Operating Manual for Unmarketable Projects

They won’t know what they saw. That’s the point. #MarketingWithoutMercy #ConfuseSeduceDeepen

[confuseducedeepen]

100 Ways to Disappear and Be Found Anyway

You want to be seen, but not sold. Heard, but not harvested. Percieved but no processed.

This is for you who don't want to play the game but still want to be remembered. For you who resist performance as identity, and branding as self-definition. For you who want something real to reach someone real, without becoming content along the way.

The Quiet Fracture Between You and the Feed

If you're an artist, you're probably already tired. Not because you’ve created too much, but because you’re constantly expected to create the wrong kind of things.

Every platform tells you to be social. But they’re not social spaces. They are storefronts disguised as intimacy. They reward clarity, regularity, familiarity. They punish contradiction, hesitation, and depth. Your ambiguity is not a “niche.” Your silence is not a strategy. But both are seen as failures by an ecosystem designed for seamless conversion.

You are told to post more. To schedule. To smile. To make things “relatable.” But what if what you make isn’t relatable only recognizable by those who are starving for it? What if you don’t want engagement but entanglement?

Visibility Without Betrayal

This blog is not a strategy guide. It’s a toolkit for tension. For friction. For unmarketable moments that linger. It’s for creating visibility without losing what made the work necessary in the first place.

There will be no “10 tips to grow your audience.” No templates for high-converting reels. No platitudes about authenticity in a system that turns every scream into a hashtag.

Instead, you’ll find ways to confuse first impressions, seduce slow attention, and deepen what remains.

What I want to explore here:

Weaponizing dissonance.

Staying unexplainable without becoming invisible.

Building presence without a brand.

Leaving marks instead of metrics.

Because the question isn’t “How do I grow?”

It’s: How do I get seen without becoming something I never meant to be?

So What Is This, Really?

Confuse, Seduce, Deepen is part manual, part trapdoor, part echo chamber for those working in subcultures, experimental art, weird music, and beautiful failures. It’s where marketing ends and mythmaking begins. And if it works right, you’ll leave not with answers – but better tools for making your own damage visible.

This is not a path to virality. It’s a way to vanish correctly.

And still be felt.

[confuseducedeepen]

PSA

Universal truth exists. That is the good news. But it dwells only in the abject.

And thus remains forever out of reach.

To touch it is to dissolve.

The self can only scream, not hold.

[confuseducedeepen]

Beyond Disruption or 'Why Spectral Work Lasts Longer'

A: I light fires. You plant spores. Let’s be honest most people scroll past both. So why not go out loud?

B: Because loud burns fast. I want what lingers, not what glows.

A: You really think people stay with what they don’t get?

B: They do if it haunts the right place.

Disruption is visibility. Spectral work is persistence.

The disruptive move demands attention. It breaks rhythm. It shouts into systems. That can be necessary. Vital even. But disruption needs the system to stay visible. It thrives on reaction, friction and resistance.

Spectral communication works differently. It doesn’t interrupt. It infiltrates.

It hides in the structure, not outside of it. It leaves a trace the reader didn’t choose but carries anyway.

Spectral work doesn’t seek the crowd. It waits for the right one to notice too late.

It works like decay. Slow. Specific. Irreversible.

It doesn’t offer relief. It offers residue.

You won’t remember what it said. You’ll remember that something changed and you didn’t see it happen.

Disruption is a flash. The spectral is a shift.

Disruption wants to be heard. Spectral work wants to be re-encountered.

If you want virality, go loud. If you want transformation, go spectral.

[confuseducedeepen]

Beyond Disruption

Why Spectral Work Lasts Longer

I light fires. You plant spores. Let’s be honest most people scroll past both. So why not go out loud?

Because loud burns fast. I want what lingers, not what glows.

You really think people stay with what they don’t get?

They do ... if it haunts the right place.

Disruption is visibility. Spectral work is persistence.

The disruptive move demands attention. It breaks rhythm. It shouts into systems. That can be necessary. Even vital. But disruption needs the system to stay visible. It thrives on reaction, friction, resistance.

Spectral communication works differently. It doesn’t interrupt. It infiltrates.

It hides in the structure, not outside it. It leaves a trace the reader didn’t choose – but carries anyway.

Spectral work doesn’t seek the crowd. It waits for the right one to notice too late.

