the biggest mental wall youâll run into in RPâor any other endeavor reallyâis always gonna be, âWhat am I doing wrong?â
at some point or another youâll spend a lot of effort on somethingâa post, an edit, an event, a blog, whateverâand it wonât get recognized no matter how much you push it. when it only happens once maybe youâll get discouraged but carry on. the important thing to know is itâll keep happening.
itâs not really anybodyâs fault and this is just how social media is. things werenât always this way but they are now and itâs platform invariant. it doesnât matter if youâre posting fics on AO3 or putting up videos on YouTube or writing tweets on Twitter. the real engagement rate versus views is always less than 10%. usually 1%. sometimes less.
so eventually youâll hit that wall and start to question yourself. thatâs just how our brains work. itâs your self-awareness kicking in. your Default Mode Network. the thing is that that system can betray you and get you into trouble and itâs exactly encapsulated in the question itself.
odds are you arenât doing anything wrong.
odds are it has nothing to do with you. people get busy with real life. there are time zone differences. interests shift. interests donât align. people are nervous. people are anxious. people donât know what to say. people donât know what to do. people donât think what they have to say matters.
it almost certainly has nothing to do with you the vast majority of the time but itâs hard to keep that in mind when youâre the center of your own universe. weâre not built for that kinda perspective.
what we can do is stop ourselves from asking that question if there are no immediately obvious answers to it. we can learn to be kind to ourselves. and more than that we can reach out to try to make a difference for others. everyone can only do what they can at any given timeâno one can give 100% all the timeâand only you will know what you can do. you only have to answer to yourself for that.
but be kind to yourself and if you can be kind to others too. together we can make things even just a little better.














