Hey art frens

It's okay, there are no algorithms here, you're not fighting to swim upstream any more  

You can sit here and just breathe and look at all the pretty things coming across the timeline while you take time to untie the knots that the other nastier places left in your creative muscles.

You don't need to perform here. You don't need to prove anything. You're valid even when you can't put pen to paper. You have the heart of a creative and that's enough.

*hugs everyone*

@Curator

"You don't need to perform here. You don't need to prove anything."

This is the exact feeling I've been getting across Mastodon. I feel like I can be who I am. Twitter, Instagram, etc. gives too much social pressure.

@nerk One of our mods @Otherbuttons described the relationships we have with other social media sites like abusive relationships, and I like that analogy very much. There's a kind of Stockholm Syndrome that goes on there, a constant hammering of 'you're not good enough, be better'.

@Curator @nerk I wouldn't really put it to the levels of stockholm syndrome, but absoloutely: it's godawful for a creator's mental health.

Algorithms enforce these content-first rules that are unachievable without bending to unhealthy lengths, and because the corporations know we're dependant on it and it makes them money, they don't care if we break our backs doing it.

You have to dance for the algorithm, or you don't get to eat. And over time you forget that That's Not Okay.