It works like decay. Slow. Specific. Irreversible.

It doesn’t offer relief. It offers residue.

You won’t remember what it said. You’ll remember that something changed – and you didn’t see it happen.

Disruption is a flash. The spectral is a shift.

Disruption wants to be heard. Spectral work wants to be re-encountered.

If you want virality, go loud. If you want transformation, go spectral.

[confuseducedeepen]

How to Be Read Without Being Used

Strategies against appropriation.

Introduction

This guide is for artists who don’t want to be a brand.

Who don’t aim to please, but to fracture. Who aren’t looking for agreement but for tension.

If your work disturbs more than it explains, if it resists being quoted, simplified, or turned into a slogan then you’ve probably seen it misused:

Turned into content. Misread into consensus. Followed by spam bots, “support messages,” trauma-mimics. Used to fuel a discourse you never joined.

Appropriation doesn’t just come from critics or ideologues. It comes from comment sections, platform logic, and automation. This is how to make your work resilient by design without hiding, softening, or branding it.

Online Strategies

When you want to be visible without being claimed

1. Design fracture, not clarity

Post fragments, never full statements

Break video structure early: pause, glitch, noise, emptiness

Use phrasing that resists being clipped or shared

Goal: Disorientation, not clarity “This is not a quote. It’s a cut.”

2. Turn comments into terrain not validation

Leave spam visible but aestheticize it (screenshot with caption: “This tried to follow me home.”)

Disable comments if the work isn’t a dialogue

Ignore trauma hijack language, don’t answer algorithmic empathy

Antifragile reaction ≠ response Antifragile reaction = redirection

3. Make your format unextractable

A poem as audio

A text only visible in movement

An image distorted through light or sound

If it can’t be copied cleanly, it can’t be misused easily.

4. Undermine feed logic

No CTA

No hook

No emotional payoff

You don’t owe them retention. You owe them disturbance.

5. Treat spam as material, not commentary

Don’t delete—repurpose

Don’t argue—frame

Don’t validate—recode

“Not every comment is a conversation.”

Offline Strategies

When you want to show without being seized

6. Show only fragments

Incomplete installations

Cropped or unlit parts

Room design as friction not framing

The work is not the object. It’s the refusal to be whole.

7. Prevent archiving

Projections, stickers, performance

Ephemeral formats that resist capture

If they can’t save it, they have to experience it. That takes effort. That’s the point.

8. Disrupt through space

Place too high, too low, too close

Use acoustics, reflection, repetition

Make the body decide if the work remains

Presence without possession.

Strategies that work in both spaces

For artists who move between digital and physical risk

9. Ambiguity is a boundary

No fixed narrator

No stable message

No clear stance

You don’t need to be understood. You need to be unreadable in the right places.

10. Return with difference, not repetition

Don’t repost. Re-introduce the same work with a shift in tone, form, context

Let it spiral, not loop

Repetition with difference creates resistance.

11. Not everything needs a response option

Build pieces that don’t invite replies

Post texts that can’t be easily commented on

Let some work exist only once, then vanish

Visibility doesn’t mean availability.

Conclusion

You can’t stop people from seeing your work. But you can make it harder to use. Harder to quote. Harder to convert.

You can treat spam like static. You can make visibility disorienting. You can build works that multiply in confusion not in affirmation.

Let them comment. Let them try to use it. Just make sure they can’t hold it.

[pallidpupils]

clip from my first Maligna Cerebra live set the other night

[confuseducedeepen]

Antifragile Works

When pressure doesn’t break it. It sharpens it.

The previous fragment explored how to resist appropriation through form, through context, through friction. But they’re still responses. They assume pressure, and try to absorb it.

What if the work didn’t just hold under pressure but used pressure to deepen?

What if every misread, every hijack, every misuse didn’t weaken the message but multiplied its effect?

This isn’t protection. It’s design.

This is not about making work that hides. It’s about building work that can’t be held because every attempt to seize it fractures the one trying to hold on.

That’s antifragile communication.

Not harder. Not clearer. But structured to resist capture by transforming under stress.

The more it’s pushed, the more it pushes back not with defense, but with dissonance.

Antifragile works

1. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” (Audre Lorde)

It’s quoted constantly. Stripped of its context, used in fundraisers, in think pieces, in HR trainings. It’s misunderstood almost as often as it’s spoken.

