"When Austin Kleon, the New York Times bestselling author of the creativity classics Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and , joined me for a Substack Live conversation, I expected a smart and funny chat about creativity. And it was... but it was also a lot more than that. Austin waded right into the existential deep end, offering his thoughtful perspective on how to make art in our hyperconnected, always-on, social-media-blasting, monetize-everything, hey-look-at-me-I'm-a-brand world. His candor was refreshing, and his time-tested advice for artists of all kinds was both inspiring and tactical."
""I always think about the way that it's called a social media feed. And that's the way people operate.... we're like pigs in the trough, you know?""
""You reacting to things is really how they keep you plugged into social media.... to be in a creative state, you need to be receptive, but it needs to be an active reception.""
Hyperconnected, always-on social media is engineered to keep people reactive, emotional, outraged, or numbly entertained, which undermines the conditions needed for creative work. Creativity requires a calm, receptive mental space and an active form of reception to notice and develop ideas. The feed model encourages compulsive consumption and comparison, likening users to "pigs in the trough," which disrupts focused attention. Monetization and personal-brand pressures further complicate the act of making art by shifting priorities toward attention and performance. Practical guidance emphasizes limiting reactive consumption, cultivating quiet attention, and prioritizing craft and receptivity over chasing metrics.
Read at Nextbigideaclub
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