the red pill, blue pill of platform marketing - tara mcmullin
inspiration library > WRITING > CRITICAL ESSAYS > TECHNOLOGY
I’ve been feeling nourished and brain-stimulated by Tara McMullin’s work for a few months now, and today I recieved her latest essay “Wait, I think you’re platform-pilled” — about the matrix of online marketing via platforms which promise: easy audience, be authentically yourself, instant fame.
In her piece, she uses the BLUE PILL / RED PILL metaphor from The Matrix to describe what’s actually happening inside the mechanism of platform marketing, and opens the question of what taking the RED PILL means.
I was especially struck by this paragraph, under “Websites are Dead.”
“Did people stop visiting websites because platforms are actually better? Or because platforms incentivized us to abandon the websites we used to love? Did people stop making good websites because platforms are better for business? Or did platforms make us choose between the potential for internet fame on their terms or the near certainty of languishing in obscurity on our own websites?”
As in: the idea that websites are dead is something that platforms WANT you to believe.
Since my work is so deeply intertwined with website as world-building / art forms and internet as creative practice — this paragraph made me feel lots of feelings.
After reading this essay a few times, I felt (a) inspired to reply to Tara (a very rare thing for me, given how terrible I am at emails) and (b) to share her piece as part of my inspiration library practice.
I ended up doing both. My quick email reply turned to an email-essay, a selection of which I’m sharing below.
Dear Tara,
[…]
I wanted to share with you my personal version/vision of "The Red Pill.”
I'm an artist-entrepreneur, web designer, and creative guide. I always felt that platforms made feel powerless, helpless, and futile. Over the years, my (non)-strategy for marketing became one of minimalism and total artist-hermit introversion:
All I did was three things: (1) create something (2) post on my website (3) send a newsletter.
I began thinking of my website as a "world" (or public mirror of my consciousness) that people could visit -- if they happened to randomly stumble upon it. But mostly, I felt like sharing on it was speaking into the void -- as you wrote: "the near certainty of languishing in obscurity."
My red pill consists of 3 things.
To deliberately accept the feeling/fate of "languishing in obscurity" -- and to STILL create -- because, as an artist, the process of creation itself (regardless if I made money or not from it) nourished me.
Embracing a highly self-selecting, "niche" audience. I think that taking the red pill is realizing that you DON'T want a quickly and cheaply ammassed, big audience -- but instead, to slowly magnetize a tiny, highly self-selecting group of people. This means that my website has to feel "sticky" for the right people. -- and have enough friction (my uncompromising authenticity) to keep out the "wrong" people.
My internet practices: recently, I started articulating my philosophies for digital world-building, and for the internet as a creative practice. I also articulated why I like to focus on building a world, not an audience.
Is This Thinking Small?
Is this "thinking small?" Sure - I've accepted obscurity, my audience is still very small, and my reach seems highly diminished. But, I'm way past the point of caring.
Because I, as an artist and creator, feel so deeply expansive. My creative expressiveness feels more alive, diverse, and fruitful than ever, and my website-world is the ONLY infinity space that feels big enough to hold everything.
I'm not trapped in a rabbit cage, subliminally controlled by the algorithm.
Also, this thread of thought reminds me of the book "small is beautiful" by EF Schumacher.
Is the Red Pill Effective?
I think it's important to define what "effective" is.
I know that my red pill is effective for me because:
(a) it nourishes me to keep doing it
(b) I get positive external feedback.
A is far more important than B, especially at the beginning. And B is a function of A.
By B I mean: when people resonate with my work, they share it on their own newsletters. I'd get big spikes in traffic, and then, my newsletter list also grows -- all of this without me doing a single thing differently.
But... I think that for me, the metrics of "building a subscriber list" or "making sales" are only byproducts of the entire system -- not the primary goal of the system itself. The more this system feels self-sustainable, the more these byproducts will happen, effortlessly.
This is how I can focus on the main force that will, ultimately, initiate the chain reaction that can make making money feel.. not like work.
That is, as you put it: making remarkable work.
And: remarkable work deserves an infinity space for it to live in, not a rabbit cage manipulated by robots for techno-feudal lords to profit from.
[…]
visit my inspiration library
more on world-building
💌 I write a weekly newsletter on creative alchemy & world-building called guide.notes. I also have a podcast, botanical studies of internet magic.