Tag: writing career

Do you care about me? A conversation about parasocial relationships

Do you like me? Do you really like me? Like, as a person?

I promise, this isn’t some desperate cry for attention. I’m not your ex or super needy friend texting you at 12:45 at night on a Thursday. Do you like me, Nicole, the person?

If you consider yourself a reasonably kind person, you might well want to answer yes. Of course you like me. You come here every week and read whatever writing or reading-related thing I’ve come up with between working and trying to keep my cat from eviscerating my roommates’ dog.

And yes, part of me wants you to like me. I am human. We all want to be seen and loved for who we are. But the other part of me, the larger part, doesn’t really give a damn. And if you’re a writer or content creator, you probably shouldn’t care if your fans like you, either.

That’s right, we’re talking about parasocial relationships today. And why they’re not only dangerous for everyone, but really don’t have any upsides.

Your readers can’t really know you

You can’t really like me as a person, because you don’t really know me as a person. You know the face I show to the internet.

This isn’t to say that I lie about the things I say online. I really am a writer, feral Christian, witch, progressive, horror fan who lives in Western PA and refers to Stephen King as dad. I really do love the books I praise and hate the books I berate.

But to know these things about me isn’t the same as knowing me. You can know a lot about a person online, and it’s not the same as having an actual relationship with them.

We know people in our real lives. People we’ve been able to have real-world back-and-forth conversations with. People who we’ve seen grow and change, and who have seen us do the same. Can this be done on the internet? Yes, of course. I have several good friends I’ve never met face-to-face. But it’s still a two-sided relationship with give and take.

Liking someone doesn’t always translate to liking their work

Even if you like a creator, that doesn’t mean that you like their creation. I love Cardi B as a person, but I don’t listen to any of her music. I like her politics, her sex positivity and the way she supports other female creators. But her music, while I can appreciate the quality and talent, isn’t for me.

Likewise, some people I am not fond of make some wonderful content. I don’t mean people I can’t justify supporting financially anymore. I mean people who are fine, just kind of dicks. Joss Whedon strikes me as a pompous ass. I’ll still watch almost anything he’s involved in.

Most people I’m a fan of, though, I don’t know a lot about. I know almost nothing about Sylvia Moreno Garcia, Grady Hendrix or Kirsten White. I’ll buy their books sight unseen. I don’t think liking them as people is a big part of that. It’s the fact that their books are fantastic.

Parasocial relationships are dangerous

I am very blessed. No one who’s ever been weird to me online has ever found me in real life. I’d love to keep it that way.

Other writers and content creators aren’t so lucky. One witch I follow on YouTube had someone trying to break into her home with a screwdriver. An Instagrammer had to move to another country because she was getting death threats and people were calling ICE on her.

Being online is scary. While the vast majority of people are perfectly kind and normal (And the comments you guys leave are so sweet!), it just takes one devoted crazy person to find a content creator and threaten their life.

This danger goes both ways. We’ve all heard horror stories of content creators taking advantage of their fans. Like Miranda Sings, for instance. The less said of her, the better.

That’s not why we’re here

We as writers and content creators aren’t here to make friends.

I don’t mean this in the mean, competitive way. I have certainly made friends in my writing journey. Other writers and creators are not my competition. And that is a blessing. But that isn’t why I started writing.

I started writing to tell stories. I started this blog to share my writing journey and hopefully help you with your journey. I’m assuming that you started writing to tell your stories.

No one needs to like us. They just have to like our stories.

So, do you like me? If so, that’s great. I’d probably like you too. But if you don’t, that’s alright. All I really want you to like is my writing.

0

Content behind paywalls

I meant to write this post months ago, but the second half of 2024 has been way busier than the first half. So, here we are.

Earlier this year, a YouTube channel I’m very fond of called Watcher made a big decision. They announced that they were going to pull all of their content off of YouTube and put it on their own streaming platform, Watcher.com. It would cost $7 a month to view any of their shows.

The Watcher fan base, many of which had followed Shane, Ryan and Steven from Buzzfeed, lost their minds. Within twenty-four hours, the guys put out an apology and rethought the whole situation. Instead of yanking all of their old content from YouTube, they would leave it up. They would also continue to post new content, though they would do so only a month after they posted it on their own site.

This whole situation got me thinking about how much we’re paying for entertainment. And how much we as creators should be expecting to be paid for our work.

First off, I want to say that I probably would have paid for the Watcher site if that was the only way to get new episodes of Ghost Files and Are You Scared. Those shows are fire.

Selling your creative work is a tricky thing. On the one hand, creatives don’t generally create to get paid. I certainly don’t. If all I wanted was to make money, there are faster and easier ways to do that. What I want more than anything is to share what I make with other people.

That being said, I need to eat. And publishing books cost money. I pay to have PBW on WordPress. I pay for my cover art. I pay to print copies of my book. All of this cost money. Then there’s the fact that if I want time to write, I need to not be at my day job so much. So I need to make enough money to justify not working overtime. Eventually, I’d like to make enough to justify going down to part-time and then quitting altogether.

What I’m saying is, on the one hand, I understand where the Watcher team was coming from. Their content costs a lot more money to create than mine does. And if they want to keep making that content, they need to have the money to do it. That isn’t going to come if they’re beholden to the ever-changing rules and algorithms on YouTube. I don’t blame them at all for making what they thought was a sound business decision.

I also don’t fault them for stepping way back when their community reacted the way they did. I applaud them for listening and considering the points of view of their audience. I think that holding some content back for pay and delaying the release of free content, is probably a pretty good way to go.

I mean, it’s what I do.

I post here on PBW every week for free. I hope I’m giving you content that’s worth something, even though I don’t ask for money. I share some short stories and chapters of my books for free. I even post all of Station 86 for free, for a limited time.

I, however, have novels that are not free. I have short stories for fifty cents on my Ko-fi page. I, like most online creatives, have to walk the line between giving away what we can and charging for what we think is the most valuable.

All of this to say, it’s incredibly challenging to be creative, balancing our desire for eyes on our work and our need to survive in a capitalist society. None of us, I’m sure, forget that people buy our work with hard-earned money. Money that has to go farther and farther as inflation and housing costs get way out of hand.

But I sure am glad you’re here, whether you buy my books or read my content here for free. I’m glad you’re here if you never pay me a dime. I’m just glad you like what I write. And if you do donate, or buy a book or short story, thank you. It means so much more than the financial amount itself. It means, to me, that my work helped someone enough that they were willing to pay money to have it.

So yes, I probably will eventually subscribe to Watcher. I’ll continue to subscribe to some of my favorite creators on Patreon. I’ll buy their books, stickers, and T-shirts. Because I want to. Because I want the content they put out. And because I want them to know that their work is something that I value.

It doesn’t have to be me, but if you can, please consider supporting a creative today. It means the world to us.

If you love the story and want to support Paper Beats World, you can do so on Ko-fi.

Broken Patterns is now live! You can get it right now on Amazon.

0

A WordPress.com Website.

Up ↑