Happy New Year’s! Welcome 2026!
Boy am I glad that 2025 is over. Here’s hoping this year will be better.
In our family, the emphasis isn’t on making resolutions. Instead, right after New Year’s, we do a deep cleaning of the house… like spring cleaning, but earlier. I also like to look at my schedule and time costs, even if it means seeing how many hours are wasted on pointless screen time. And lastly, I like to learn new things, try new things, and plant new things.
Planting seeds in January, in the Northern Hemisphere? Well, not outside, naturally, but it’s always fun to grab a dozen peat pellets and an egg container to put on the windowsill. Rather than spend hours and too much money choosing plants to neglect, I’ll get one of those mixed collections, so I can stare at them when they come up and say, “what the hell is that?” Kinda like when you’re playing Pokémon Go and you see a silhouette you don’t recognize. Oh well, whatever you are, welcome to the windowsill, I guess! Have some water.
Then comes the tedious part, where you check on them every day. Sometimes it seems to take forever. Other times, they sprout out so big and so fast that they end up getting all spindly and withering away. Not all of them make it; the ones that stay low to the ground until they can sprout their first leaves before they grow tend to do much better. But when you’re waiting for those plants to do something interesting and you’re stuck day in, day out poking, checking the dampness, rotating them for sun, and fanning them for breeze action, there are many times when you wonder if it’s even worth the effort. And that’s especially true in these early stages when so few of them make it. Even when you have good soil, sun, and water, growth is not a guarantee.
Kind of like people who want to share their interests in the blizzard-like conditions of social media channels. Talk about adverse conditions! Algorithms get in the way, spam gets in the way, and scam commercials have overtaken social media channels like YouTube that no one believes any of the products shown on them are real anymore. Big channels get in the way; often not intentionally. Companies simply prefer to support and bolster big farming operations as opposed to flowers on windowsills.
Most people go on social media to hear about their interests. If you’re an American football guy without side interests that don’t involve physical sports, you’re probably skipping right past chess matches or life-and-death problems in Go. If you’re an anime person and only an anime person and American dramedies bore you to tears, you probably didn’t spend the holidays looking at top ten lists for this year’s Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.
Or to put it another way, most people on social media like to declare: Hey, I like this thing! I want to talk about this thing! I want to talk to other people who also love the same thing! And maybe then we can share content about this thing!
They are not there to talk to the one-guy-in-the-comments that says, “Dude, your thing sucks.”
Sorry, one-guy-in-the-comments… they just aren’t there for you. Maybe you should go find somewhere else that is interested in your thing, whatever that may be.
That doesn’t mean we are saying that ‘your thing sucks too’ by ignoring you; it’s simply not relevant to the conversation. We’ve got better things to do than go to everything we’re not interested in and express our opinions of disinterest. Do you know how long that would take? I have a lot more things that I’m not interested in talking about than I am interested in talking about, and there are only so many hours in the day.
So how do we help those people who are interested in the same things find each other? I mean, most of them are still in that blizzard right now instead of on that windowsill.
But instead of high-quality dirt, the right amount of water, and the right amount of sunlight:
Passionate people, the right amount of content, and a positive, supportive audience.
People
It’s interesting that the most important element of this conversation is often easy to forget. Despite the anonymity of the internet, the crazy user names, the anime stand-in figures or video posturing that can seem larger than life, it’s important to understand that social media is made by people.
Even AI content is made by people. It didn’t just magically come into being. AI is a tool that is sometimes widely misunderstood by those who don’t use it on a daily basis. We’re not in the age of Daneel Olivaw, Robby the Robot, or HAL, here. Even Data didn’t spring up without Dr. Noonien Soong.
