“We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough, somehow a miracle will happen, but this is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life”

(This email was originally sent out on Monday – if it ended up in your junk, just drag it over to your main inbox. Alternatively if you no longer find them useful then feel free to unsubscribe at anytime)

What follows is me trying to make sense of my feelings about social media.

It may come across like I’m having a mental breakdown.

I cannot be sure I’m not.

But what I am attempting to do is examine why for so long I have thought the answer to “can we use social media to make good art?” was

“Fuck off”

and if that answer needs to be updated.

For the chaos I wish you luck.

This is part 1 of 2 The Actors Who Hate Social Media Playbook: Understanding the hatred.

Email me if you have complaints.

The Hatred

Here’s where I’m at with social media:

I hate it.

I hate what it does to me.

I hate how it makes me feel.

I hate how envious it makes me

I hate that it brings out the worst in me

I hate how insignificant and small it makes me feel

I hate that it can see me in my bathroom looking at my thinning hair whilst prodding my ill defined tummy, feeling my most sad and pathetic. sorry little man

and then within seconds it has me in front of a laughing movie star, an advert for hair loss surgery and the 5 reasons i’m not booking that big job.

I hate how tempted it makes me to change who I am, to discard the lessons my parents taught me, what life has taught me, what my failures have taught me, to chuck all of it out in a microsecond to take away the pain i feel.

Goddam I fucking hate social media.

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And yet.

And yet.

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I have never been more sure that it holds the key to my independence.

The Audience

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If you missed last week‘s email here’s the tldrlstldrtldr:

1. “A-list” actors gain most of their power from their ability bring a large audience to buy tickets.
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2. Our industry attempts to maintain an image that it is a “talent” based business, but it is, infact, a business based business.
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   meaning:
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3. If you can help a producer put bums on seats, you are at a significant advantage

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(Over the last week, I have also heard two more anecdotes of exec producers favouring actors with large followings over those who the directors want to cast.)

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4. When you have a large audience at your disposal, you can create films/tv/art that doesn’t have to answer to anyone except your collaborators and the audience.

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(if you have an anecdotes i would love to hear them – just reply to this email and i’ll get my bot to message back. I’m joking it’s just me waiting, refreshing my emails)

Our current business model:

85% of us make under £10,000 a year and 72% need a second job.

You are competing for approximately 1,500 living wage positions with 52,399 other actors.

Repeat payments (royalties) have been destroyed by streamers meaning a working actor today has to find an additional £17,592 per year than a working actor in the 80s.

The industry is oversaturated with us, our ability to earn from our previous credits has been destroyed and there are very few gatekeepers at the top (fewer every time networks/channels merge) making it very much an insiders game.

The default route of Agent → Casting Director → Director → Exec Producer is the equivalent of playing the lottery. No matter how “talented” you are.

many of the workshops the acting industrial complex provide us are essentially “we will teach you how to pick better numbers”.

This is not a sustainable business model for us.

Very good for them.

Not so great for us.

We need something better

I needed something better.

For 10 years I took up residence at our industry’s 24hr jackpot casino.

Winning just enough to give me another pull on the slot machine

Knowing for certain that I would make all my money back when I won that big jackpot. When that happens all the sacrifices will have been worth it. All the life I gave up will be given back.

But then my bottom fell out twice:

1. One was during the pandemic.​
   I became a bike courier – but got mild frostbite. so I decided to become a VO actor, but no agent would take me as a client, so I taught myself how to self-produce audiobooks.
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2. One was after we had our daughter.​
   I ran out of money – things were different this time – and was looking rather frantically for new audiobook clients when I somehow ended up having a stare down with the creator economy.
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Making audiobooks taught me what it feels like to have agency in my work. I began to see how little agency i have as an actor.

The creator economy showed me an entirely new business model. I began to see how flawed the lottery ticket business model was.

But the creator model meant going directly to an audience. Which terrified the crap out of me.

because it meant I’d be forced to engage with that thing i hated so deeply: social media.

AN ACTORS TIMELINE OF SOCIAL MEDIA HATRED

2013 Drama school

• Changed name because thought imminent fame would bring weirdos and stalkers and dark web and that frog from reddit down on me
• Didn’t need to use it for success – “I will survive on talent alone.”
• Hated it but kept it for when i arrived.

