I watched a Youtube video by Austin Augie today who has recently re-emerged back on the platform. He is a film photographer who lives in New York who is now trying to film something each day and upload it to create a routine for himself. I remember watching his youtube channel when I was younger. During this time, he filmed and uploaded every day for about a year and half and his content consisted of bmx riding and fooling around in the streets of New York. After that, he stopped posting which I assume was due to how physically and emotionally draining Youtube as a career can be. Feeling a need to entertain and share your life with other people makes you forget about your own values as a person.
This lifestyle of entertaining others for their benefit without considering the effect it will have on you is wrapped up in the essence of many social media platforms. He talked about this trap and I wanted to share his analogy and message with others. People who do this for their job along with people who are very active on certain social media platforms start to think of this idea of needing to entertain or share with others constantly. When Augie came home from work, he stated that he felt this inherent voice that was telling him to immediately go get content which will benefit his Youtube channel. Augie states, “It’s incredibly easy to fall back into that trap of trying to feed the machine.” This analogy of “feeding the machine” struck me as being so brilliant and a great way to depict social media as a whole. It’s this machine that rewards you because you receive validation through others’ praise, likes, or an algorithm that makes your video known when you post something.
Many people on social media fall into this mindset of needing to film or capture the event so they can share it. They’re doing it mindlessly because it has become second-nature in this highly digitized world that we live in, yet acting in this mindless way is the problem. Doing things strictly for entertainment purposes is okay, but then the question arises of why do you feel the need to post it? Does the video or picture entertain you or is it for other people’s entertainment? Augie’s purpose for making these videos is to entertain a bit, yet he states, “these videos are for himself…and they are helping him build back structure in his life.” For me, the blog serves as the same tool as Augie’s videos. It is to entertain and try to build a community of people, but when boiled down to the essence, I am writing these posts because they make ME happy and they allow me to vocalize and express the thoughts I have in a written format.
So I just wanted to share this idea of feeding the machine with others. Create content and post on social media platforms because it makes YOU happy to document or serves as a great memory. Stop feeling a need to please others if you yourself are not happy. Take action that allows you to improve as a person wherever you are on your journey. Post consciously instead of mindlessly.
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