How to Contend with the Entertainment Metaverse

The difference between an audience and engaged readers

A quote from a recent article in the Atlantic left me spiraling: “Dystopias often share a common feature: Amusement, in their skewed worlds, becomes a means of captivity rather than escape.”

I am no stranger to using — even relying — on amusement as a means of escape. I love TV (if you aren’t watching Game Changer on Dropout Media, what are you even doing with your life?),  I love silly videos on Instagram of sheep bounding happily toward the camera. The Bon Appetit Cinematic Universe carried me through the worst of the pandemic. And I recently bought a Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing for when my brain needs a break from being too real, and I’m unapologetically obsessed with it. 

These are forms of amusement I can usually lean into fairly shamelessly. We all need breaks and rests and humor and regular reminders that there are still funny, wonderful delights to be discovered. Maybe a therapist would say otherwise, but I think some gentle escapism into the world of amusement is perfectly normal and even healthy. Taking breaks from the drabness and drama of our everyday lives is very, very human.

But what struck me was acknowledging the fine line between amusement as escapism and amusement as captivity. 

In the article, journalist Megan Garber says, “...each invitation to be entertained reinforces an impulse: to seek diversion whenever possible, to avoid tedium at all costs, to privilege the dramatized version of events over the actual one. To live in the metaverse is to expect that life should play out as it does on our screens.”

It’s one thing to want relief from some of the more unpleasant moments in life (we can’t be doing “the work” all of the time), but it’s another thing entirely to be imprisoned by the need to fabricate a life for others to consume. 

What sent me spiraling was wondering, as a writer, where I fall on this spectrum, and what kinds of prisons I’ve already built for myself. It was too easy to throw myself down this rabbit hole because I was already contending with the unpleasant feeling that it might be possible that I have become a little too consumed with Instagram.

Over the past few months, I’ve been turning to Instagram as one might turn to a book to study. I’ve been obsessively observing how writers built their platforms, how they grew over time, how their following led to book deals, how their audience seems to be a part of them, how they don’t seem to just get to be writers but also must become photographers and videographers and editors and public speakers and nutritionists and lifestyle coaches — and above all else, entertainers.

It’s worth saying that I like many of these writers very much and deeply admire the art that they create. It’s probably that admiration that first led me down the “how do I mimic this to be a similarly impactful writer” Instagram rabbit hole. But as I watched the trends that seem to allow some writers to pick up thousands of followers, and others to barely scrape the bottom of the follower barrel, I started to wonder why it was that writers needed so many selfies and carefully edited videos about what they had for breakfast and why they had to turn every waking moment of their life into an obviously forced, overly literary caption. 

The poet Joy Sullivan posted to Instagram recently saying, “In order to grow rapidly, there’s pressure to churn out content quickly. As a result, IG feels full of first drafts. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that those ideas often feel under-done, a bit raw in the middle. And I think having to put your “shitty first drafts” on display can really damage your evolution as an artist.”

I find this extremely salient and I also think our algorithm-centric artistry is more insidious than that. I don’t so much mind the shitty first drafts put on display. I think that’s part of the creative process, to make things that are sort of a disappointment to us at first, but push through to create a great volume of work that eventually becomes a piece that meets our expectations (Ira Glass talks more about that here). I think it’s okay to share that art with our community (whether they personally know us or not) and share it abundantly. 

The algorithmic insidiousness lurking behind the shitty first drafts is that to even get people to see these shitty first drafts, you have to first put your private life on display in the form of quick-cut videos, a daily refreshment of stories to feed the content beast that disappears every 24 hours, and speaking so continually into the little camera on your phone that there never seems to be any time to actually emotionally process anything. And if you don’t, the algorithm will quickly move on to someone who will. 

In other words, you must become more than a writer. You must become an entertainer. And not just any entertainer — an entertainer that perfectly molds to what Instagram wants. That, to me, feels much more damaging to the evolution of an artist than just simply publicly displaying your shitty first drafts. 

And still, I empathize with every artist doing this because, for the last few months, I’ve been contemplating if I need to do something similar if I want to “make it” as a writer. I’ve been testing the waters in various ways to see if it works. Thankfully, I’ve stopped short (I think) of the cringiest Instagram life-oversharing, but I keep getting tempted. And that’s the captivity in the amusement. When I turn to Instagram, more often than not I am unable to just enjoy a scrumptious little video of some chickens chilling by a fire. I’m obsessing and analyzing and strategizing how I could turn my own life into something perfectly consumable so that people might be charmed enough to take the leap and read my work. It’s exhausting.

I end up feeling so trapped and lost in thought about what to post to engage people that the whole day will slip by without actually having written anything — the thing I wanted to do in the first place. I’m getting so caught up in the need to create content to promote my writing that I’m not writing at all.

As Garber says toward the end of the article, “A republic requires citizens; entertainment requires only an audience.” When I really sit with this, I know deep down in my bones that I don’t want just an audience. I want deeply engaged readers, critical thinkers, citizens of literature. I want thoughtful critics and a deliberate community turning to my work less for amusing escapism and more for a pause to sit with their own emotions. 

I don’t want to be held captive by the kind of writer-entertainer combo platter Instagram needs me to be to succeed on its platform. I just want to write. So that’s what I’m going to do.