AI is just another programming tool in the toolbox to express one’s creativity. Someone had to sit down, work out a prompt, test it, cringe at the results, go back to the drawing board, test it again… and again… and again… until it kinda sorta does what you want it to and maybe it’s not perfect but at least the model doesn’t have extra appendages that don’t belong. AI is a program that a real, living, breathing person has to give instructions to… no matter if it’s being used for good, for bad, for politics, for profit, somewhere out of view, a person programmed it. Could it be for use by an institution or a government entity? Sure, but it was still programmed by people.
If you don’t get anything else out of this blog, I hope that you remember that single fact:
Content is created by people, no matter what tools they use to create it.
Content
Some folks bristle at the term “content creator”. I think that’s probably wrapped up in the toxic atmosphere that has increased over time in both long format and short format video creation. It doesn’t help that there is a brutally obvious bias when it comes to content distribution as well. Video content tends to get rewarded more and shared more often, to the point where sometimes it makes other types of creators feel quite invisible.
Content is ANY form of creative expression shared on the internet by a person or group of people.
If you run a video channel, host a podcast or an X-Space, do photography of any kind including AR photography, share artwork of any kind including traditional, AR, VR, and yes, even AI, create any kind of music, remixes, and again, even AI. If you write a blog, or create calendars to inform people of social media events or even the latest drops, or if you have written one of the programs to help others in your interest to keep track of items, display them, sort them, or rank them, you are creating content.
Now that it’s defined, let’s look at the right amount of content, because there is no straight answer to this question. Because despite what the YouTube algorithm wants us to believe, the right amount of content is dependent on the individual person creating the content.
The Right Amount of Content
This comes back to the first point: content is created by people. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock, but we’re not all the same. Different people creating content have different resources, different time constraints, and different budgets. We have different obligations that have nothing to do with the passions that we want to make content about. We have different priorities in life, and different expenditures. It really doesn’t help matters when you have a passion that literally encompasses a community from all economic scales, all political groups, all cultures, and all ideologies. It’s nice to be able to sit and talk and talk about what we have in common, even when sometimes the differences can be jarring, especially to those of us at the bottom of the K-shaped economy.
So let me suggest this one little reality check: a seed on a windowsill doesn’t need the same amount of watering as a formal French garden. If you try, the seed will drown.
So what’s the right amount? I suppose a good rule of thumb would be an amount that stays within your time constraints, budget constraints, and energy constraints that doesn’t cause you to sacrifice your priorities.
However, that can sometimes be easier said than done; I’ve noticed that often I don’t realize that I’ve fallen out of that personal rule until I’m already drenched.
There’s a lot of noisy messaging out there that can play with one’s head: Post daily! Be consistent! Use obnoxious titles! Put up humiliated pictures to go with it! Publish on all social media pages, even if you don’t use them! On and on and on until finally you’re totally burned out on the content, and it even starts affecting how you felt about the passion that got you involved in making content in the first place. All of these noisy messages have something in common: they seem to have forgotten that we’re people. All they see are dollars. Even those of us who make content for free… especially those of us who make content for free, need to remember that someone out there is making money from our content even when we aren’t.
We have to be responsible for our own rules; like being realistic, and being honest with ourselves about our time and obligations. We’re people, we’re allowed to come out of the water when we’re drowning and give ourselves some breathing room to reassess. Resources, obligations, and priorities change over time. There is nothing wrong with that; we shouldn’t let the noise convince us otherwise.
Curating an Audience
Let’s talk about the audience, because you can’t have Howdy Doody without a peanut gallery! Funny how so many Gen Z don’t know where that peanut gallery phrase came from… there’s your clue. That peanut gallery can be quite unruly at times, so we should talk about that too!
The first thing we need to look at, though, is why we create content in the first place, because that has a direct effect on what sort of audience we want to curate.
I know when a person is just starting out and you only have one follower or a few family members, the first instinct is to get noticed by anybody rather than nobody at all. But what if those first few followers are trolls, spammers, or scammers?
If you’re the sort of person who is more interested in followers than the quality of those followers, you can curate those very fast, by using the phrase “I need help with crypto” in an X-post, or claim to be a 19-year-old single woman living near a beach. Either one of those will help you get plenty of followers.
