“This desire to go viral is exhausting”: Artists fed up with pressure to promote on social media | culture

TThere was recently a meme featuring Tony Soprano looking distinctly menacing, with a caption that read: “Imagine telling him he needs to create short-form content to engage the algorithm.” But the feeling is inescapable: 82% of all internet traffic now consists of videos, and the number of short videos posted on the likes of TikTok and Instagram has risen by 71% per year from 2024.

You may have noticed that there are a particularly high number of videos showing people’s faces, which are rewarded by the algorithm. Suddenly, chefs, lawyers, podcasters, and critics—all people whose jobs were once tied to their off-camera existence—are turning lenses on themselves. Even film director Werner Herzog, once a non-social media user, is now preparing steaks and opening videos for the camera.

So, how do creative people feel about having to cater to Silicon Valley algorithms? “It’s an ugly situation,” says comedian Stuart Lee, who has so far carved out a successful career without using social media. “We are at a real crossroads. The worst people on earth control the means of communication.”

Lee says that in the absence of social media, it has become increasingly difficult to show his audience where to buy tickets directly – and at a lower cost – than through “parasitic” intermediary sites. So, in a sales campaign for his recent stand-up show in London, his marketing person encouraged him to try video. “They were desperate for me to create some kind of viral content,” he says. “I came out in a wolf costume [a prop from the show] But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sometimes the work benefits from an air of mystery; “I don’t want people to know who I am in detail.”

However, if you want to become a successful creative person — and especially if you want anyone under 40 to engage with you — you need to start making videos. “I have to be there, otherwise I risk no one coming to watch us,” says Kingsley Hall, singer in Teesside electronic band Benefits. “But none of us really want to do it. It’s a terrible dilemma. This fierce, relentless competition for popularity. Seeing creative people chasing the algorithm, desperate to go viral, completely forgetting about their goal: it’s exhausting.”

Lee agrees: “I’ll have to use social media because I need to keep working. It’s terrifying, but the idea of ​​watching the crowds gradually subside as well.”

It’s a dilemma across the creative industries. Actor Chick Chan, who has appeared in everything from Batman Begins to A Thousand Blows, says he doesn’t want to be “immediately recognised.” “A lot of my colleagues think that more exposure means more work, but I think that’s just a myth. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Are you getting more work because of social media? Or are you using more social media to try to get work?”

What about the world of writing? It’s “an introvert’s quest,” according to best-selling author Benjamin Myers. He has mixed feelings about the huge BookTok community in the short video world. “I’m really grateful that people want to get excited about books and broadcast that,” he says. “But this world is full of metaphors. Filming yourself crying because you’ve read a book is completely absurd. There’s something very performative about it, which I find strange, because reading is such an introspective, personal experience.”

That doesn’t mean Myers doesn’t participate online. “I’m addicted to Instagram like everyone else,” he says. “But that’s not reality. It’s a market, and every time you go into it someone will try to sell you something – and sometimes you’re the one doing the selling.”

Even the old derogatory expression “someone has a face for the radio” is becoming increasingly irrelevant, because the face is now in demand. Many shows are filmed, as are endless social segments, while presenters also try to boost their profiles. BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Deb Grant is a diversion for creating camera-facing videos. “I feel obligated to attend,” she says. “I don’t enjoy it and it feels scandalous but it’s an important part now. It’s about building rapport and connecting people’s ideas about what you have knowledge and authority to your face.”

But alongside artists who are hostile to this new way of working, or who are somewhat disaffected, there are others who enjoy it, such as comedian Lorna Rose Train. Since they began four years ago, several of the skits have gone viral, thanks to their surreal and subversive take on the ubiquitous street interview format. And she’s been noticed: she’s now part of the cast of Saturday Night Live in the UK. “It’s very cheap to make [videos] “You can produce a lot of stuff. For a small budget, you can be really creative and experimental, which is much harder to do in traditional television now,” she says.

With the Edinburgh Festival fringe becoming too expensive for new comedians, her strong online presence means she can sell out her shows in advance. But she sees other comics struggling in this new landscape. “I know amazing, award-winning comedians who can’t get online,” she says. “There’s a lot of frustration and anger. Some people resent comedians who have gone viral but haven’t had any live experience, but I think that’s all true. We have to adapt.”

One experienced music journalist who now publishes a Substack newsletter (and wanted to remain anonymous for this article) recently started creating camera-facing content due to its economics. Record companies don’t have the budget to pay for ads in his newsletter. “This budget is now on social media,” he says. “So, if you want some of that, you need to come up with some of that content. I’m basically doing it to chase the money.”

Most importantly, it’s coming along well. “I didn’t want to do it, but it was really fun, and it works,” he says. “It’s really satisfying when you have years where the audience is waning, and then you do this thing that you might not feel comfortable with but the payoff is that it actually reaches people. I’d love for people to still want to read 4,000 words on a new band, and pay for it, but we’re not there anymore, and haven’t been for a long time.”

What about those who have wholeheartedly joined the New Age? Danielle Odugaranya, founder of Ebonix and an award-winning voice in gaming and technology, has noticed a shift on platforms like Twitch, where people are following streamers. “It’s no longer just a place to play, character-driven content is thriving alongside it. Many creators now exist somewhere between player, performer and storyteller in their own lives.”

This can place greater demands on people to spend more time in front of the camera, both performing and playing as well. “For many creatives, the pressure never stops,” she says. “The cycle of posting, performing, sharing, and staying visible can quietly turn into exhaustion.”

The demand for freelance musicians is also growing significantly and often replaces the main creative part of their work. Jazz and electronica artist Yarnie estimated that he spent four hours a day in 2025 creating video content to promote his music. “At the time, I had barely picked up an instrument,” he wrote recently.

It frustrates some people. “The bane of my life now is sitting between the label, pushing for content and beating the algorithm, and trying to protect the morale of the band,” one artist manager told me.

Is it possible to achieve this in the era of short video without engaging in it? “We never cared at first, and we don’t really care now,” says Charlie Wayne of the black country band New Road. “But since we formed in 2018, there’s been 100% more pressure to do that. The real change is the expectation of attendance. That’s because you have the option to constantly engage your audience; you should.” Wayne feels that while there’s “nothing wrong” with making a short video, “we’ve always wanted to be a band first, and that’s still the case. I still think we live in a scene where the audience rewards music.”

Odogaranya says more people need to think this way. “Stepping away from screens, having interests outside of digital consumption, and allowing yourself to stay offline without feeling guilty are all more important than the algorithm ever,” she says. “Creativity needs space to breathe. Without that, you just keep producing. That’s not a sustainable way to build a career or a life.”

But you may risk being left behind, especially as social media reinvents itself. Hall says Benefits initially leveraged Twitter: “We used the tools we had to create our own legend and market ourselves. But when Musk turned X into a big right wing, all the things we were doing became irrelevant.” More generally, he says, “Social media has democratized promotion, and for a moment it seems to level the playing field. But then these things become commoditized and the playing field suddenly slopes 45 degrees, and you find yourself struggling.”

Being enslaved to social media like this, and at its mercy, is what really worries me. “A lot of successful people now do very frivolous things because they were put together from things they created to promote themselves on social media,” Lee says. “It’s a case of the cart before the horse, where the promotional method determines the bell.” In fact, he tells me, he is a “cooperative, functional human being,” while in his actions he presents himself as “a retarded, stubborn, arrogant, self-hating man.” But in a world driven by social media, “I don’t know if it’s possible to maintain both anymore.”