Up, down, funk it up
When you're in the middle of a creative spiral so you stop giving a eff
I have been in a wee bit of a creative funk.
My God, so the other night I was scrolling through IG when I had one of those moments where I looked at my feed and thought to myself, why is everything so blahhhhh and whyyyy is everyone making the same exact content?
This is a rhetorical question, by the way, because the social media marketer in me knows exactly why. The algo has studied me at great lengths and it’s actively filtering and prioritizing content based on what it thinks I love and would therefore stay scrolling like a feign. Nature. Travel. Self-help from women sitting in front of aesthetically pleasing backgrounds speaking fast into the camera where it seems very raw and unrehearsed.
And you know what? I actually do enjoy those type of content. I have trained the algorithm well.
But when I saw so much of it stacked next to each other, I found myself absolutely fucking hating it.
I think this kind of feeling stems from the very annoyance I have with copycats. It reminds me so much of my childhood. You see, I’m the oldest of three girls, and most of my childhood was spent fighting with my sisters about things sisters fight about: clothes, space, them trying to do the things I was doing. I remember how much I hated it whenever they copied me. Maybe that is an innate oldest-sister personality trait. Or maybe I just have some kind of ego problem. Whatever it is, I have always wanted the independence of doing something that felt different. I wanted people to look at what I was doing and see something that was distinctly mine. And therefore, I respect creators who are making or doing something that no one else is doing.
At the same time, I am also deeply inspired by what other people make. That’s how creativity works. We notice things. We borrow references. We see someone make something interesting and a little mental lightbulb goes ding because we just reached an inspired thought that needs to be acted on.
I don’t want to copy anyone else, but I am also not creating inside a sensory deprivation tank either.
So lately I have been caught in this strange philosophical loop where I’m asking myself, am I inspired, or have I become a bit of a carbon copy of everything I consume? And if I can’t stand the idea of being copied myself, what exactly do I expect from anyone?
I have also been going, going, going since the spring. Flying to different countries, attending conferences, events, taking on more work projects. My career is growing tremendously. I signed with management earlier this year which have only accelerated that work. So much is happening, much of it good, and yet despite all the energizing business—I have found myself saying that I’m in a creative funk.
BTW, I’m writing this from the backyard of my mother-in-law’s house in a town called Cuxhaven which sits in the northern part of Germany, just below Denmark. I went to my first horse race the other day. We walk more here. I sit outside more. Right now, the leaves are rustling, the sky is blue, and the sun is beaming down on my perfectly sunscreen slathered face. It all sounds very idyllic, like from a movie. But if you were sitting next to me, you’d also be swatting away the flies and the bees and probably complaining about why europe seems to hate AC.
But I am, quite literally, outside touching grass (with my feet). And as I’m sitting here, reflecting on this self diagnosed funk, I start wondering if there’s actually something wrong with me or if this is what helps me be better.
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There is nothing wrong with wanting to be better than you were.
I shared this on LinkedIn yesterday:
As of this morning, the post has more than 86,000 impressions and 74 comments, which is pretty ironic when you read that last line. Here I was telling everyone that you shouldn’t need something to perform well to feel good about yourself, and then I have a post perform well and I smile like a smug little bastard. What can I say! I enjoy the attention!
To expand a little more on what I said above, something I find interesting is how often so many of us describe this feeling of being dissatisfied with our work and make it sound super negative. We call it “being in a bit of a funk.” “Experiencing a rut.” “You’re going through a season,” they say. Something to push through and recover from.
I’ve told you twice in this post already that I’m in a creative funk. But what does saying that actually do other than breed sympathy from others? Like it’s some terrible cold we caught. My goodness, how awful!
I think we’ve gotten it all wrong.
Calling it a funk assumes that feeling satisfied with your work all the time is the norm. But I don’t know a single creative person who works that way. You make something, feel proud for a hot minute—maybe even a little smug—and a few months later you look back and think, “whyyyy did I do it like this?” Ask my friends: I won’t even listen to the podcasts I’ve been on because I hate hearing my own voice, and I dissect all the ways I could’ve phrased something to sound smarter.
It always feels like I’m existing in the “knowing what I know now, I’d do everything entirely differently.” And while that isn’t always the most pleasant feeling, I don’t think it’s all that bad. You should be your own most honest critic. I’m not suggesting you go torture yourself in the name of art, but I think part of wanting to make something better gives you the thrill of the chase because there’s actually something to chase.
I also find that working in social media marketing completely wrecks your brain because it takes this very personal, individual feeling—the whole I think I can make this better thing—and makes us measure it against arbitrary numbers and scoreboards.
We get into this gut-wrenchingly awful comparison cycle. “Oh, so-and-so hit a growth milestone! Their video got more views! Their account has a pretty intense cult following…” Meanwhile, you’re still here trying to figure out whether you even like your job. Or yourself, for that matter.
Those are two competing desires:
Wanting more from the work you’ve created can push you beyond your own boundaries.
Needing more from the numbers can make you believe you’re shit.
And as if that isn’t already enough mental gymnastics to have with yourself, there’s an entire industry ready to cling to that uncertainty because it’s incredibly easy to sell to.
You’re in a funk? Here’s something that can come up with 100 ideas for you. Here’s something else that can write all your drafts, create a fuck ton of variations, and even be your bestie if you ask it to. It can produce more and remove all the friction.