But if you’re creating content because you have a passion and have something to say about it, maybe that’s not the best strategy. Sun can be a plant’s friend, or their enemy. True, if you don’t get enough of it, you’re going to struggle. But if you get too much, you’re going to get fried. So, here are some of my personal rules.
I’m a person too. Just because I’m making content doesn’t make me any less of a person, and I don’t accept social media rhetoric that degrades my personal identity.
For example, trolls and bad actors often like to declare that if you use tools to block and mute people that you are doing something wrong. They’ll make cut-and-pastes and attempt to out people who use it, stating “this person blocked me so you should stop following all their content immediately!” They might even smear campaigns… and you know what? All that really does is prove why that person needed to be blocked in the first place. It’s a childish mentality, just like when we Gen Xers were kids and “Don’t be a tattletale” was still a thing. The greatest damage always falls on the person who paid attention to that rule. The same can be said here; if a person listens to that rhetoric and lets every negative person in one’s life because they want to be the person who has a “never block”, they’re the one harmed the most by it. So my simple rule is: Blocking and Muting is Self-Care. Every person is allowed to surround themselves with positive influences instead of toxic ones.
So then, how does one curate an audience when one is just getting started? Well, by supporting like-minded people with similar interests, who also have positive messages.
Follow, like, make thoughtful comments, share to social media channels you use, then repeat.
That’s it, it’s not rocket science. Make sure your own content is positive in tone, even when critiquing, and if the comment offers no value to you or to those you support, don’t say it.
I know sometimes it’s hard to make time to watch videos. To be blunt, everyone complains about blog length, but if I have ten minutes of free time, I’ll read because it’s less of a time commitment than videos that often go over an hour. Even if you don’t have time to go through and watch every video or listen to every podcast, you can still take five minutes to share content that you support even when you don’t have time that day to go through it.
And last, have realistic expectations. We can’t all be Mr. Beast, Mr. Barron, or even Mr. Whale of any kind, and we shouldn’t expect overnight success when all we have is a free website, a twenty-dollar mic, no cash, and no team of techs, editors, and writers to do the hard work.
It’s okay if you just want to share a passion with like-minded people, and for that to be enough all by itself. It’s okay if your level of content and your level of audience is different. And it’s okay to be a person first… in fact, it’s the most important thing of all.
Let’s grow together!
Listed below is a small selection of content creators who could use a bit more community sunshine! They are either smaller channels, or they’re branching out into different areas! If you’re also a small and/or new creator in the VeVe Fam sphere who isn’t on the list, let me know on X, and I’ll be sure to add you to my Community Spotlight at some point in the future.
Category: Under 1000 on X:
Jan Collects
Jan Collects creates YouTube videos that include personal interviews, deep dives, and more about VeVe, the Collect Chain, the VeVeVerse, and connected projects.
https://www.youtube.com/@Collectably
OMIVeterans
Creates the $OMI Situational Report (SITRAP) on X, which contains both Ecomi stats as well as world macro events.
One of the VeVe affiliates known for setting up at local events.
VeVeInsights
Quick facts, trivia, and stats, about VeVe and sometimes VeVe fam.
VirtualCollect
Collaboration Channel for VR games on X, showcasing what's possible in the VeVeVerse.
Category: Branching Out
Rising Star
Known for his podcast as well as his extensive AR photos on X, Rising Star has also been setting up at local events lately and spreading the word about VeVe.
https://larrymackins.podbean.com/
SleepynComics: VeVe Rank Blog
Sleepyn Comics is mostly known for his YouTube channel and his comic book rankings on his website. However, he's also been doing quite a bit of blogging! If you haven't checked in lately, now's a great time to get reacquainted with his site.
This blog was supported by https://x.com/OmilliTees.
Don't forget to support your own favorite creators! Those follows, shares, and likes, help everyone grow.
