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This week in the Insidr community, a member shared a post that stirred up a lively debate, and I thought I’d let you chime in.

Is it process or pornography?

Last week, Jaime Derringer (founder and former managing editor of Design Milk) shared an op-ed piece on her new Blob Zine about art process videos where she’s not sure if they are a valuable contribution to the social media community or if they are merely an easy way to engage people without putting any real effort into quality posting.

She goes on to say that she fears that platforms are forcing creative people to constantly generate new content that one-ups previous content to feed the machine (aka the dopamine-addicted audiences) because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to turn viewers into loyal followers and buyers.

​Jennifer Mullin is an Insidr member who shared this post in the community to ask for member's opinions, which brought varied responses.

As it goes with me, my initial thoughts on the topic led me to question whether process videos are worth more than social media stimuli. I posed this question on Instagram and Threads and surprisingly got vastly different answers.

People who saw my posts on Instagram stories were more inspired to buy because of the process video, but the opposite was true on threads. However, an equal number of both said that the process video helped them become fans and buyers later (of indeterminate time).

Personally, I believe the sharing process is a deeply personal aspect of art, and not everyone is inclined to share. Although I occasionally share process videos, I agree that considering whether I’m in frame or not takes me a bit out of my flow state. I operate a lot on intuition with my work, and flow is important. However, I am willing to sacrifice a little of that for the sake of sharing because I also enjoy that.

We all must decide for ourselves where the line is drawn between art and content. Although content isn’t required to make art, if we want our work seen, we must accept that creating content is necessary. That said, not all platforms are as beneficial as others for our work and our relationship with our audience.

I want to know how you feel about this topic, so I pose the same question from above:

Get Professional Help

It’s my experience that creative people tend to be autodidacts (self-learners), leaning into figuring things out on their own before investing in education or assistance.

As a self-learner myself, I understand that sense of independence that compels me to search YouTube for answers on every nuanced question that comes up, but then I often find myself spending way too much time consuming content and not getting to the action part of the process.

This week, I made a significant investment in getting help on a topic that isn’t foreign to me, but I’m far from an expert. Spoiler alert: I reached out to my friend Laura Jane* to help me with re-organizing my business to offer consulting services through The Hungry.

My instinct is to jump feet first into the project, but with everything else I have going on, I didn’t want to waste time hitting my toe on every stumbling block when I know Laura has already been there and is eager to help me through it.

Yes, spending money on the promise of something can sometimes be gut wrenching, especially when the digits go 3 or higher. It took a lot for me to admit to myself that I needed the help, and why I chose Laura Jane over others is because I’ve come to trust her to provide quality ideas and concern for my interests.

Instead of spending several hours going down the YouTube wormhole, I’m spending ninety minutes with a pro so that I can put those remaining hours to work on the project. If you spend time listening to smarter business people than me, they will often talk about knowing when it’s time to invest money in the knowledge of smarter business owners in order to grow.

No, LJ did not pay me to say this. My thoughts are my own and totally unsolicited, but once I made that tough choice to lay down a credit card for answers, I felt instantly better about the future of The Hungry.

Reframing how we look at learning can vastly impact how quickly be build and grow a business, and I’m encouraging everyone to take some time to think about what matters most—your independent thoughts or your time?

Small Bites

💀 - I've shared a few times how Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, declared this era as the death of the follower. I got tremendous amounts of pushback for saying it, so I can imagine he got it worse, but that doesn't make it any less true. In fact, he's publishing a report on how we're already deep into that hellscape.

💡 - Do you use Notion? I do (not well) and I recognize the power and potential the app has for the future of things like publishing, marketing, data management, customer relationships, and more. Now they're making a big move into email, which could be great, or horrible.

📈 - Everyone believes social media is the top marketing channel of most big and small businesses, and you might be right for the most part, but this report on marketing trends for 2025 has one tid bit that may surprise you. Read it and tell me if you think you know what I'm talking about.

📧 - Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack talks to The Spinoff about the 1future of media and why the audience should be in control over what they consume and not Kings on the thrones of your favorite social media platform. NOTE: There's some spicy ideas here, some of which I do not agree with, but many that I do.

🖌️ - The president of Brazil has declared graffiti a symbol of national culture. I would love this to be a thing in the U.S., but then it would be 🍆 drawings everywhere.

My Open Tabs

• ​This new vlogging style is taking over... - Think Media
• ​Creator burnout: what it is, why it happens, and what you can do to heal from it - Kit.com