springs to my mind as a writer is, of course, that it slows the whole process down. If I am trying to come up with something new and innovative, the last thing I need is the burden of stress and external pressure. Your mind goes from focusing on the act of creating to worrying about these expectations that you suddenly have to fulfil, stress develops from the notion that you might not do it in time, or what you create won’t be good enough. The snowball becomes an avalanche.
There is no getting away from the fact that a creator requires an audience. With an audience there will also always be expectations. However, my approach to creation is that I am creating for myself and my own enjoyment. This is why my work makes me happy. Because I do it for myself, not for others or my readers – their enjoyment is a bonus. For me, this helps provide some distance from the requests I receive on my fanfiction. It gives me the space that I need to process everything going on in my life, as well as writing.
However, not everyone can have built in distance, either because it’s not feasible or that isn’t the relationship they have with their work. In addition to this, creatives don’t always work the set hours of 9 to 5. And regardless of whether you are a creative or not, work-life balance is something that many people struggle with. When it comes to being a creative, this can blur even further, especially if what you’re creating is a project you love. Burnout is a very real risk if balance is not achieved, and if you are battling with your own expectations and perhaps guilt if you’re struggling, the expectations of your audience, demands from people who don’t understand the work that goes into creation, these factors all come together to create a toxic scenario.
What I’m talking about here are not simply conditions that are not ideal for creation. What I’m talking about here is personal wellbeing – mental, physical, and emotional. Creating something is a deeply personal act. Sharing it with the public is putting yourself out there. It’s often simultaneously nerve-wracking and exciting. Even when you have a supportive audience, you never have guarantees of what to expect. On top of this, dealing with deadlines and expectations, particularly if you are an owner-operator, is a lot to manage and it can be truly overwhelming.
And this is the thing. It is very easy for an audience to forget that the person providing them with a product or service is actually a human, someone who has their own life going on beyond what they create, and someone who also needs a break from time to time, particularly if their creative endeavour isn’t their day job. They have families and friends, they have bills to pay and squabbles to settle, they have cooking and cleaning to do. No one is ever simply making in a vacuum. Creation is not that simple.
Add into this the increasing speed at which we are consuming media and content, a learned need for immediacy of satisfaction, and the speed at which we can access things, and what we have is a melting pot of dangerous factors that can pose a real threat to the wellbeing of creators. The internet, then, becomes a double-edged sword for creatives. On the one hand it provides access to a vast audience and resources. On the other, it can become very difficult to switch off, and distance becomes harder to manage.
In my fanfiction, I have been lucky enough to have very few negative experiences with readers and commenters, but there have been some where it is clear that they have an expectation of what they want from me, and are annoyed that they’re not getting it. I have received plenty of demands, and often people are not coming from a bad place, but rather one of enthusiasm. But if the only thing they give back are demands, particularly in an arena of fanfiction where the author is receiving no material compensation, the creator-consumer relationship can be fraught and become damaged.
So where is the sweet spot? Where is the balance for creators between being online and reaping the benefits of it, and not overloading themselves?
The unhelpful answer is, of course, that it will vary from person to person. The more helpful advice is to check in with yourself. Ask yourself how you are doing, ask yourself whether you are being too hard on yourself, whether the goals you are setting are realistic, whether you need a break, whether the hours you are putting in are simply too draining and excessive. And breaks need to be guilt free. Although being a creator is often pursing something that you love, it doesn’t make over-committing or burnout something that doesn’t happen.
In addition to this, you need to be firm with your audience. You need to manage the para-social relationship that you have with them, and that they have with you. And this is the key thing. The relationship between creators and their audiences, particularly when social media is involved is a para-social one. We have our own ideas of what the other side is like, and think that we know them, and act accordingly. But as with any relationship, this means having boundaries, and enforcing them.
This could mean reducing what you post about your personal life on your social media, or increasing it in specific instances if you trust them to respect that insight and to understand what you have on your plate. If you need more time, or time away, tell them. There may be disappointment. But that is not your job to manage. Boundaries should always be asserted, regardless of the response that you will receive. And it will be natural to feel concern about whether this could affect your engagement. But staying in the game when you need rest will only harm you and your health, and in the long run, pouring from an empty cup will cause more problems than it solves.
In addition to this, because many acts of creation are acts of love, having your work relentlessly consumed but little given back can be as draining as have little to no engagement at all. Many creations are little edifices, not only of a person’s time, skill, money, and energy, but also of their love, care, and dedication to their craft. Many of us are creators in private, which is wonderful. But being a creator in public adds a whole other layer to what you do, and one of the saddest things is when it saps the joy out of something you love. Having an audience that recognises this effort and care therefore, and which understands and acknowledges that you, as a creator, are not simply a vending machine for what they want, can make a huge difference.
This is not something that creators can necessarily cultivate. Although the image and persona you project can be of interest to particular audiences, it is pretty much impossible to stipulate who is in your audience and what they will behave like. This is where we, as consumers, can practice our own mindfulness. Is it frustrating that something didn’t arrive on time? Certainly. Should you leave a review blasting them? Not as a first move. Creators have no more control over the post (particularly in times such as these) than their consumers do. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt will allow them to show you what they’re really like. As Treebeard says, “Don’t be hasty.”
Although I come at this from the perspective of writing, this does, of course, apply to any creative endeavour, or even anything involving these kinds of dynamics. As creators, part of our job really is to make sure we manage our own boundaries and expectations of ourselves, as well as the ones others have of us – particularly because of the place that the internet has in all of this. Building a strong foundation and relationship with yourself will help inform your decisions when it comes to managing the expectations of others. Respecting your own needs and boundaries without guilting yourself over it will make it easier to communicate those needs to your audience or other key stakeholders.
So yes, it is very possible for creators and creatives to utilise the bounty of the internet. This is a given. But due to the changing nature of how we interact with audiences, creating these para-social relationships, and the evolution of how media is consumed, it is vital that managing these elements is taken into account. This is not going to be the first thing anyone thinks of when they start a business or decide to open a professional Instagram account. But sooner or later, it will come onto your radar. At the end of the day, creation is about enjoyment and it’s about love. If these are being eroded by the nature of consumption, it may be a sign to take a breath, pause, and re-evaluate.
