what was social media?

specifically: what was it for writers?

Some months back, I wrote about social media, and how it sucks, and that you should all get off it. I promised to practice what I preached, and said I would only stay on Bluesky as a kind of methadone, and to see where that experiment was going. I have indeed stayed on Bluesky for the methadone—my long Twitter addiction has proven really hard to kick cold turkey—and because it remains difficult to find reliable breaking news sources anywhere else. But as an experiment…I’m not thrilled. Yes, Bluesky is somewhat joyless, a retirement community for elderly millennials with no sense of humor. But for writers specifically—writers like me—it’s also a retrenchment of the same tired patterns of behavior that made social media so dull, pointless, and life-draining in the first place.

Bluesky’s “Discover” feature has an algorithm; I don’t quite understand how it works. It’s certainly figured out that I’m interested in fantasy novels. But the algorithm doesn’t understand what I want: when it comes to fantasy, I am here to shitpost about Tolkien and look at pictures of dragons. Instead the algorithm brings me earnest posts by genre writers about their books.¹ I know this comes across as weird and antisocial, but I don’t really care what other writers have to say about their books on social media. This isn’t because of a lack of interest in my fellow writers or their novels—I’m friendly with plenty of writers online, I read a lot—but because writers as a community have been taught for over a decade that they’re supposed to behave a certain way on social media that’s not only annoying to me personally, but also detrimental to themselves. And I think these particular, irritating behaviors are symptomatic of what was always wrong and fake and untenable about social media as a whole. You can’t truly socialize as a human being in a networking space where everybody’s always trying to brand and sell themselves.

Basically, the posts that Bluesky brings me are promotional in nature, rather than anything sincere. Writers might be bubbling over to talk about their ideas for their new books, but it’s hard to tell when everything sounds like a pitch, when everything really is a pitch, often meant for an agent. And I’m not an agent, so I can’t help. Meanwhile, other writers are promoting their newly-published novels, ad nauseum—fine! Writers have to promote their books; writers are often told that they have no choice but to promote their books, because whether they’re self- or traditionally published, nobody’s going to help them much with the marketing. But the jury has always been out regarding how much social media book promotion actually helps; in some contexts, yes, in others, maybe not. The writers that have really blown up on BookTok—Colleen Hoover, Sarah J. Maas, etc.—didn’t promote themselves (as far as I know), but have had devoted influencer fans. Jason Pargin, an author and popular TikToker, has said that he really has to devote a considerable amount of time to making TikToks and otherwise promoting his books on social media; that’s how he makes ends meet. And maybe his internal metrics show that he moves copies of his novels that way, I don’t know. But I watch Pargin’s videos, I like them, they’re funny and insightful…and yet I have never once navigated over to his publisher’s site and bought one of his books. I feel guilty, every time. I still haven’t done it.

Over the past decade, I’ve seen a few writers build their career on social media; they’ve generally done so through viral public stunts. The cleverest have figured out that the best tactic is to start fights, to stake out weird and dramatic and often cruel positions: to be needlessly awful to random people. Some writers have scored massive engagement and even multi-book deals on the backs of Tumblr-style literary panics (though mainly acted out on Twitter); others have tried this, and destroyed themselves.² None, in my opinion, are particularly good writers, because they’ve never spent much time and energy on their writing. They’ve wasted it all on posting.

Some years back on Twitter (when it was still Twitter), one of these professional stunt-posters started an argument regarding whether writers needed to read. The argument looked incredibly stupid at first—of course writers need to read! don’t musicians need to listen to music? don’t artists need to look at art?—until you remembered how often writers have been instructed to market and sell themselves on social media. If you want to write a novel, and you work full-time, and especially if you have other responsibilities like childcare, and you have to build your brand and market the damn book yourself, then of course you don’t have time to read. It would be absurd—ableist, classist—to suggest otherwise. But of course, if you don’t read, you can’t write. You shouldn’t write. You have nothing to write about, nothing to write with. You’re trying to cook with zero ingredients, with ashes and dust.

So many writers have been told they have to sell their books that they’ve forgotten about writing their books, and everything that goes into writing a book. They’ve put the cart before the horse; they’ve gone into the work pitch-first. I think, in a way, many writers have been sold on the fantasy that they can cheat, that they don’t have to do the work of actually writing novels; or that, like models, they’ll be recognized by agents for their obvious talent in one look, one pitch, one line. But unlike models, they won’t get exploited. Because writing is a matter of words, not images; and because exploitation is for bimbos.

