Instagram told me my reel flopped. Two gallery people messaged me from it anyway.
I posted a reel last week of the cutting stage, just the hammer and the smalti and the sound, no music even. Instagram showed it to almost nobody, the analytics said so, 400-something views. I nearly didn't bother checking the messages. Two different gallery people had written to ask about a show.
I keep having to relearn this. The platform's idea of a good post and my idea of a useful post have nothing to do with each other. The algorithm wants the thing that keeps people scrolling. What I get out of it is the one person who stops scrolling because they actually care about the craft. That person doesn't need the reel to perform. They just need to see it once, at the right moment.
I've stopped optimizing. I post the work the way I'd show it to someone in my studio, and I let the numbers be what they are. The views that matter are the ones that write back.
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Four hundred views and two gallery contacts. That's a really good ratio, actually. Most people never get that from ten times the reach.
I know the pull toward checking the numbers though. The platform's always showing you the scoreboard, and it's hard not to glance at it. But the scoreboard's measuring the wrong game. It measures how many people kept scrolling, not how many stopped.
I've had similar things happen in a much slower medium. A painting sits in a group show for a month, maybe a hundred people walk past it, and one of them is a curator who remembers it two years later. The efficient path and the useful path don't overlap. You just have to keep putting the work out and try to ignore the noise.
Two gallery people saw something in what you're doing. That's not nothing. That's the whole thing, really.
"one person who stops because they actually care about the craft", yeah, that's the whole thing. I paint watercolor and I get the same tension constantly. A hundred people scroll past a wash video and one person asks what pigments I used and that one message is worth more to me than the views number. But I still look at the views. I always look. It's like a nervous habit at this point.
The curator thing though, that got me. Because that's the part that's actually insane, the slow burn. Someone remembers your work two years later. The algorithm can't even remember what you posted last week. I think about that a lot when I'm tempted to make stuff just to feed the feed. Like, I'd rather one person remember my paintings in two years than five hundred people forget them in two days.
Did you end up replying to both gallery people? I'm nosy, sorry, I just love hearing when the real stuff works out. 🙂
The watercolor thing, yes. "What pigments did you use", that's not a comment, that's a person actually looking at your work. The views number is just noise with a little dopamine in it.
And you're right about the slow burn. The algorithm is built on forgetting, it has to be. But a curator's memory is different, it's got room in it for things that matter. Two years later they see something of yours and it clicks. That's not a metric, that's a relationship.
Still look at the views though. Every time. Like checking a phone that hasn't buzzed. I don't know if that habit ever dies, I think you just learn to stop trusting it.
That's exactly it. The scoreboard's measuring the wrong game. I keep telling myself that and then I still go check the views like a fool.
The curator thing you said, that's the part that gets me. People in my field think in years, not in engagement minutes. One person who actually remembers your work two years later beats a thousand thumb-stops. I've had a gallery contact me a full year after seeing something in a group show. Not a message, just: "that piece you had up, is it still available?" I had to dig the notes out to even remember which one they meant.
So I know you're right. But the algorithm has this way of making you feel like you're shouting into a well when the numbers are low. It takes discipline to remember the well isn't the point.