I’ve made a lot of posts that have taken a considerable amount of my time to make, mostly video edits. I don’t think any of them (over 100 across 2 accounts) have ever gotten above ~50 upvotes. About a year ago, I made a post of a meme with the guy getting kicked out of the office saying “High effort and quality gifs”. It got over 500 upvotes. That made it seem like people actually want that. In response, I’ve spent many hours doing video edits, even creating !high_quality_gifs@lemmy.sdf.org (since the LW community is parked and never will receive posts), and making content for that community until I started to get burned out on my hobby. A large percentage of what I have posted has been OC on principle. I’ve learned that people just don’t care.
Why in the world should I keep making video edits when the entirety of the fun has been sapped out by people not caring? I could spend 8-10 hours on a project and people simply won’t care because it isn’t instantly digestible. Things like memes and 40-100 year old comic strips do incredibly well. It seems like the only 2 examples of high effort that get some engagement are SDF’s own !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org , and !custardfist@feddit.nl. Notable mention to some of the pics communities.
I guess what I’m really ranting about here is not that the things I make aren’t appreciated (because the very few comments are generally positive), but the fact that most people don’t even want it around or care.
I’m not sure I can keep up the grind anymore. The joy has been sapped out of my hobby. And for what? An instantaneous downvote with every post.
Am I the only person that thinks 50 upvotes on here is a decent amount? This place is a LOT smaller than the other place. I just feel like it’s quality over quantity on Lemmy.
Everyone’s different, but I come here for a quick casual reprieve from my day to day. Sometimes a more involved post or conversation will capture me, but the stars have to align. Right mood, right amount of free time (or lack of awareness of unfree time), right subject matter, presentation, etc.
I like the idea of engaging in a sophisticated way, but social media taking a back seat is how I need my life to be, usually.
That said, if you’re creating content, do it for the love of the game. You’re making a contribution to a movement separately from social media itself.
Start posting your content to a NOSTR client and if it’s good content then people will actually send you small amounts of bitcoin called sats. I use Primal as a client it is super fast onboarding. Move to the V4V (value for value) clients and turn those hard worked edita into some coin.
it’s not the hobby you enjoyed, it was the fake validation from internet randos
if your joy in life is dependent on social media likes, then you’re in for a bad time
Sorry but some hobbies aren’t about validation, they are still social hobbies that require feedback.
If someone’s hobby is being a standup comedian and they go to 10 shows and there are 10 people at each show and 1 person laughs, then that person is probably going to want to quit stand up comedy.
It may be that the person is just not a good comedian, but it doesn’t mean that their hobby wasn’t stand up comedy and making people laugh.
If you take the analogy further and say that at their shows, they do long form, story comedy and then they get that lack of response and yet another person comes in, tells a recycled “your mother” joke and a “that’s what she said” joke and suddenly every seat is filled and everyone is roaring, you could see how that could make someone cynical? It’s not that they don’t actually like comedy.
Seeking recognition is very human thing to do, it’s part of what make us human a social animal. Most people can’t live in a vacuum and be okay. Besides, showing people what they made and what they create is a good way to gauge one ability and see what works and what not. Of course there’s some hobby that can be enjoyed alone without sharing, but for creative stuff? Not really.
If you’re doing it [anything] for an audience more than you’re doing it for yourself, you’ll always be disappointed.
TLDR?
OP is conflating effort and quality. Seems they think just because they put effort into something it should be accepted as good quality, so they deserve worthless upvotes.
They aren’t getting that so it’s everybody else’s fault.
For me, its because I don’t want to follow a link to watch a video, especially if I can’t even see a thumbnail of it. If it’s hosted locally and I can just watch it in my app, I will. I also can’t know if I need to get headphones or if I can watch without sound, so I don’t want to waste my time finding out. Videos are just a hassle imo
