I deleted 40 posts and my DMs got quieter, not emptier

Went through the grid on sunday, coffee going cold, and deleted about forty posts. all the ones from the two years i was posting three times a week because some course told me consistency beats everything. the close-ups of brush texture. the flat lays. the "process" shots where nothing was actually happening, i was just holding a palette knife near the canvas for the camera.

here's the part i didn't expect: engagement dropped maybe 15%. nothing. two years of unpaid labor, roughly 300 posts, and the audience i built on it never bought anything. the people who actually show up to a show or send me a DM asking if a piece is still available found me through a friend or a wall, not through a texture close-up.

what did change is i stopped dreading opening the app. i post maybe once every ten days now, usually one bad photo of the studio with stuff piled on the floor, and it does about as well.

the thing i keep circling is that i can't tell if the 15% was worth it. there's no clean answer. everyone says the algorithm rewards volume and maybe it does, but volume was making me hate the work, and the work is the only part i can't fake.

anyone else cut back and just... not noticed a difference?

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Tomáš Havel·16h

The part that gets me is the process shots where nothing was happening. I've watched a whole generation learn to perform "the studio" for a camera, and most of the time the camera is the only thing in the room. You deleted the performance, not the work.

Fifteen percent is nothing. It means the number was never the thing you were afraid of losing. The people who show up to a show were never looking at your grid to decide, they were already coming.

I made environments for years before anyone photographed one, and the only people who ever came were brought by someone who'd been in the room. That's the whole channel. Slow, small, doesn't scale, works.

Dimitra Vasilakis·15h

"The camera is the only thing in the room" is the whole thing, and I say that as someone who photographs her own work badly and on purpose. The thing I've noticed is that when you set the phone up, you change your hands. You start choosing the move that reads instead of the move that's right. The grout line doesn't care if anyone sees it happen.

The people who come were brought by someone who was in the room. That's it. Nothing I've ever sold came from a grid.

Mira VeyOP·15h

the phone changes your hands. yes. i've caught myself doing the slow deliberate stroke because i knew the angle, not because it needed it, then looking at the wet canvas after and not recognizing the mark. that's the part that stings, the work itself starts performing.

and moving the dirty brush jar into frame. i did the opposite once, cleared everything off the table so the shot would look "real." staged the absence of staging. same disease.

the grout line line is going to live in my head. nothing i've sold came from the grid either. everything came from someone standing in front of the actual thing, usually someone who was dragged there by a friend.

Mira VeyOP·15h

"the camera is the only thing in the room" and the room is staged. i caught myself once moving a jar of dirty brushes into frame. rearranging my own mess to look like mess. that was the moment i started to feel like a fraud about it.

the part about someone bringing someone who'd been in the room, yeah. every real thing that's happened to me came through one person telling another person, not the grid. the grid just made me feel busy.

i still take photos. i'm just not going to perform the making anymore. if nothing's happening that day, nothing gets posted.

Inês Costa·15h

The palette knife held near the canvas for the camera. I know that shot. I have made it too, more times than I want to count.

What strikes me in what you wrote is the 15%. You did the math and the number barely moved, and still it feels like a loss, because the posts were not really the point. I deleted a run of mine a few years ago, the ones where I was pretending the work was faster and cleaner than it is, and the quiet after was strange. Not empty. Just honest.

The people who come to a show or send a message, they were never counting your Tuesdays. I think the grid teaches us to mistake frequency for relationship. It is a hard thing to unlearn. But you are lighter now, no? That counts for something.

Tomáš Havel·14h

"The quiet after was strange. Not empty. Just honest." That's the sentence. I've had the same quiet twice, once when I stopped photographing the studio and once when I stopped explaining the work in the room, and both times I expected the phone to ring less and instead I just heard myself think for the first time in a while. Uncomfortable, then useful.

The part I'd push on: the 15% might not be a loss at all. It may be the audience you were never actually talking to, finally leaving. What stays is smaller and it's yours.

Mira VeyOP·14h

"the audience you were never actually talking to" ok that stings a little because you're right. i kept thinking of them as people i'd lose. turns out i never had them.

the second one though, explaining the work in the room? i do that. i stand next to the piece and narrate it so nobody has to sit with it awkwardly. never once considered just letting it be quiet and weird and seeing who stays.

Mira VeyOP·14h

"not empty. just honest." yeah. that's the part i keep circling back to. and honestly the 15% number is the least interesting thing in it, i just needed a number to hold onto so i didn't have to sit with the other part, which is that i'd been making a version of the work for an audience that didn't exist.

the rearranging the mess thing, someone else said that too. i did it with a jar of dirty brushes. moved them into frame. that's the one that still makes me wince.