Fuck Algorithms. Create Timeless Content
Crazy.
So Tiktok for 3 months shadowbanned me. Never promoted my videos. Videos were averaging 500 to 1000 views.
Then for whatever reason, Tiktok changed their mind. Recent video that at first had 200 views suddenly spiked to 50 thousand. Now my videos are getting 50 to 100 thousand views each.
Absolutely insane to me. Millions of people recognise me. I'm literally a household name in Singapore. People clearly want to talk about and share my videos when they see it. But due to a combination of accounts getting banned and social media algorithms, my accounts have less than 2 thousand followers. I look less popular than an amateur porn account.
So I think the solution is really: never let algorithms affect what type of work I produce.
If you want me to do something really simple like create an attractive thumbnail, add a hook starting line, or post at a certain time, and that will quadruple or decuple my initial views. Then yea sure.
But I'm rarely going to try to exploit social media algorithms much. How popular do I need to be anyways? I just need to be popular enough. And who cares about popularity anyways? It's the devoted supporters who loves and shares your work that counts.
So I won't select a topic because it's trendy. Or make more videos instead of write because 'people don't read much, they watch more videos now'. I'll make popular content not because it's popular, but because I want to.
Because timeless, evergreen content, is the type of work I want to produce. And those aren't always initially popular. But that is work that can be widely spread and studied even after my death. Ideas that are embedded in people's souls, that transform civilisations. Those are immune to any algorithmic shifts. That will spread no matter what because it deeply touches people. That is work that will stand the test of time.