A Warning Message to Myself of Social Media… But Not Really

Thinking about how much reliance I have come to have in social media would surprise my past self, if not leave myself in awe. Coming from someone who was very late to the game on Facebook, let his Instagram sit for 4 years with only one photo on it, and used Twitter only for a couple courses where I was required to, I was not the most social media savvy in the past. But it did not take too long for me too join the crowd, aka end of high school when I said “Okay, I guess I should start giving a f**K about this”.

So moving on into university and I finally became part of the social media sphere (although Facebook I had for a bit in high school, highly inactive but there, like Jared Kushner). I was already a bit of a band geek in high school, spending after school with my friends playing to Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard songs (because we were pretentious Jazz hipsters), and this band geekiness got worse(better) in university. I became deeply ingrained in social media for music events, promoting my music, promoting other friends’ music, getting involved in any way I possibly could. Most importantly… getting people to see over social media, “hey, look at me, I’m a musician!”.

But the fun of branding music lost the fun, the anxiety inducing aspects of it became flooding in. I started out as someone who would be highly supported of every musicians work, especially close friends but when I started to take it more seriously, it became competition. I would get complete anxiety from other’s people posts, thinking “damn their getting far more hits and likes with their song then I am with mine”, or thinking “What’s wrong with my music?” or even worse, “What’s wrong with me?”. My own posts didn’t seem as good in comparison to what other artists were creating, and it was hitting me hard. But I eventually found a way to better deal with it, and that is what I wanna tell my past self (let’s get corny).

Dear Past Michael, (come on, got to keep it in style)

I know you’re busy pretending you know what Bitches Brew is about and re-playing Ocarina of Time, but it’s time to listen. So you’re gonna get really into promoting music over social media and then get really stressed out about it, surprise, surprise.

The only things I have to tell you, is don’t take it seriously. Don’t treat likes and hits like social currency, look at it like support for your fellow musicians, you’re all a bunch of starving artists in Toronto, show support and it will come back in the end. Don’t worry about the FOMO of not being a part of a jam or a showcase. Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, get involve, do it yourself. Stop staring at the posts of all the events with sad eyes, switch over to your email or you contacts list and actually contact that promoter you met in passing at a show one time, it will work, seriously.

Most importantly, and this is with your actual posts, don’t take those seriously either. Make jokes, have fun, stop worrying about keeping it ‘artsy’ and write some dumb jokes while writing about promotion. Write a political joke, I know how you like to do that. If you take it in the direction the way you want to, rather then what you think people want to, it will go far better for you and people will see that in the posts. You chose to do this because you love it, and if you turn music into being related to stress then you’ll ruin what you love. So just don’t take it so seriously, enjoy it. Now get back to beating the fire temple.