But every time someone uses it to soften a moment— it gets sharper. Because what you’re not quoting is what she actually meant. And that silence is louder every time.

Antifragility through overload. When misuse doesn’t dilute just reveals the distance between gesture and understanding.

2. Sinner Get Ready. (Lingua Ignota)

It was never meant to fit. Not in playlists. Not in background noise. Not in genre.

It’s visceral. Religious. Almost unbearable. And yet: it circulates. Not because it’s comfortable but because it refuses to become content.

Antifragility through unquotable intensity. You can’t cut out a line to make it yours. You have to feel the whole thing—or leave.

3. @dril (Twitter/X)

He’s been called a genius, a shitposter, a prophet. His tweets are unreasonably strange, unreadable out of context. And that’s the point.

You can’t turn them into merch. You can’t assign a stance. You try to use the voice and it slips through your hands.

Antifragility through structural unclarity. You can’t co-opt what you can’t even paraphrase.

4. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. (Nan Goldin)

These are photos of bruises, of lovers, of bodies that don’t know they’re being remembered. They’ve been exhibited in major institutions. But they’re not digestible. Not aestheticized. Not closed.

Even when the art world tries to frame them— they stay open, breathing, unresolvable.

Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency | MoMA

Exhibition. Jun 11, 2016–Apr 16, 2017. Comprising almost 700 snapshot-like portraits sequenced against an evocative music soundtrack, Nan Go

Antifragility through proximity without explanation. You can look. But you don’t get to possess.

5. It’s Okay to Cry. (SOPHIE)

It’s a pop song that unravels. A coming-out that doesn’t explain itself. A voice that’s digitally altered, emotionally exposed, and completely uninterested in giving you resolution.

It was misunderstood. Then it was adored. Then it was misused. Still, it holds.

Antifragility through form disruption. When you don’t know if something is pop or ritual— you can’t flatten it into genre.

6. “This is fine.” (KC Green)

It was never meant to go viral. But it did. Then it was co-opted. Then it was memed into oblivion. Then it came back again stronger, sadder, more true.

Now, no one agrees what it means. Which is exactly why it still works.

this is fine | This Is Fine

See more 'This Is Fine' images on Know Your Meme!

Antifragility through semantic erosion. Meaning doesn’t survive purity. It survives in excess.

What they all share:

They aren’t protected. They’re permeable. They don’t break when used wrong they expose the user.

They don’t block access. They multiply under pressure. Not by being louder but by staying structurally unstable.

You don’t need to say more. You just need to build work that doesn’t collapse when they say it wrong.

[confuseducedeepen]

You Misread Me. That’s Not the Problem.

On Interpretation, Ownership, and Letting Go.

You published it. Let go.” “You can’t control what people do with your work.” “That’s the deal, right?

Yes. I let go. But I didn’t give it away.

You misunderstood me. That’s not the problem. The problem is you stopped reading. And started using.

There’s a difference between interpretation and possession. Between resonance and branding. Between being moved by something and moving it somewhere it doesn’t want to go.

I don’t mind being misunderstood. I mind being instrumentalized. I mind when a sentence I wrote from doubt comes back as a slogan. When a wound becomes a badge.

Yes, I let it go. Yes, I know what happens online. But don’t call it ‘reading’ when you only stayed long enough to steal a tone.

I wrote this to be entered, not claimed. I don’t want agreement. I want contact. You can misread me. Just don’t flatten me.

There are ways to make misuse harder. But that’s another text.

[confuseducedeepen]

How to Make Your Work Return Without Repeating It

Spiral structure, platform logic, and how to escape the repost trap.

1. Don’t confuse return with repetition.

From the outside, they look similar. Especially in a feed. Same image. Same format. Same user. Again.

But return if done right is not about visibility. It’s about deepening resonance. It’s not what you show again. It’s how you place it differently.

2. Reposting is punished. Reframing isn’t.

Most platforms (Instagram, TikTok, even Tumblr) deprioritize repeated content. Same asset = lower reach. Same words = algorithmic fatigue. Even engaged followers will scroll past if it feels like repetition.

That’s not your fault. That’s platform design.

So if you want to return to something don’t repost it.

Reframe it. Recontextualize it. Reintroduce it in a way that changes the contact surface.

3. Spiral structure demands perceptible shift.

A spiral is not a loop. The curve bends back but it’s not the same angle. It doesn’t close. It cuts deeper.

