I have a love-hate relationship with social media because it feels like a treadmill without the rewards. You chase engagement, create and post, and the return is small, if it comes at all. You draw an audience to the platform; it monetizes that audience by showing them ads and using their data.

And it’s not only social media. It seems to be a big platform thing. I talked about it in this video.

I’ve been shadowbanned on X a few times for sharing my work, maybe too repeatedly. Apparently I must be a bot for trying to get my readers off their platform and onto my website. I don’t know what threshold triggers the algorithm. I just know X blocks me out temporarily. No warning, no appeal.

The game feels rigged. And knowing it feels rigged really hampers my desire to play it.

It’s a feeling I’ve had before. Years ago, I was headhunted a couple of times. I thought the recruiter was on my side, impressed by my CV and wanting the best role for me. Then I understood who paid them. Their loyalty was to the company that hired them. They got paid if I got hired, not if I found my dream job.

Social media follows a similar pattern. Its priority isn’t really those who make the platform’s content. Even YouTube, which talks like a partner to creators, ultimately has to serve its business and its advertisers. The crowd you gather as a creator is valuable to them, so they keep you happy, until they don’t.

But here’s my puzzle: if the platforms are rigged toward advertisers, why do some creators still thrive on them? Do they know something I don’t, or is it something they don’t know?

I have a theory. Three things keep showing up.

Oh, let’s point the elephant in the room: I know some are paying for fake engagement/ views/followers and the like. It usually shows, and it doesn’t work long term.  But in any case,  I’m not interested in that. 

Ok, back to the three-pronged theory:

The first is consistency until things snowball, because results don’t usually appear when you expect them.

The second is a useful dose of delusion. Psychologists call them positive illusions: people who overrate their abilities and their control over outcomes may be more willing to persist. Studies of founders find that many rate their own odds well above the odds of businesses like theirs. Of course, that doesn’t mean overconfidence guarantees success. Sometimes it just means you keep going when you should stop.

The third is luck. Simulations of talent and success suggest that chance can play a big role in who ends up on top. The most talented people aren’t necessarily the most successful ones.

One caveat, though: we only see the deluded people who got lucky. The deluded people who lost are invisible. The lucky ones may be vocal, but they are not the norm. I wrote about that in my newsletter last week. It’s called survivorship bias.

So, in a nutshell, it might be better not to know. If you don’t know the game is rigged, a couple of forces play in your favour. The delusion gives you the impetus to go at it blindly. And because you’re more active, you give luck more chances to find you. You can also sustain the madness of constant output for longer than someone who sees, from the start, how unfair it is.

That’s my problem at the minute. I know the game, and I’m disappointed by it.

However, I haven’t fallen into the “why bother, it’s rigged” mindset just yet. I still keep at it, albeit sporadically.

At least something worked before: engaging with people online rather than just posting my content. My introverted brain much preferred to post and ghost. I could scale that in a heartbeat 😅

But I have to try what worked.

The plan: find people who are interested in fables about animals, human nature, psychology and the structure of our societies. Then I’ll engage with their posts and hope they get curious about me.

I am now publishing on the blog every Friday, so I’ll run this for a month. If I have new readers at the end of it, it worked. If not, I’ll know that too.

Place your bets. Will it work? Has anything like it worked for you?

Reflect, Redefine, Rise.

R

P. S.: I’m joking. No gambling here please 😬