Singers and Social Media

Why I will never start an Instagram even though I probably should.

“It’s called Facebook,” my brother told me. “It’s a social networking site where you can chat with folks and share stuff. It’s a little like Livejournal.”

The year was two thousand and something or other, and my middle-school-aged self had been summoned to my elder brother’s side at the sound of his laughter. My brother has always had a wonderful sense of humor, and my preteen self knew that he had probably found something good. The meme in question was a classic GIF cut from Jurassic Park, with an anonymous voice singing silly lyrics along to the theme song. If you have a favorite method of filing taxes, you are probably familiar with the meme in question.

This was my introduction to what would become one of the most powerful (and destructive) entities in the world.

I should probably take a moment to make it clear that I don’t hate social media. Not exactly. I spend plenty of time scrolling for memes, and the convenience of updates from those who live far away really is nice. As to why I’m sharing any of this on a website dedicated to my Opera Nerd Activities, that would be because of this frustrating little concept: Branding.

From my teenage years to my thirties, I have received many, many snippets of advice about branding. After all, singers have to market themselves. America only has so many large opera houses, and said houses don’t have nearly enough jobs for everyone. The demand for opera is out there, but finding that audience (and hopefully a paycheck to goes with it) means getting creative with networking and advertising. In the era of the internet, this usually means utilizing some kind of social media.

However, the thought of using social media to market myself as an opera singer holds about as much appeal as eating a bowl of rocks.

Do other singers do this successfully? All the time! Anything wrong with that? Of course not! Am I hindering my singer “brand” by not having an Instagram or a tik tok? Quite possibly!

But here’s the thing- I’m old enough to know myself pretty well by now. And I have learned that, when it comes to upgrading or changing my online presence, I can only ever trust myself to do the bare minimum. Sometimes not even that.

I regularly wait years to change a profile picture. I’m too paranoid to “check in.” I’m too self conscious to play with filters. Successful branding needs at least a hint of sincerity, and I SINCERELY DO NOT ENJOY DOING ANY OF THESE THINGS.

On a more serious note, I’m also old enough to know how quickly the social media landscape can change. What works on one app may not work on another, and algorithms can be fickle. When you’ve lived long enough to spend hours cultivating an online presence AND see the website you’ve been using fade into obscurity, the whole darn process just seems a bit pointless after a while. Watching Facebook go from “Fun New Thing” to “Disinformation Dumpster Fire Sprinkled with Very Bad A.I.” has left in impression on me. No matter how many cute animal shorts and comedic sketches my friends show me on the Newer Apps, I just can’t bring myself to get invested.

Enter the blog.

While the popularity of the blog has waxed and waned, this format has some advantages that give it more staying power than some other forms of content. Because the core of any blog is the text, I can easily backup my work with some simple copy and paste action.

I also have more control in regards to file formats and media types. This comes in handy when you’re an artist who needs to demonstrate your skills, and the most recent samples of your work were filmed on 3-5 different smartphones, an Ipad, and an old digital camera of unknown origin that just happened to be in the room when every other piece of tech died.

Will this blog help me to advance my career? I have no idea! Are there other opera blogs written by those with more experience than me? I would bet a lot of money that there are!

But if my love of this art form demands that I interact with others in digital space in some way, then I’m going to do it on my terms. I’m going to try to give you some silly blocks of text that you can read at your leisure, or ignore in favor of what else you’ve got going on.