If you want your work to return, you have to move with it.

Don’t just drop it back into the feed. Bring it back altered. With a new voice, a new format, a new entry point.

4. How to re-enter without redundancy:

Turn a poem into audio

Add context, not clarification

Show it in a new visual setting

Pair it with something unexpected

Let someone else interpret it

Return to it yourself—with more doubt, not more polish

Don’t pretend it’s new. Just show what changed in you, in the time, in the tone.

5. Offline, spiral return has more freedom.

Feeds demand novelty. Rooms don’t.

Offline, you can reuse without penalty. You can let the same image reappear - on a wall, - in a zine, - at a reading - and no one calls it lazy.

Why? Because the context is alive. And you are part of it.

So if you want your work to return intact, bring it offline. Not as backup. As primary strategy.

6. You’re not repeating content.

You’re extending the wound.

Most users optimize for attention. You build for afterlife.

Let the work come back. Not louder. Not bigger. Just different enough to disturb them again, at a deeper point in the spiral.

You don’t need new content every day. You need new contact.

[confuseducedeepen]

Repetition as Movement

Didn’t you say that already?

Yes. But not like this. From above, a spiral looks like a loop. You see the same curve turning, again and again.

You think: I’ve been here before. I've seen this already.

You think: They’re doing it again.

But sameness is often a trick of perspective.

The philosopher Jacques Derrida called it the illusion of repetition – the way something can appear identical, while actually carrying a displacement inside it. He argued that real meaning doesn’t emerge from sameness, but from the small differences hidden in what looks familiar.

That's what a spiral is: a return that doesn't land on the same spot, a loop that doesn't close.

You come back to a wound. Not to cover it, but because you've changed. And now it cuts differently.

Roland Barthes described something similar when he spoke of the punctum the part of a photograph that pierces you, not because of what it shows, but because of what returns later, unsummoned. That’s what this is: Not clarity. Not conclusion. But delayed resonance.

Julia Kristeva, writing about poetic language, described a kind of movement without structure – a rhythm, a pre-language pull that she called the chora. It doesn’t communicate. It insists.

That’s what a spiral does. It insists.

So no, this isn’t repetition. This is a way back that changes you. And a way forward that doesn’t forget where it hurt.

Didn’t you already say that in your last piece?

Yes. But not like this.

The image is the same. The words might even echo. But I’ve moved. The spiral turned.

When you look at it from above sure, it might look like I’m repeating myself. But from where I’m standing, I’m deeper in. The line bends – but it doesn’t circle.

I didn’t come back to prove I’ve changed. I came back because something stayed with me and this time, I want to meet it differently.

It's not a theme. It's a pressure point.

You say: this again? I say: not yet.

Isn’t that just personal obsession? You keep circling the same thing. Isn’t that a trap?

No. A trap doesn’t move. Obsession wants closure. This doesn’t.

I don’t come back because I’m stuck. I come back because something stayed unfinished— not in the work, but in me.”

There’s a difference between repeating a topic and returning to a tension.

I’m not circling pain to display it. I’m listening to what didn’t finish speaking.”

If I name it differently now, it’s not because I finally understood it but because I can now carry what it meant without collapsing.

So when does it end? At some point you have to move on, right? Say what you had to say. Close it.

I thought so too. But some things don’t respond to closure.

They don’t ask for conclusion. They ask to be carried until they stop echoing. And I don’t think this one has.

Endings are useful for the viewer. But I’m not here to resolve. I’m here to return until returning doesn’t shift me anymore.

A spiral ends when the thread runs out. And I’m still holding it.

So this is just process, then? A way to stay in motion?

No. It’s more than that.

Sometimes, return isn’t for me. It’s for them.

Because a second encounter often does what the first one couldn’t. The work didn’t change. But they did. And suddenly it enters.

You thought it was over. You looked away. And then it came back not to remind you, but to become something else inside you.

That’s what I want to talk about next.

Return as catalyst. How spiral structure enhances spectral impact.

[confuseducedeepen]

What Is a Spectral Experience?

And how do you know if you’ve left one?

“How do I know it worked if no one said anything?”

You don’t. Not right away. That’s the whole point.

