Allergic to Posting
Day XXst, Month 20XX
Allow me to define "posting" first.
Posting is not updating this website, it isn't uploading stuff I've made, it isn't streaming.
These things resemble posting, in that they're all part of trying to exist online. Have a presence.
But these things are not posting. Posting is doing stuff just to have a presence. And I simply can't do it.
Since I started making games, I've had reason to Post More, to build a brand and market my stuff and be like all the other indie devs I follow in Bluesky, to do all the things a person needs to do these days to functionally exist online, to be a person. But I can't.
Part of it is the sickening knowledge that I'll do it wrong. That I will try to emulate this thing I see and fail in some unknowable way. That I will get zero likes on my thing and be forever branded as a failed poster.
Another part of it is that I never found a voice. Any time I draft a post bound for twitter or bluesky, it feels like I'm writing copy for some company. That I'm selling something for someone else and trying to shave off all the rough edges. Click this link! It's good, and it has broad appeal. YOU will enjoy this thing I am building. You will enjoy me!
And beyond the times I'm actually promoting something I've made, what the fuck to I have to talk about!? I'll just text my friends!!! Why do all these strangers care!? They don't! And then I remember that the only reason I would post is so that I can exist online! So that I appear present and engaged and corporeal. I think that's what puts me off it so much, that the only reason to post is to be seen, to be part of the conversation, to build something like a precense. Because if I don't, I'll never be able to get anyone to care about what I'm making. I wont be anyone.
Because if you don't post, you don't exist. And unfortunately, I do want to exist.
I don't know how to square this necessity to build a brand with my absolute distaste and lack of skill at doing so. If I don't, I'm cutting the legs out from under myself when it comes to promoting the cool shit I'm doing. But if I do, I'll hate every second of it. I need to find a way through that doesn't make my skin crawl. Or maybe I don't. Maybe I just need to get over myself and repost memes.
This post is a mess. I think there's 2 parts to it. 1) building a brand and how much that sucks. 2) "existing" online and having a home/a place that you're effectly always present. Chew on this more.<-->I want someone to find something I've made. Find this blog or play my games, and know that I'm online, somewhere, that I have a place where I'm effectively present. I need a home, I suppose. Or at least something that looks like one.
Maybe that's what the point of this website is, after all; to have a home that isn't reliant on a platform or an apparent always-onlineitude, on engaging with the timeline treadmill.