I spent three weeks on a painting last month. It’s a moody little thing—oil on canvas, a quiet street at dusk, the kind of light that makes you forget your phone exists. I posted it everywhere. Instagram, Twitter, the ghost town that is my Facebook page. I even tried a reel, which I hate doing, because I’d rather eat dry toast than dance in front of my work. The result? Seventeen likes. Two comments. One was my mom. The other was a bot trying to sell me crypto.
If you make art and share it online, you know this feeling cold. You do the work, you hit publish, and then… nothing. The algorithm yawns. Your numbers flatline. You start wondering if you should just pivot to painting portraits of dogs in bow ties, because apparently that’s what the internet wants this week. I’ve been there. I live there, actually. And after enough cycles of quiet disappointment, I’ve started to figure out how to keep going anyway. Not by hacking the system, but by remembering why the system was never the point.
The Silence Isn’t About Your Work
The first thing I have to tell myself—and I mean really tell myself, sometimes out loud, like a weirdo in my studio—is that the silence doesn’t mean my work is bad. It doesn’t mean I’m bad. The algorithm is not a critic; it’s a traffic cop with a caffeine addiction and no taste. It rewards frequency, trends, and engagement bait. It doesn’t care about brushstrokes or the way you finally nailed that one chord change.
I think about the artists I love. If Emily Dickinson had an Instagram account, she’d have like twelve followers, and half of them would be spam accounts named “xXx_DarkPoetry_xXx.” Her work wasn’t made for a feed. It was made because she had to make it. That’s not a romantic cliché—it’s a survival mechanism. When I separate the making from the sharing, I can breathe again. The making is mine. The sharing is just a bulletin board in a very loud hallway.
Stop Checking the Scoreboard
I’ve caught myself refreshing the app. You know the move: post, close, open again in forty seconds. As if the internet has been waiting with bated breath. It’s embarrassing, but it’s also human. We want to be seen. The problem is, when I treat likes as a scoreboard, I start making work that’s designed to be liked, not work that’s true. And work that’s designed to be liked is usually boring. It’s the visual equivalent of small talk at a party you didn’t want to attend.
Here’s what I do now: I set a timer. I post, and then I walk away for three hours. Sometimes a full day. I go back to the studio. I make a cup of tea. I stare at the wall. The numbers will be what they will be, and my refreshing them won’t change anything except my mood. The work deserves better than my anxiety.
Make the Work You’d Make If No One Was Watching
This sounds obvious, but it’s terrifying to actually do. If no one was watching, I wouldn’t paint sunsets. I love sunsets, but I don’t paint them because I find them interesting; I paint them because they’re safe. They’re pretty. They’re the kind of thing that gets a polite nod. But the work I make when I forget about the audience is stranger. It’s more personal. Sometimes it’s ugly. And those are the pieces that, months later, I still turn toward when I walk into the room.
I have a small canvas in my studio right now—just a smear of gray and a single yellow line. It’s not impressive. It would die on social media. But it’s exactly what I needed to make that day. It’s a note to myself, a reminder that I was here and I was feeling something. That’s the stuff that keeps me going. Not the applause, but the quiet satisfaction of making a thing that didn’t exist before.
Build a Tiny, Real Community
The algorithm might ignore you, but people don’t have to. I’ve started sending my work to a few friends directly. A text message. An email. Not a mass newsletter—just a “hey, I made this, thought you might like it.” The responses are slower and smaller, but they’re real. Someone writes back: “This made me feel less alone today.” That’s worth more than a thousand double-taps from strangers who scrolled past in half a second.
I also try to be that person for other artists. When I see something that moves me, I send a note. Not a comment full of fire emojis, but a sentence or two about what it did to my insides. It takes two minutes. It matters. The internet is full of passive consumption; a little active attention goes a long way. I’ve found that giving it makes receiving it feel less urgent. The pressure eases.
Remember That Most Art History Happened Offline
This one helps me when I’m feeling particularly invisible. Think about the artists you admire. How many of them built their legacy on a platform that didn’t exist twenty years ago? None of them. They worked in basements and garages and rented rooms. They showed up at weird little galleries and coffee shops. They made zines and mailed them to strangers. The algorithm is not the gatekeeper of artistic validity. It’s just a loud guy at a party who thinks he’s in charge.
I’m not saying we should all delete our accounts and move to a cabin (though some days, I’m tempted). I’m saying that the online world is one tiny slice of what it means to be an artist. It’s a tool, not a home. When I treat it as a home, I get depressed. When I treat it as a bulletin board, I can use it without letting it use me.
Keep a Private Body of Work
I have a sketchbook I never post from. It’s messy. It’s full of bad ideas and half-formed thoughts and drawings that look like a toddler’s tantrum. That sketchbook is my sanctuary. It’s where I go when the online silence gets too loud. I make things there that no one will ever see, and that’s the point. Not every piece of art needs an audience. Some of it just needs to exist, for you, as proof that you’re still making things.
If you don’t have a private practice, start one. It doesn’t need to be a sketchbook. It could be a folder on your computer, a voice memo, a box of scraps. The container doesn’t matter. The privacy does. It’s a way of reminding yourself that your creativity doesn’t depend on validation. It exists because you do.
What to Do on the Hard Days
The hard days come. The days when you think, “Why bother? No one cares.” I have a list for those days. It’s taped to my studio wall. It says:
1. Make something tiny. A doodle. A single sentence. A chord. Don’t try to make it good. Just make it.
2. Touch something real. Canvas, paper, clay, an instrument. Get off the screen.
3. Remember a piece of art that changed you. Not a post. A real piece of art. Sit with that memory.
4. Tell someone you appreciate their work. Break the silence for someone else.
This list doesn’t fix everything. But it gets me out of my head and back into my hands. And that’s where the making lives. Not in the numbers. In the hands.
FAQ
How do I stop caring about likes and shares?
You don’t stop caring overnight. It’s more like building a muscle. Start by noticing when you’re checking—just noticing, without judgment. Then try small experiments: post something and don’t look at the response for a full day. Pay attention to how you feel when you’re making versus when you’re tracking. Over time, the making gets louder and the tracking gets quieter. It’s not about never caring; it’s about caring more about the work than the reaction.
What if I need online visibility to make a living from my art?
That’s a real pressure, and I don’t want to pretend it’s not. If your income depends on visibility, the algorithm can feel like a boss you can’t please. In that case, try to diversify how people find you. Build an email list that you own, not one that Instagram can take away. Collaborate with other artists so you share audiences. Look for offline opportunities—local markets, galleries, teaching. The goal is to make the algorithm one tool among many, not your entire livelihood. It’s a slower path, but a more stable one.
Does making art just for myself actually matter if no one sees it?
Yes. Unequivocally, yes. Art has always been about more than an audience. It’s about processing, exploring, documenting, playing. Think of it like journaling. You don’t write in a journal expecting someone to publish it. You do it because it helps you understand yourself and the world. The same is true for art. The act of making changes you, even if no one else ever witnesses it. And honestly, that change often finds its way into the work you do share, in ways you can’t predict.
I’m still posting my work. I’ll probably keep posting it, because I like the idea that someone, somewhere, might stumble across it and feel a little less alone. But I’m trying to hold it more loosely. The algorithm is a fickle friend, and I’m tired of chasing its approval. I’d rather be in my studio, making something ugly and true, with the door closed and the phone in the other room. The art will still be there when I come back. And so will I.
