A few days ago my all-time favourite artist (singer/songwriter, performer, entertainer,…) Frank Turner announced that in November 2027 he’ll be taking a step back from his professional life as we know it. In my mind I’m calling it a sabbatical of undetermined length, not a retirement. My fangirl heart refuses to believe it’s a retirement.
A good friend had sent me the link to Frank’s Facebook post while I was running errands. When I clicked the link on my phone I saw this.
Once the initial shock wore off, I read the full text in that post once more and my brain for some reason latched on the following words
[…] the music industry has been swallowed by social media in a way that doesn’t really interest me […]
I’m sure this statement was prompted by more and different aspects than the one I’m touching on here. I have no idea how using or rather being required to use social media looks from Frank’s side. I’m just the passive consumer receiving any message / “content” he sends out there.
The aspect my brain so irrationally latched on was how this so typical for social media post preview looked on my phone screen. Various images. White letters on various black squares. Different font sizes, different margins. Some images were cut off in the preview. It looked disjointed and made my head hurt.
This is in no way meant as criticism towards Frank. He’s merely adhering to the rules of attention economics. It’s what his job requires these days, when he wants to get a message out to the people who he wants to come see his show, buy his music etc.
I wonder though when in the past few years the switch happened from
sharing information in one full length text on some kind of stationary website
to
sharing information via text slapped on images and these shared on social media
But that’s obviously the crazy world we live in and I’ve SO grown to loathe this.
Take a step back and think about the process behind it.
You write something you want people to read. With help from an app or AI or old school DIY with any photo editor you take your well thought-out, articulated and structured text and divide it into easily digestible snack-size-portions to slap these portioned words onto an image / graphic. The text needs to be easily read on a phone screen so you pick a large font size. But space is limited (1080 x 1920 pixel) so there is often more than one image, hence the “social media carousel” with easily swipeable slides.
Isn’t that absolutely insane?
Don’t ask me why it was Frank’s social media carousel to announce the plans for his future that turned on my rant mode and not any of the others I see or rather mostly skim over on Instagram these days. It might have been the combination with his statement I quote above. In the past Frank mentioned often enough that he dislikes social media for all of the well known reasons: the negative impact on public discourse, our mental health and our lives in general.
So I read his words about social media in the full length text (!!), glanced down to the collection of text graphics and thought:
“What a relief it must be for him to not have to care about any of this shit (for a long while) after his final bow in November next year! Good for him!”
I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what he thinks. I’m speculating here and I might only be doing that, because my brain and heart refuse to start processing, what his decision means for me. That’s the funny thing about being a fangirl. His decision is not about me at all, but in a way it still hugely affects me, which makes it feel kind of personal. Even though it is not. Does that make any sense?
I will most probably write a post about my thoughts, emotions and personal development of the past 13 years, in which Frank’s music, gigs and more played such a huge part in my life. Once I have figured out how to articulate it in a coherent and adequate way.
The title of this post is taken from Frank’s song “Get it Right” (2018)