Some effects don’t announce themselves. They don’t arrive in the form of comments, likes, or thank-yous. They arrive later – as a sentence someone repeats without knowing why, as a question they keep asking themselves, as a moment of hesitation in front of something that reminds them of your work – even if they forgot it was yours.

That’s what I call a spectral experience.

“So… like, resonance?”

Not exactly.

Resonance implies something was heard, even if faintly. Spectral effects often don’t register as reception at all. They act later. Outside of conscious recognition.

They don’t echo. They haunt.

“But isn’t that just wishful thinking? I mean… if no one responds, how do you know you’re not making it up?”

You don’t know. And that’s where the work gets serious.

If you need confirmation to believe something happened – you’re not working spektral. You’re working performativ.

A spectral effect is not a reward. It’s a trace. A pressure that outlives the moment of contact. It’s most visible when you’re not looking.

Some works act like toxins: They don’t break through right away. They settle. Then they shift something.

“Okay. But what is a spectral effect, then?”

It’s when someone can't forget what they never understood. It’s the moment they flinch when a certain tone appears again. It’s the feeling of being already entered – by something unmarked. You thought you understood. But understanding left first.

It’s the thing you can’t cite – but still feel contaminated by.

Kristeva [Powers of Horror, 1982] would say:

“A language of abjection […] where any ideology, thesis, interpretation, mania, collectivity, threat, or hope becomes drowned.”

“So what does that mean for what I make?”

It means: You might never see the real effect of your work. You might only see the edges of it – in silence, in confusion, in delayed response.

But if you shape your work to be understood immediately, you might kill the very thing that makes it linger.

Spectral Work is the echo you didn't wait for, but it stayed anyway

“So I shouldn’t explain anything?”

No. You can explain. Just don’t make explanation the only way your work can function. Your work is like a door that forgot it was ever open. Let it also slip. Stutter. Fail to land.

A work that can't be misread can’t be possessed.

“But how do I build for that?”

You don’t build it like a message. You build it like a wound. Like a smell. Like a frequency that not everyone can hear – but those who do, will feel altered.

“What if I don’t know if I’ve ever made something that did that?”

Not everything leaves a comment. Some things leave a silence you carry.

[confuseducedeepen]

Ways to Be Seen Without Explaining Yourself

For those who don't want to grow an audience – just disturb the air.

Visibility isn’t the same as understanding. Recognition isn’t the same as resonance. And if your work needs to cut not convert then don’t perform. Interfere.

1. Use the wrong platform on purpose Post the poem on Bandcamp. Put the loop on Tumblr. Share the drawing in a place where people came for gear.

Not to provoke but to displace.

Let the mismatch become the first friction. Make your work feel like it shouldn’t be there – so those who need it will wonder why it still is.

This isn't advice. This is a detour you won't notice until later.

b. Leave something clearly missing Show the work without the title. Or without the text. Or without the ending.

Make the absence obvious not cryptic. Let the viewer feel that something should be here, but you didn’t give it to them. Not because you forgot. Because you watched them wait.

Task: Post something incomplete. Say nothing. Leave the silence unfilled.

3. Post the part you almost deleted

Everyone has that sentence. The one you wrote too late at night. The one that felt too close. The one you erased before uploading.

That’s the one.

The part that felt true before you tried to make it beautiful. That’s the signal.

Task: Post the sentence that made you pause. Not the one that made you proud.

Do you really want to be seen? Or do you just want to be followed?

4. Don’t package. Place.

Visibility doesn’t require polish. It requires presence. And presence doesn’t require consistency. It requires placement.

Put your work where it can linger. Not where it can sell.

Task: Choose one place (offline or online) where your work doesn't belong – but might survive. Place it there. Not for attention. For haunting.

V. Write with echo, not with reach

Don't write to be heard. Write to be overheard. Let the reader feel like they stepped into something unfinished. Private. Maybe not for them.

That’s what makes them stay.

Task: Write one sentence as if you’re not ready to share it. Then do it anyway. No context. No framing.

6. Disturb the format

If it doesn’t echo wrong, you didn’t open far enough.

Post at the wrong time. Wrong length. Wrong ratio.

Disturb the structure that tells people: “This is content.” “This is optimized.” “This belongs.”

Let your work look like it slipped through.

Task: Post in a way that breaks the feed. Not obviously. But enough that it feels… unstable.

8. Vanish intentionally

Disappear for a while. Not out of fear – but as signal.

