Why Everything Online Feels Like It’s Trying Too Hard

I keep having the same thought every time I scroll through social media. Everything looks good, but a lot of it feels forced. It is hard to explain exactly why, but the more time I spend talking to people in real life and working on Juke, the more I notice the difference between things that feel real and things that feel like they were made to solely exist online.

Before starting this project, most of my creative work lived on the internet. I posted photos, worked on social media for brands, and spent a lot of time thinking about how something would look once it was uploaded. That is not necessarily a bad thing since the internet is where most creative work gets seen now. At the same time, when everything is made with posting in mind, the post becomes more important than the work itself.

One of the things that changed for me while working on Juke is that I started having longer conversations with people instead of just taking their photo or sharing their work. When you talk to someone about what they actually do every day, you’re reminded that most creative work does not happen in clean, perfect moments. It happens through repetition, mistakes, slow progress, and a lot of time spent doing things that would never make sense in a post.

I also started to notice that the people who feel the most genuine when you talk to them are usually not thinking about content or online presence at all. They are thinking about their next project, their next idea, or just trying to get better at what they do. When those people share something online, it feels different. It does not feel like they are trying to prove anything. It just feels like a small piece of something bigger.

Working around social media and brand content has made this even more obvious to me. A lot of what gets posted online is planned, approved, edited, and designed to perform well. When everything is polished and intentional, it can lose the feeling that made it interesting in the first place.

That does not mean social media is bad, and it does not mean people should stop posting their work. It just means that the internet only shows one part of the process, and sometimes it is the least interesting part. The conversations, the trial and error, and the time people spend figuring out what they actually want to make are usually what makes the work feel real. Those things rarely fit into a single post.

The internet moves fast, and it rewards things that grab attention right away. Real work usually does not happen that way. It takes time, it changes direction, and sometimes it does not make sense until much later. The more I work on this project, the more it feels like social media has creativity in a stranglehold. It always wants something new, something finished, something ready to post, and there is not much space in between for ideas to grow. The more conversations I have, the more I realize that the part you do not see, the slow part, the uncertain part, is usually what makes the work matter in the first place.

-MS