Feed the Algorithm … Or Not
L. E. Merithew
I’ve been planning to offer a post on the numbers game that Medium is subject to. I’m going to hold off on that a bit longer. I want to make sure my math is correct, so that I don’t give mistaken impressions, or push away new folks to the site.
Instead, I’ll focus today on another issue I’ve begun to see recently elsewhere online, not just here.
Whether it be on YouTube, here, Facebook, what have you, I’ve noticed a trend toward creators beginning to realize there is a difference between feeding a given algorithm, and creating what they really want.
One artist (illustrator and painter Jazza) mentioned a while back on his YouTube channel that he was getting disillusioned with the direction he was heading in. Paraphrased, he decided to cut back on making so many clickbaity videos, and returning more toward an artistic teaching style.
Another YouTube channel, by someone using the moniker “struthless,” made a video in which he decried the trend for everything to now just be labeled “content,” with the implication it was being done as a means of devaluing the creator’s efforts, time and quality of output.
Here on Medium, I’ve seen posts every so often saying, “I busted my butt to get my 100 followers, and it didn’t turn out like I wanted.” Or, “I’ve spent so much time feeding the algorithm and following my followers, I don’t have any time left to actually WRITE.”
From my own forays into trying to find online writing work, I’ve seen sites like Upwork, where making a decent income is a challenge. The biggest factor is the lowest-common-denominator competition, where a hiring company is looking for 250–500 words on a topic, but other providers are willing to do the work for only $1–2 per project. To even make $12 an hour at that rate would require bidding on and completing 6–12 projects per hour. At 250 words, that translates to a typing speed of 25–30 words per minute, with acceptable results on the first pass. Add in the time to bid, clarify the specs, and submit the result to the hiring company, and a real speed of 40 wpm might be on the low end. Oh, and this is all before the site takes their cut.
Now do this 8–10 hours a day with no days off, and only enough breaks for trips to the bathroom as needed.
Then, when you finally have the chance to write what you really want, you discover you’re so locked into “satisfy the algorithm” that you no longer seem able to generate your own projects, and need someone else to give you a nudge to come up with an idea, ANY idea. Even if “satisfy the algorithm” doesn’t turn you off, there’s still the burnout of spending so much time writing for others that you no longer have the ambition to work on something for yourself that may or may not pay off (and if it’s a novel, the payoff, if any, could be 2 to 5 years down the road, maybe even longer.)
I’m sure you’ve seen this as well.
The answer?
I won’t say I have the definitive answer, but a couple of YouTube videos may hint at the general shape of the solution.
In the same video that struthless describes the trend to “it’s all just content,” he identifies some of what I mention above, and suggests taking an attitude of “one for you, one for me.” Namely, for each project you complete to feed the current algorithm (and it’ll change at some point, forcing you to relearn everything — my addition), work on a project that satisfies your own direction you want your career to take.
In another video, Miley Cyrus leads into a cover of a Pink Floyd song with the comment, “two for you, one for me.” Say what you want about her, but you can’t argue with how it’s helped her become as successful as she is.
I’ll let you decide if what I say here has any merit, or is just “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
© L. E. Merithew 2022
