Only Boomers Care About Social Media Optics

It’s the same old story.

Disavow! So outraged! What is X doing talking and being friends with Y?

The amount of fretting people do about the association game on social media is ridiculous. And it’s even funnier that when someone doesn’t care about it at all, they get so indignant at that person for not caring as if this constant outrage standard upheld must be kept sacred.

But it’s an old-guard game. It’s played on the national TV level because this works for killing politicians’ careers in moments where there’s a single day vote that matters in that regard and it’s all about a quick in-the-moment emotion to try to manipulate the public.

It’s just a game to the consultants who run these kind of things.

And social media is just a game in reality as well.

How funny can I be to get followers? How poignant can my content be to keep engagement up?

It’s just a game for that, one where celebrity fanbase is the most important factor for determining which comments get the most likes, or who cares about what.

And that’s why you can’t take it seriously.

I had someone I won’t name the other day tell me “I lend you legitimacy by commenting on your facebook wall!”

I read this and laughed hard.

I’m an egotistical guy, no question there, but that’s a level of absurd ego that is just ridiculous and pretty boomer in mentality (though we know boomers are egotistical — it’s all about them after all. Did they tell you about woodstock yet?)

First, a couple thousand people in a world of 7 billion have the potential to see my facebook wall at all. Second, of those, the FB algorithm only shows the feed to like 1/10th of those so at any given time a couple hundred people might see it.

Of those 200 people, maybe 50 are looking at the comments and maybe 10 of those know who the person is. Facebook is meaningless. The posts are meaningless. Associating is meaningless.

Post what you want, don’t care what people think is the conclusion here. If someone wants to hang out and be a friend, that’s great, if they don’t, they can go away. There’s no legitimacy or meaning beyond that.

And in the context of book sales, it really doesn’t matter.

I’ve had establishment publishing work overdrive to destroy me. I’ve had jealous people come after me many times, trying to drum up outrage, tell people I’m some awful being because they were soooooo “upset” that I posted something funny they didn’t find funny (which is usually what it comes down to). There’s been a social media crucifixion of me over and over.

Big names in the industry have run whisper campaigns to each other to tell people not to associate with me, not to talk to me, not to treat me as human — it’s pretty disgusting to watch — and they keep getting more and more frustrated that IT DOESN’T WORK.

The truth is no one cares. They don’t care about whatever the outrage is. They don’t care about anything except the book on Amazon they’re looking at and whether it’s fun for them.

You’ll get a fanbase on social media who’s there for you,,but the readers that are just there to read will flock to quality product which I have. And there’s nothing the haters and losers can do about it.

The best part is this represents 98% of the population of readers. Just last night I was back up to #3 in Steampunk category again, all of my books doing well. This is the best sales month of my life and people are grinding their teeth because it’s happening without a political controversy surrounding me — despite their constantly bleating that people only read me for political controversy. They are wrong.

And it’s cuz social media doesn’t matter.

So my advice to you is don’t worry about who said what, who talks to who, who follows who. That’s high school bullshit, and it just speaks to your life that you’d care about something like that, not the other person involved.

As for me, I’m going to keep having fun and keep winning.

My blog gets nearly 1000 views a day. I spend hours on this content, this is where the real opinions matter. And I count on you to keep it going. I gained a couple of Patreon subscribers yesterday because I’m looking for a $20/mo subscription to push my video content further. I’m almost to the goal, just need one more person to subscribe. The value is there. Short stories, comics, books, all produced regularly and at the top quality in the industry. Moreover you can help the blog and the cause if you like this content too. Subscribe today.