Once upon a time, having a following on Twitter actually meant something. Your tweets showed up in your followers’ feeds. Chronological. Simple. Honest. You posted, they read it, they responded. A conversation between human beings. That was the deal.
Then X changed the game — and nothing on the internet has quite been the same since.
“For You” algorithmic madness took over. Visibility stopped being about who chose to follow you. It became about predicted engagement: likes, replies, reposts, watch time. The algorithm decides who sees what, and it rewards whatever keeps people scrolling longest. Not what’s true. Not what’s beautiful. Not what matters. Just whatever triggers the next dopamine hit.
So we all started gaming it.
“What used to be a casual platform for sharing thoughts became a full-time performance. We stopped posting for people and started auditioning for a machine.”
We tweet more. We reply to everything. We chase trends, post threads, ask questions, stir outrage — anything for that sweet algo juice. Endless hours interacting, reacting, performing — just to stay visible. What used to be a casual platform for sharing thoughts became a full-time performance. We stopped posting for people and started auditioning for a machine.
Then AI arrived and broke what was left.
Tools like Grok made it trivially easy: quick replies, content ideas, polished threads in seconds. Suddenly anyone with a paid subscription could flood the timeline at industrial scale. Suddenly the human voice — tentative, searching, imperfect — got buried under an avalanche of frictionless machine-generated content. And to cut through, you had to post even more. Reply even faster. Farm engagement like a digital serf.
We became algo slaves. The question is: for what?
- Platforms win: more time on site, more ad revenue, more addiction engineered into the product.
- Power users and influencers win: clout, sponsorships, influence over the discourse.
- The rest of us? Burned out, dopamine-fried, screaming into a machine that doesn’t care about truth, quality, or genuine human connection — only metrics.
It’s a tragedy of the commons, played out in real time. We each optimized individually — post more, engage more, be more — and collectively wrecked the experience for everyone. The old Twitter died the day chronology became optional. The new X turned us from posters into performers, endlessly auditioning before an algorithm that moves the goalposts daily and answers to no one.
For indie artists, this trap is especially cruel. Music has always been about creating something real — something that took time, vulnerability, and craft. A song isn’t a thread. It can’t be hacked into virality with a hot take or a rage-bait reply. And yet the pressure to play the social media game is relentless. Post reels. Go live. Build your “personal brand.” Engage, engage, engage. The implicit message is that if you’re not gaming the algorithm, you don’t deserve to be heard.
But here’s what the platforms don’t tell you: X is one of the weakest environments in existence for music discovery. Audio doesn’t surface well there. New listeners don’t find artists through X — they find outrage, debate, and memes. The indie artist grinding out daily posts in hopes of breaking through is almost certainly burning time that would be better spent making music, connecting with fans via email, or investing in platforms where music actually travels.
The algo doesn’t care about your art. It cares about your attention — and it will take as much of it as you’re willing to give.
“Own your audience. An email list can’t be algorithmically suppressed. Your followers can’t be taken from you by a platform update.”
So how do we break free? The honest answer is that there’s no clever hack. No trick to beat the machine while still playing by its rules. The only real freedom is reducing your dependence on it. Post less and better — things worth reading, worth saving, worth sharing — rather than volume-posting for engagement metrics. Use the Following tab instead of the algorithmic feed, so you’re engaging with actual people rather than whatever the machine decides will keep you scrolling. And above all: own your audience. An email list can’t be algorithmically suppressed. Your followers can’t be taken from you by a platform update. A real community, built slowly and honestly, is worth ten times the hollow follower count of a profile that’s been optimised to death.
None of this is fast. None of it feeds the beast the way the beast wants to be fed. But that’s precisely the point.
The platform won’t save us. The algorithm isn’t going to suddenly start rewarding honesty, depth, or art. Only we can decide — individually and collectively — to stop performing for a machine that doesn’t care whether we live or die, as long as we keep scrolling.
So here’s the only question that matters: when did you stop posting for people and start posting for the machine? And more importantly — are you ready to stop?
