you woke up and checked before you peed
be honest. the phone was in your hand before your feet hit the floor. instagram or x or tiktok or whatever platform is currently holding you hostage. you did not check the weather. you did not check if your mom texted. you checked the number.
the little number at the top of your profile. the one that tells you whether the internet still loves you.
and it is a tamagotchi. you know this. it demands feeding, it makes sad noises when neglected, and half the time you are not even sure if the thing inside is alive or just flickering.
the 4am death check
here is the cycle. you post something. you watch it for an hour. you close the app. you open it again. you close it. you open it. you go to sleep. you wake up at 3am to pee and think "let me just check." you check. the number went down by three. three people you will never meet decided, in the dark, that you were no longer for them. and now you are awake.
you are lying in bed at 3:47am doing grief math over twelve strangers.
this is not a strategy. this is a compulsion wearing a business hat.
why the tamagotchi metaphor is not cute
a tamagotchi dies if you stop pressing buttons. that is the whole game. your creative work is the opposite. it dies if you ONLY press buttons. if every sentence you write is a glance at the counter, every frame you shoot is a calculation of the algorithm, every idea is filtered through "will this make the number go up" ... you are not creating. you are performing maintenance on a pixel pet.
and here is the thing the tamagotchi never told you. the number going up does not mean the work is getting better. the number going down does not mean the work is getting worse. sometimes the number moves because a platform changed its rules. sometimes it moves because a cohort of bots got purged. sometimes it moves because tuesday.
you are giving the number meaning it does not have.
the creators who win stopped looking
not forever. not in some enlightened monk way. they just built a wall between the making and the measuring. they post and walk away. they check once a week, or once a month, or when their analytics app sends a summary they did not ask for. they treat the follower count like a bank statement ... useful information, not a mood ring.
the ones still refreshing every twenty minutes. they are not growing faster. they are just more tired.
what to do at 2am when the itch hits
- put the phone in another room. physically. not "across the bed." another room.
- write down the thing you are actually afraid of. it is not the number. it is that the number means nobody cares. write that down. look at it. it is a feeling, not a fact.
- make something before you check anything. one paragraph. one sketch. one voice memo. give yourself proof that you are a creator before the internet gets to vote on it.
- pick one day a week where you do not open the app at all. saturday. sunday. whatever. the tamagotchi will survive 24 hours. yours might too.
the real number
the follower count is not your pet. it is weather. it changes. you do not stand outside yelling at the rain to stop. you grab an umbrella and go do the thing you were going to do anyway.
your tamagotchi is the work. the actual work. the posts, the words, the frames, the ideas that exist whether twelve people see them or twelve thousand. feed that one. check on that one at 2am.
the other number will do what it does. and one day you will look up and realize you stopped checking because you were too busy making things worth following.