We all have our own audiences. Starting with ourselves, and working our way out to potentially millions of people.

In the context of North American media and societal culture, I propose three takeaways I found that slightly go against conventional wisdom. By audience, I mean a set of humans who regularly interact with your output, whether that be your extended friend group, your twitter sphere, or your secret YouTube channel teaching Next.js.

Does Your Audience Help?

Let’s be a bit practical, and assume this audience is at least a dozen people. They don’t have to help you out every day, but every step towards your goals should not come at the detriment to your relationship with your audience.

If this positive correlation is not occurring, evaluate why. Some reasons are more understandable (and mitigable) than others.

Where I would differ from conventional wisdom is what to do if there is some misalignment between your audience and your relevant goals. I am of the opinion that it’s beneficial to modify some of your goals to suit your current audience. A benign example is learning surfing if you have a lot of surfing friends, but when thinking about something deeper, like your career trajectory, there’s no single correct answer. I do believe that peer support is among the most important factors for support, but doing something because of peer pressure is not sustainable.

Pull, not Push

Audiences are pull-based, not push-based. Of course, most people probably have that one best friend or parent who would listen intently to anything you do. But audiences, especially larger ones in online spaces, tend to have a limited range of expectations. They “pull” the output they want from you. Even in-person, it’s very easy to steer a conversation one way. You can usually do whatever you want inside this range, but venturing out of it is a huge risk.

Conventional advice rightly puts emphasis on quality, but defines quality as some synonym for total expended effort, which I feel is misguided. Effort should go towards to the right areas. If you’re a TikToker with a trendy audience, a 15 second video you made catering to the newest trend is probably going to result in greater audience growth and retention than a 1 minute, well-planned video which focuses on something outside of your scope.

Give the people what they want. As long as it doesn’t compromise your creative freedom or mental health. That’s the difference between one-hit-wonders (who often lose creative freedom and mental health) and Coldplay (who changes up their style a lot, but smartly curated an audience that actually wants that).

Are they here for your personality?

There is a type of audience who is just here for your personality. This is liberating, as it means you are not constrained by subject or even medium. The downside is that your personality becomes the constraint. Celebrities experience this a lot. Lil Uzi Vert can announce he’s gotten into horror movie producing, or Japanese tea ceremonies, and his audience would embrace it. But if he suddenly acted like an industry plant, it would be over.

I guess conventional wisdom makes it seem as though this is the default style of audiences (maybe due to the pervasiveness of celebrities on our culture). I find that this is actually a bit rare. Most people you befriend will be due to some common interest or type of output. While this is arguably personality, I believe that actual personality is independent from output. Only a few people come to mind when I think of having a personality which carries them through their presence. And of course, I make no value judgements here. A friendship’s value and strength is independent from how it’s made. Whether through interests or output (such as deep conversations), or through personality (e.g. that one person everyone knows).

Basically, while social skills are not optional, social “presence” usually is, particularly online.

Be like water. Understand what your audience wants, but also what you need. Find the compromise. Don’t worry about personality; if you’re someone who attracts an audience based off of that, you would already know it. No matter what, take care of yourself. You’ll be here the longest.

This essay was written at Socratica Toronto.