I’ve been wanting to write something called Attention Whores, thinking about how that used to be an insult that was thrown around. Just did a twitter search for it and it’s a phrase that still gets used, though. Often by women describing themselves, so maybe you could say it’s been somewhat reclaimed? But occasionally still used as an insult. If you ask me, I feel like the landscape has shifted. I think I somehow inherited a somewhat Gen-X attitude

i dont usually like to talk in terms of generations but i wonder if this clicks for anyone else as a millennial i grew up on internet forums largely populated by gen Xers and I inherited a bunch of their aversion to self-promotion and marketing etc

“but visa you literally work(ed) in marketing and talk about yourself all the time lol” yeah I know! in some ways I was drawn to marketing precisely because I wanted to understand it well enough to do it properly. I think if you’re sufficiently nuanced you can dodge the lasers

and it’s been interesting to witness the ascent of zoomers who seem to have grown up with more of a “get that bag” attitude, post-youtube, post-instagram. honestly I’m happy for them because I think in some ways it’s more honest re: the challenges of navigating modern realities

if you look at my stuff carefully you can notice the things that i am in turn very careful to avoid doing. I never do “Thread 🧵👇🏾”, I personally find that distasteful. when talking about my books I tend to bring them up semi-obliquely as they come up in natural conversation

and I don’t think that makes me a better person or anything, that’s just how I turned out, largely as a function of my environment. I’m reminded of Taylor Tomlinson doing a great bit about makeup vs plastic surgery and comparing it to cheating on tests,

sth like, “there are levels: makeup is like writing the answers on your hand, surgery is like sleeping with the teacher. school is a scam, it’s all bullshit, you do you boo, honestly the main reason i don’t do more / cross certain lines is that i’m too scared to do it personally”

nobody asked but i think there are prosocial and antisocial ways to do marketing or self-promotion. the antisocial way is to just spam the commons with “buy my stuff!!”. the prosocial way is to actually hang out and talk about problems and solutions, have real conversations w ppl

the complication is that people-at-large have a v wide spread of values, beliefs, interpretations, so even if you’re squarely in the middle of mainstream acceptability, some edgelords will mock and insult you anyway. (funnily, once you have stuff for sale, this sells more stuff)

one of my personal values there is “if someone quotes me or my work by name and insults it, I will use that as a springboard to sell more stuff– but I will never go out of my way to seek out more haters” cheesy as it sounds i do think a man’s gotta have a code, and that’s mine

for some additional nuance, i wouldn’t claiming that an entire generation of people *all* had a universal aversion to marketing/self-promo, but those who populated the early internet forums definitely did. some clear + strong selection effects there

tbc