I see posts saying “don’t be self-deprecating about your own creative work! know your value! be proud and let others know you’re proud!” and it always feels like the poster thinks this is some kind of self-esteem problem, when people talk their work down or don’t talk about it at all.

But if you actually look at it from both the artist’s perspective and the potential viewer’s perspective for like 5 seconds each, you will see the problem.

I have made posts talking up my own creative work, and even linking to places where some of it can be bought. Those posts have pretty much never gotten more than a few notes, and have never led to any sales. And I think I know why, and it’s not a problem I know how to solve.

I suspect this is because our minds are compensating real fast for the fact that ad blockers are getting less and less available/effective. Our Bullshit Detectors are getting active to the point of maybe overactive. If I see a post enthusiastically talking up something the poster has done– my brain says THIS IS AN AD.

If it’s blazed, that counts extra. If it has lots of notes, that counts extra. If it contains a link to something, that pretty much cements it.

And on one level it’s true! Talking up something you’ve made, and encouraging others to go see/buy it, is the definition of advertising. And this is not necessarily bad! I am sure a lot of those self-promotional posts are from awesome people making something I’d actually be interested in!

BUT when my bullshit detector has flagged it, the warning tells my brain I need a reason to believe that, instead of the default conclusion that it’s a scam or a mass-produced piece of soulless crap trying to pretend to be personal.

Only if OP is a person I actually know, will I trust it automatically. (Not the most recent reblogger, I know my mutuals can be duped sometimes. It has to be the Original Poster.) And once I’ve reblogged it, it’s at one more degree of separation for the next person who sees it, and therefore less reason for them to trust.

Other reasons I can be persuaded to consider trusting it– well, those are mostly things out of the creator’s control. Like if other people are spontaneously commenting on the post saying that they like what the poster has made, and if those comments mention specific things they like about it, and those things are also things that specifically interest me.

And I’ll still be reading those comments with a suspicious eye, because I know that they may be sockpuppets and/or people that the poster specifically asked to comment and help promote them.

And I think part of the reason that I’m unsuccessful at selling my (theoretically) sellable work is that I can’t bring myself to cross that line. Because sock puppetry is obviously dishonest, and asking others to help promote my work feels like it’s on the very edge of honesty– my brain tells me that if they actually liked my work enough to promote it, they would not wait until I requested it (putting them in the coerced position of having to either hurt my feelings or say things that aren’t from the heart).

(I’m from the Midwest, so almost every form of asking for anything feels like coercion to me for that reason. This is a topic for another day. Do not @ me about how I should handle it differently because that is NOT as easy as you think, and I have entire essays about why. You can ask for those if you really want to see them.)

If the post is primarily about something else– like the process of creation in general, or the difficulty of reaching an audience and making a living as a self-employed artist– and the link to the artist’s own work is somewhere in there– I can imagine giving it another look. Like, if this post included a link to something I make to sell, I can imagine someone checking it out.

But I’m not gonna do that, because my BS detector is already side-eyeing that sort of link, because there ARE posters who will use that as a sneaky vehicle for a promotion, and even if I agree with the whole post I’m not particularly likely to click a link just because of that– if the post says nothing about what’s actually in that link or whether I’d like it.

Honestly, it feels to me like a lot of positivity posts about self-esteem are missing the point. It feels like there’s this default assumption that the reason someone doesn’t reach for their goals is “a feeling that they don’t deserve it”– as opposed to “a well-founded belief that society is stacked against everyone who isn’t already rich and successful, and that reaching for their goals will get them nothing at best and will result in society actively punishing them at worst.”

Which is, in my experience, more common than you’d think.