And you can see how easily this attitude, of selling the pitch first and worrying about the writing later, blends into the adoption of LLMs, and how seductive AI can seem, how maybe it isn’t such a bad idea, since it lets you write faster and faster. And isn’t that what matters, getting out the words quicker so you can spend more time selling, building your brand. And before long, the salesmanship takes over everything else, and the actual writing, the art, the story, the great idea that you originally loved so much, recedes far into the distance.

I don’t want to be cruel here, because I don’t think the origin point of these thoughts is generally sinister: if you want to write, then all you want to do is write: you want the money and time to write. And to do that, you have to sell your books. And it seems logical to say: well, if I get on the treadmill now, if I run fast enough I can get to a place where I have money and time and freedom, and my book adapted into a Netflix series, and all I have to do in the meantime is log onto Bluesky and the other apps and post earnestly about my idea until agents and the writing community and the right people see it. I just need to create a brand, a cool brand that people like, with lots of ironic weary commentary on all the awful things happening in the world lately, which will surely keep happening.³ And maybe soon, someday, with enough exposure and money in the kingdom of heaven, I’ll fulfill all my dreams.

Or you could take another route. Strange things have been happening on the literary internet of late.⁴ Bluesky was rocked in the past week by a strange scandal in which an account calling itself “Unsolicited Manuscripts” posted or pretended to post synopses of novels that had been submitted to a literary agency. The synopses were supposed to sound crazy but mostly they sounded—fine? It’s impossible to tell from a two-sentence summary if a novel is good or bad; it’s entirely up to the actual writing. Certainly the purpose of the account is performative; mining (or inventing) other people’s queries for attention. As of yesterday, the person behind the account claims to have been fired. Whether the account was ever real or not, it was a stupid, mean attempt at engagement: playing on writers’ anxieties, their fears of being mocked, the real vulnerability that comes with pitching your work. It was the same dumb bullshit you would have seen on Twitter. Whoever did it might have been hoping to parlay the stunt into a book deal of their own.

But okay: writers still have to pitch agents; they have to promote their books; they have to build some kind of brand. We may be transitioning out of the social media era, but we haven’t escaped. What is to be done? I think it’s best to think of promotion—any promotion, on any platform—as a necessary evil, as something fundamentally beneath a writer’s dignity. It’s not the work. It’s not what we’re in the business for. It’s definitely what some people are in the business for: the scammers and the mediocrities.⁵ These people are sometimes successful in the industry but that doesn’t tell us anything: success isn’t that interesting, and it doesn’t prove whether a given work is good or not. I’m primarily interested in whether novels are good. This newsletter is for the real ones only.

Skill at social media has simply never correlated much with literary talent. Few great novelists are also great posters (Joyce Carol Oates being a huge exception, we bow before the queen.) If you’re struggling to find time to promote your work as you balance the demands of your day job, writing, reading, family responsibilities, and protesting the regime—then don’t. Or pull back, at least. It’s not that important and again, the numbers have always been murky regarding how much social media promotion actually helps. What you really need is for BookTok influencers to fall in love with you, like they did with Colleen Hoover. Have you considered naming a florist character Lily Bloom? (Do not name your florist character Lily Bloom.)⁶

1. I’ve tried Bluesky’s “Show me less” feature, and I’ve muted innumerable writing-related hashtags, but I’m still getting earnest book posts. Just show me the dragons!

2. I’m not naming names, though you may guess at least one of the “writers” I’m talking about. This is because they’re extremely mean and vengeful! And I think, to some extent, they know they’re frauds, and they don’t want to hear it.

3. This is not intended as a dig at Pargin, who is cool, and whose videos are genuinely thoughtful and good. Also we (I) should probably buy his books.

4. Just today, multiple literary Instagram accounts have posted Mein Kampf next to cute chick lit novels??? I can’t keep up with this shit. I hate you guys on Bluesky for letting me know about it. This is my fault for looking.

5. Thanks to jaywallace1.bsky.social, who reminded me of this essay. There’s a nice literary community on Bluesky! They’re the ones who aren’t constantly posting about their work all the time.

6. I read exactly one page of a Colleen Hoover novel and she for real did this. I think I’m okay skipping her forever. Rooting for her, though.