Beyond Views: Social Media Success Redefined
Thank you for celebrating our achievement of over 600,000 views on a video. However, Calling Up Justice, wants to share why we don’t place much importance on view counts. While we acknowledge the necessity of being on social media platforms due to their vast audiences, we’ve developed a skeptical outlook towards the value of views. In this essay, we’ll explain our perspective and why we believe view counts aren’t a reliable measure of a video’s quality or audience appreciation.
Why don’t we care about views?
Social media platforms are where many people connect and share content, but they aren’t as open and community-driven as they might seem. Instead, these platforms operate under a profit-driven approach, making money through ads and user engagement. They’re like walled gardens, where our interactions with friends, collaborators, clients, and audiences are enclosed within a capitalist system. This focus on profit often leads to the use of metrics that might not truly reflect the value of our content.
We’ve noticed that these platforms offer metrics like views to keep us engaged or motivate us to post certain content. Sometimes, these metrics can be misleading and even manipulative. For example, we’ve had videos with lots of positive comments but fewer views, possibly due to the content’s political nature. This suggests that the platforms might prioritize certain types of content, affecting how widely our videos are seen. It’s as if these platforms want us to care more about views and less about meaningful interactions.
Occasionally, we accidently make a video whose content or aesthetes align with the platforms’ profit-driven goals. This seems to prompt the platforms to promote one of our videos to a wider audience. While this helps us reach more people, it also underscores the platforms’ control over what content gets attention. This dynamic makes it clear that view counts can’t be trusted as a measure of a video’s quality or audience approval.
What do we care about?
It’s worth noting that not all creators are treated equally on these platforms. Some creators may struggle to profit or face violations that prevent them from making money. If you don’t fit a certain mold, the platforms might not prioritize your success. This further demonstrates that view counts don’t accurately reflect a video’s value.
We want to make it clear that we welcome the audiences to watch our videos on the many platforms we publish on. They provide a way for more people to discover our work. We’re spreading education and connections to community. However, we advocate against exchanging money through these platform. We use these platforms to widen our audience, not as a measure of our worth or success. We believe that the true value of our videos lies in the connections we make, the ideas we share, and the impact we have, regardless of the number of views.
In conclusion, while we appreciate the acknowledgment of these view count milestones, Calling Up Justice looks beyond views as a sole indicator of success. The capitalist nature of social media platforms, the potential manipulation of metrics, and the challenges faced by certain creators all contribute to our skepticism. We believe that genuine engagement, meaningful interactions, and the positive impact we create hold greater significance than mere view counts.