Performative Freelancing (Patreon)

From time to time people reach out to tell me I inspired them to get into ttRPG freelancing or self-publishing, or helped them step up their game in that or a related field. I love that, and I want to keep doing it. But I also want anyone who wants to get into independent ttRPG work (the things I do to pay my bills) at a level deeper than side hustle or hobbyist to be prepared for some of the challenges that come with it, that have nothing to do with skill or reliability in the creation progress itself.

(And, yeah, pictures of yourself that might go viral can be a useful part of the your performance.)

If you are depending on the tabletop game industry for your full income, and you do not have a full-time job with benefits, necessity means at least part of what you are doing to survive is going to be performative.

Performing to build a community. Performing to gain name recognition.Performing to seem more fun and interesting, on the assumption that makes your products seem more fun and interesting. As a freelancer, you are your brand. So if you don't land a full-time job (which are rare), or begin your career knowing enough people in enough places to make sure you have an endless stream of freelance work and/or enough fans to buy what you self-publish, you are suddenly in a position where you have to market... yourself.

Given how many of us came into gaming to escape what we saw as societal and clique-based requirements for shallow performative interactions, this is often a bitter irony. Indeed, while most of us are too smart to complain publicly, this can result in annoyance or anger as what we see as the "pretty popular people" being successful in their performance to a degree we cannot match (often directly measurable in how much money those people can raise compared to how much experience they have or how much content they have created.)

Given I am an obese, socially-awkward, depressive introvert with cPTSD and social anxiety, it often strains my coping mechanisms and ability to put on a false face to their absolute limits. Social media is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. The ability to use text to put forth an idealized, entertaining self helps create a buffer between my depression and my need to be a performative creator. However, those very tools also demand constant attention to remain an effective part of my mandatory performance.

And at that, I have a much easier time as a cis white hetero male, because there are faults and failings I can have which are seen as quirky, or the stereotype of the grumpy writer. Western society as a whole seems pretty forgiving of the flawed creator/artist archetype, as long as he's a cis white male. Marginalized creators often don't get that slack. They both have much more cause to be scarred by social interaction, and must maintain a more perfect performance to reap the same benefits I do.

Even my ability to make discussions of my illnesses, failings, and annoyances part of my public persona is made easier by my role as an elder whitebeard. I have seen women, minorities, and LGBT creators all with as much or more experience as I have been shouted down as clearly unstable for daring to say the same things I am allowed to state largely without consequence.

Nor do I foresee anything of this changing in a major way anytime soon. If anything, it seems to be getting worse. The need to be performative to be successful as an independent appears to be baked into the industry (and full time jobs that pay something like the median income for their area are so rare as to be unicorns). Meanwhile, the demands for performance keep changing and increasing, as technology drops the barriers between creator and consumer.

Being a good performer seems to reap more rewards than being a good creator, and I don't believe that's part of any conspiracy or malice on anyone's part. Success as an independent creator is often related to reach. The percentage of people who will buy a given thing often stays in a close range no matter how well done that thing is, so the variable between success and failure is how many eyes can you put it in front of. There is a variable for going viral, but the more people like something in its first presentation, the more likely it is to reap some self-sustaining viral exposure. And, obviously, more entertaining people are watched by a bigger audience, meaning they can enjoy greater success with the same conversion rate of eyeballs to dollars, since they have more eyeballs.

I work hard to remain relevant. And I see no time when I'll be able to stop working at that without falling into an at-best-niche position (assuming I'm not already in one, which is a reality I consider from time to time). Which means my coping mechanisms for my trauma, depression, and other issues must include being able to maintain the performance--at least for regular, short bursts-- even when I am fighting to not just curl up under the covers and give up on it all.

This is like endlessly climbing a slowly sinking wall. If you ever fully give up you don't just fail to make progress, you sink downward. You may be able to rest in a cradle for a time, or depend on your ropes. But those things can only hold you for a brief time. Without effort not only will you sink with the wall, eventually you'll fall, and then you don't just drop a little. You lose a huge percentage of your progress, and can damage yourself and your career, even kill it, as you smash things on the way down.

Keeping yourself in a place where people will see you and your work so they even might buy it is a grind, on top of the grind of creating enough work to survive even if people see enough of it.

You don't have to have answers for all of this as you start. But to rise above a certain level, you must begin to work it out eventually.

When people sometimes suggest I take on too much, I want to yell at them that if I only do 75% as much work, I won't get 75% of the result. I'll get 50%, or less. If you try to microwave popcorn and you put it in for 60 seconds, you don't get half the popcorn you'd get if you microwaved it for 2 minutes. Your work is all at least partially wasted if you can't back it up with enough PR, backstock, and previews to maintain brainshare in an audience with tons of other, better-funded, better-advertised options.

Sadly I don't have a brilliant observation on how to bypass this issue. It's just something I want to make sure people who want to leap into this industry KNOW, before they get so far in its too late to consider if it's a good idea without suffering damage. And, of course, not everyone will face this issue, for whatever reason, and it doesn't matter for hobbyists or people with full-time jobs.

But for everyone else, how to get eyeballs is a huge issue.