What about art without algorithm?

When I was a kid, I loved to draw. I loved to draw so much that one day, when I was about 6 years old, I had completely run out of ideas. I had drawn all of them already. What now?

These days, in a world with bottomless scrolling and an endless supply of content, it seems one should never lack inspiration. Anything goes. (I once went viral on TikTok for exposing the signal readers under the tables at Panera.)

But that day, I felt like I had reached the bottom of the well. After that, I mostly drew pictures of animals, and I especially liked to draw dogs in side profile. One time a kid in my class said to me, “Angela, why are you always drawing those stupid dogs?”

I don’t know, kid in my class, maybe because I like them? Why are you still carrying a t-rex lunchbox?

That’s my earliest memory of artist’s block.

Back in my day, you could create something and there was no pressure to share it with anyone. You could just make the thing, show it to your mom, maybe hang it up on the refrigerator door. You might even be brave and take your portrait of Corbin Bleu to school to show your friends (and have your middle school crush laugh at it), but that was about as far as it went. There was no social media, no pressure to commoditize it, no ‘likes and views.’

At the iHeart Radio Awards, Taylor Swift said she spent years unobserved playing guitar, writing songs, and honing her craft in the privacy of her childhood room. Hours and hours of practice safe from the malice of the internet.

In her speech, she said:

“Anything you feed the internet, it will attempt to kill. I don’t want that for your dreams.”

I’ve had a dozen or more creative pursuits over the years. None of them have been nearly as successful as that one stupid TikTok. Since the dawn of the social media age, I’ve been pestered by the feeling that anything I make is only worth making if I can share it online and get immediate feedback.

Honestly, its been kind of a buzzkill. It became less about creative expression and more about seeking validation.

There was a time when you’d never see the words ‘art’ and ‘algorithm’ in the same sentence. I’d like to see that become the norm again.

I’ve started blogging again, and I’m just doing it for fun. To relax. To share my thoughts. Maybe a few people will read it, maybe no one will. Who cares? What I’m NOT going to do is write for an algorithm.

And I’ll draw all the pictures of dogs I want.