I've made a lot of posts that have taken a considerable amount of my time to make, mostly video edits. I don't think any of them (over 100 across 2 accounts) have ever gotten above ~50 upvotes. About a year ago, I made a post of a meme with the guy getting kicked out of the office saying "High effort and quality gifs". It got over 500 upvotes. That made it seem like people actually want that. In response, I've spent many hours doing video edits, even creating !high_quality_gifs@lemmy.sdf.org (since the LW community is parked and never will receive posts), and making content for that community until I started to get burned out on my hobby. A large percentage of what I have posted has been OC on principle. I've learned that people just don't care.
Why in the world should I keep making video edits when the entirety of the fun has been sapped out by people not caring? I could spend 8-10 hours on a project and people simply won't care because it isn't instantly digestible. Things like memes and 40-100 year old comic strips do incredibly well. It seems like the only 2 examples of high effort that get some engagement are SDF's own !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org , and !custardfist@feddit.nl. Notable mention to some of the pics communities.
I guess what I'm really ranting about here is not that the things I make aren't appreciated (because the very few comments are generally positive), but the fact that most people don't even want it around or care.
I'm not sure I can keep up the grind anymore. The joy has been sapped out of my hobby. And for what? An instantaneous downvote with every post.
it's not the hobby you enjoyed, it was the fake validation from internet randos
if your joy in life is dependent on social media likes, then you're in for a bad time
Nah, I legit enjoy it as a hobby. I did let things get to me trying to make stuff people would enjoy, there's no question about that. Spend hours on something, enjoy making it, only for people to not care about the end result is disheartening. Imagine having fun making a painting for a year with the goal of making people happy only for no one to look at it.
it is possible to enjoy doing a thing and have that be enough, without being discouraged because "not enough other people care about it." i know because i used to get stressed about the same shit. coming to terms with the fact that 99.9999% of people on the planet just don't care about you or anything you do might be tough, but once you get to "well i don't really care about 99.9999% of people on the planet either" it gets easier