Spectral presence doesn’t mean absence. It means being missed even if they don’t know what’s missing.

Let them feel the lack. Then return without explanation.

Task: Stop posting. Leave one image. One line. Go silent. Return when the silence feels full.

These aren’t tactics. They’re interference patterns. Not to grow. Not to please. Not to convert. But to disturb the air. And maybe leave a mark where no one was looking.

[confuseducedeepen]

This Isn’t Advice. It’s Interference.

Why I Write About Marketing Even If You Hate The Word.

I want to write about marketing.

Because too many artists avoid it like a disease. They think marketing means selling out. Or selling at all. They think it’s something for extroverts, managers, or people who "aren’t real enough."

It’s not.

Avoiding visibility doesn’t protect your work. It just keeps it out of the systems where it might disturb someone. And if your work is supposed to disturb why are you hiding it?

There are great teachers out there. I’ve learned a lot from them.

Some of Jesse Cannon’s and Matt Bacon’s ideas have shaped how I work. But they’re building systems for growth. And I’m writing for the ones who don’t want to grow they want to fracture.

Most advice assumes you want an audience. I assume you want an effect.

That’s a different conversation. That’s not reach. That’s tension.

Marketing, for me, is not how you grow. It’s how you place the wound so others can find it.

Not everyone will call it marketing. Some might call it visibility. Translation. Contact. That’s fine.

The internet is so saturated with advertising that anything that obviously isn’t selling something becomes more powerful by contrast.

You don’t need to scream. You just need to not ask.

I’ve tried the other version. I used to talk a lot about how I built my sounds: the gear, the software, the decisions behind them. It worked. It pulled in people who were into machines, structure, surface. But it didn’t make them feel what I needed them to feel.

They admired the system. But they didn’t step in.

Only when I stopped explaining and started layering when I stopped answering and started arranging did something shift.

That’s when questions came. Real ones. Not about gear. About interpretation. Emotion. Themselves.

And by that my work came back to me. Transformed.

I don’t teach how to pitch. Because I assume you want to know how to make people stop scrolling without understanding why.

I don’t want to coach you. I want to interfere with whatever makes you think that marketing is beneath you, instead of being part of your weapon.

People admired what I built. But they never stepped in. Because I gave them structure not space. Explanation protects you from the moment you lose control. And maybe that's why they felt nothing.

[confuseducedeepen]

The Artist as First Resonator

If your work shakes no one but you, you might be hallucinating.

You told yourself it moved you. That it cracked something open. That it left you raw, changed, burning. And maybe it did.

But did it move you because it was true or because it was finally about you?

You say you don't want to be seen. You say your work is too pure, too raw, too broken for algorithms. You say you're fine with silence.

You're not.

You're just protecting yourself from the terror that comes with showing something that might not matter.

The mask slips first where the irony cracks.

Let’s be clear:

Yes, you are the first one it has to reach. Yes, it must shake you. But that’s not the end. That’s not even the work.

That’s just the opening.

If it only echoes inside you, it’s not resonance. It’s containment.

And most likely: self-hypnosis.

“But I felt it. It changed me.”

Of course it did. So does a fever. So does a breakup. So does a dream you’ll forget by morning.

What you felt means nothing until you give it shape, friction, exposure.

Art that only moves you is called processing. Art that moves through you is called work.

Projection is a fragile form of protection. Especially when it's articulate.

Ask yourself:

- Did it confront me or just comfort me? - Did it challenge my practice or just confirm my identity? - Did I make something that needs to be risked – or something that keeps me safe?

If you're not sure, you're not done. If it made you proud, it’s not a confrontation. If it made you doubt your integrity maybe.

Some of you don't want to be seen because you're afraid of not being recognized.

But here’s the thing:

If no one sees your work, no one can tell you it’s empty.

And so you stay invisible and call it strategy.

But invisibility is not mystery.

It’s often just: fear with better lighting.

When the echo names itself, the feedback becomes signal.

You’re allowed to be unknown. You’re allowed to be obscure. You’re even allowed to disappear.

But don’t confuse silence with depth. And don’t call it art until it costs you something real.

You are the first resonance. But if you’re also the last then what you made is not a work. It’s a trap.

Sometimes the wound replies before the person does.