I’m not sure how any of that will make you feel. More productive? Less creative? Slightly more fraudulent? But hey! Look at all that speed. Look at all that output!!
I use these tools too, which is why I feel perfectly fine indulging in a little sarcastic banter about how heavily reliant some of us have become on them. We become reliant on tools that make it easier to produce more, and then complain that so much of what gets produced has no taste.
Ahhhh, taste.
I guess it was only a matter of time before I, too, joined the bandwagon of marketers talking about taste.
I love how everyone talks about it like it’s some mystical quality a lucky few were born with and the rest of us are begging for the recipe. I don’t think it works that way. You develop taste by actually experiencing the process of doing the thing.
You need to go through trial and error to get good at your craft. And that experience can’t come only from making more content. You need to give your brain material it didn’t receive from the same feed you scroll every day.
I touched on this lightly above, but the algorithm is doing exactly what you taught it to do: giving you more of whatever already holds your attention. Its job is to keep you on the platform. The longer you watch something, the more of a signal you give it to keep surfacing similar stuff.
That’s fine for doomscrolling. It’s not great when you need your brain to develop something different.
So, I’m not telling you to book a flight to Europe every time you’re in a funk. Please don’t put it on your credit card and cite this newsletter to your spouse. But you can read outside your industry. Learn something you’re bad at. Go somewhere that pushes you out of your predictable routine.
I have, rather conveniently, fucked off to Germany this last month, and moving more slowly has made me realize how little I pay attention to things back at home.
I watched an older couple walking ahead of me and found myself inventing their whole marriage and picturing what it must feel like to have kids who are grown. I saw a butterfly and a slug sharing a fallen plum. I looked up and realized clouds can move a lot faster than I remembered.
None of those things are going to magically pull me out of a creative funk. I’m not coming home with a campaign inspired by a slug.
But maybe months from now, I’ll want to make something about time passing. Maybe I’ll remember that older couple. Maybe I’ll picture them sitting in the same place years earlier with their children, cutting back and forth as the kids grow and the couple gets older, with the clouds moving faster and faster above them.
That’s how moments from life make their way into the work.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes you don’t like your output, and that’s perfectly normal. The creative field, especially in social, requires too much volume for every post to be some kind of artistic breakthrough.
I don’t want to treat the desire to make better work like something I need to recover from.
So maybe I’m not in a funk. Maybe I’m bored with some of the work I already know how to make and starving for something I haven’t made yet.
Two things that caught my attention
1. Ben Affleck’s delivery on AI and filmmaking
I came across a year old clip of Ben Affleck discussing AI at CNBC’s 2024 Delivering Alpha summit, and it completely sucked me in. First off, I’m a sucker for someone who speaks well, and are passionate about the thing that they’re talking about. And what got me is that he skipped the usual celebrity AI take that’s often very surface level. He didn’t say things like “it’s coming for all of us,” nor did he just say “relax, it’s fine.” He made an actual argument. AI will probably drive down the cost of the grindy parts of filmmaking and put real pressure on jobs like visual effects. He also believes that it’ll stay pretty bad at having taste and judgment when it comes to making a movie. I love that it was an absolute refusal to be pro-AI or anti-AI.
It was a good convo overall but I think my marketing brain just couldn’t get over the delivery. He took a complicated economic point and made it feel like something he’d say across a dinner table, without dumbing it down. His tone and voice sped up, slowed down and it was enthralling to watch. He sounded like a guy passionately working through an idea in real time, and not some actor that’s reciting lines. Or maybe he’s just a great actor and I’m a schmuck.
This writeup covers the substance, but watch the video!
2. OpenAI’s creator trip backlash
So unless you’ve been living under a rock, there has been some HEAT around OpenAI’s recent influencer campaign. They flew a bunch of creators out to Wildflower Farms in the Hudson Valley, where some people are calling it their first creator brand trip. Business Insider covered it. Apparently there was supposed to be some product education that’s paired with nice dinners and outdoorsy stuff. People got branded merch, and everyone was creating content. OpenAI’s line is that it was an education event tied to ChatGPT Work, and creators should be showing practical uses of the product, that whole thing.
The wild part is how every creator made a post that resembles your stereotypical day-in-the-life influencer vlog. There were gorgeous rooms, gift bags, nature shots, “so honored to be here” energy. And they posted to tiktok and guysssss! People came in hawwwwt. There were people talking about AI’s environmental footprint, and their concerns about jobs, and about whether these creators were really attempting to do some image rehab for an industry half the internet already side-eyes. The Verge documented the trip and the pile-on, including how some of the creators responded once they got called out.
Honestly, I’m really not that interested in litigating the should or shouldn’t of these creators. The marketing case study on this is what’s interesting. You’ve got one of the biggest brands in the world putting a bunch of people in a genuinely stunning setting, and majority of the audience had no idea what they’re supposed to take away from knowing that these creators got this experience. Some of the reaction content traveled further than the campaign itself did.
And as someone who also manages creator partnerships, I was especially intrigued by how everything played out. You’re never going to please everyone, and getting yelled at doesn’t automatically mean a deal was not worth taking. But there’s real implications with partnerships and I think that’s pretty costly.
Alrightyyy, friends. That’s all I have for today.