Final thoughts

Not every work needs to be loud. But if no one sees it, including yourself, truly it's not a work. It's an escape. First resonance is vital. But it's only the beginning. Don't confuse personal intensity with artistic risk. Make sure you're not just making noise inside your own skull.

Not all mirrors are visual. Some are friction.

[confuseducedeepen]

You Can't Shake What Doesn't See You

Uncomfortable truths about visibility, feedback, and failing to register

Some artists dream of impact. Others dream of rupture. But rupture, too, needs an audience. Because you can’t disturb what doesn’t register.

Online and offline aren’t the same. Offline, people twitch. Whisper. Leave the room. They shift uncomfortably. They stare. You feel it.

Online, they scroll. They skip before the break even starts. No presence = no tension. No view = no friction.

Let’s be clear:

You can’t trigger a reaction in someone who never sees your work. Zero views means zero signal. Not because you failed but because you weren’t reachable.

Visibility is not betrayal.

It’s the precondition for disturbance.

So if no one reacts, what do you do?

Not pivot to something more “accessible.” Not smooth the edges. Not perform desire.

You analyze:

Was the work placed where it could be seen?

Was the opening contact too obscure, too delayed, too frictionless?

Are you on the wrong platform or just speaking the wrong dialect?

It’s not about becoming easier. It’s about becoming decodable by the right people, through the right fracture.

And don’t romanticize absence.

Silence isn't always depth. Sometimes it's just… being lost in the feed.

Spektral reactions are rare. Most people don’t engage with what unsettles them. They ignore it. Or forget it. A “wtf” moment doesn’t linger unless it hooks into something.

You don’t need mass approval. But you need contact.

Even the most disruptive work needs a surface to hit.

Because rupture only becomes real in relation.

Which means:

Some form of visibility.

A chance for the other to see.

A path to interference.

Otherwise, you’re not a fault line. You’re just background noise.

And yet ...

There’s one form of impact that doesn’t depend on being seen. The first person a work must move… is you.

If the work doesn’t shake you, it won’t shake anyone. Not later. Not deeper. Not ever.

You are the first resonance chamber.

All others come after.

[confuseducedeepen]

What Does Success Mean When You're a Seismograph?

A dialogue in tension

„But how do you know it’s working, if no one reacts?“ (someone close to the scene, good with numbers, genuinely trying to help)

That’s the wrong question.

Because not everything that works is built to be seen. Some things move underground, like pressure. Like memory. Like rupture.

If I wanted reactions, I’d build something smooth.

But I want to leave something that lingers. Something that doesn’t fit. Something that starts vibrating later – when the room is already empty.

„Still… how do you measure impact if no one engages? How do you know you're not just screaming into the void?“ (a booking contact, someone who’s burned out on acts that never draw)

I don’t measure. I trace.

I trace what remains after the event. The silence. The message three weeks later. The strange glint in someone’s eye when they say,

"I didn't get it. But I can't get it out of my head."

„But people need to see it to feel it. And if you don’t get seen, you disappear.“ (someone from a DIY label who’s seen too many good projects vanish)

I’m not trying to be seen. I’m trying to be found.

And that’s not the same.

To be seen, you perform. To be found, you leave traces that matter.

Some of us don’t go viral. We haunt.

„But haunting doesn’t pay for tapes or rooms or gear.“ (the realist, the friend who organizes everything)

True. But mass appeal doesn’t protect the work either.

If I start designing for reach, I’m no longer listening to the rupture. I’m smoothing the signal. And then I’m just another square in the feed on someone’s lunch break.

No thanks.

„So what is success, then? If not growth? If not scale?“ (someone who once believed in this, too)

Success is when the structure wobbles.

When someone walks out. When someone stays silent. When someone tells you a week later that they had a dream about your set and they’re not sure if they hated it or needed it.

That’s what happens when the seismograph hits.

You don’t get applause. You get aftershocks.

„So you’re saying confusion is the metric?“ (half-joking, half-exasperated)

No. Confusion is just the crack.

What matters is what leaks out of it.

Final thoughts

This kind of success won’t show up in your stats. It won’t trend. It won’t be shareable.

But it will shape someone. And if you do it right it will shape you, too.

Because when you’re a seismograph, your job isn’t to convince.

It’s to detect. To disturb. To document what’s shifting beneath the surface even if no one else is ready to feel it yet.

[confuseducedeepen]

“Art that consciously wants to create a break … does not need to measure success in social media metrics.”