2015

• Cycling between serious bone crushing feeling shit e.g. envy, and insignificance, and unsure how to use it effectively (or if there’s such a thing), posted rarely.
• Believe that when I get my big break, I will be gifted many thousands of followers and i’ll know exactly what to do on there.
• Assumed at some point someone would offer to run social media account – or my agency would do it, or a social media manger or something – i don’t really know how these things work
• someone else would deal with my popularity
• still did not really enjoy it

2018 – deleted everything

• mainly due to the envy
• From that point forward took great pride in being a “im not on social media (i don’t need it or want it)” guy
• Stubbornly proud of not being on it.
• was happy to take the consequences

2021 – pandemic

• used youtube to build a soundbooth cupboard.
• fell in love with youtube tutorials
• first time i saw true value in social media as a tool and creators as earning their keep
• would not have been able to teach myself editing, mastering all the other fun stuff in audiobooks.
• instagram and the rest could do one though

2024 post paternity desperation

• was very out of work
• started investigating using social media for business
• spoke to industry professionals about social media – if there’s anything i can do to increase chances of work
• said actors don’t need it (“Rpatz doesn’t have it”)
• remember thinking – “yeh because he’s fkn rpatz he doesnt need it”
• Strange u-turn on the usefulness that social media might have to my business (audiobooks + possibly acting) has left me thinking, “if i use it for my business, does that make me the bad guy?”
• used X first as good place to find self published authors, with added bones of my friends/industry professionals not being on there.
• First time I thought can actors use the creator economy as a side hustle to acting? why not?

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What is the creator economy though and how does it bring independence

Audience = Independence

Here is the business model creators use:

1. A creator will create “content” (video, images, posts, tweets) on social media that attracts an audience into their world.
2. They then use that audience to make money, this can be done in a variety of ways:

• advertising (e.g. they promote things within their content and are paid by sponsors)
• Create and sell their own Paid products (e.g. candy, merch, courses, services etc)
• Ticket sales and Offline events (like gigs/concerts)
• Develop a reputation as an expert and are hired by people looking for that as a service
• im sure there are many other ways too.

What’s interesting is the dream that they are pursuing is not dissimilar to ours – to get paid to do something they (for the most part) love and are passionate about.

We play to audiences on stage, in cinemas, on tv and relatively rarely.

They play to audiences on social media and all the time.

They bring their work directly to their audience.

We must go through multiple rounds of auditions, rehearsals, lengthy filming process, lengthy post production, possibly cut from show – no control, broadcast, no real control over audience data to see what worked what didn’t, no agency or choice in whether we get to go again with another series.

So why hadn’t we heard about this at drama school – go directly to the audience?

Why don’t more actors use social media as the street and go back to performing and learning through street theatre?

Because of social media and because of the content.

Social

When I thought “God, is performing for audiences on social media a viable option?” my initial feeling was to give myself a slap.

I believe there is a snobbiness about it that comes from the hierarchies in the established industry.

But if i examined myself closely i would say there are 3 large fears present:

1. Deep insecurity about what people think of me (Creating theatre on social media will make me look like an idiot)

• I’ll look like an idiot
• Look desperate
• look like i need to resort to being on social media in order to get work
• look like i can’t get work on the basis of my talent alone.
• people are going to think I’m attention seeking
• look like a hypocrite (i’ve been railing against social media for years)
• i don’t want to become a reality tv presenter, im an actor
• ill get typcast as an influencer
• I don’t want to be blacklisted by an industry thats threatened by the creator economy
• I must be an Enigma: the less people know about me the easier it is for them to see me as the character.

2. Resource Drain

• Take me away from doing things that are meaningful
• Lose my life to an app
• Support a shitty ecosystem
• being trolled
• publishing something that will be used against me in the futre

3. Not being true to myself

• Retaining my values
• Am i an attention seeker?
• it’s impossible to make the art i want to see on social media.
• becoming dependent on followers affirmation
• faking feelings in order to sell something
• starting to sell something
• it not being about craft/being more about me and my narcissim?

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A 6fa reader I talked to this week got to the absolute heart of why social media is so tricky:

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CONTENT Yum Yum Yum

Content is to be consumed

Then discarded

It is somehow cheap

It is coorporate

It is intended to extract something (bordering on manipulative)

It is hard to find the art in it – it feels like it cheapens and diminishes other forms of that medium.

It is hard to get on board with content.

This was my feeling, before finding some of the “content” on youtube:

Here’s one i think is art

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Bobby Fingers

Here’s another

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Slugs – Conner O’Malley – good example of modern street theatre

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Okey dokey i have to call it a morning there. Wait no one last thing. When i was thinking about the street theatre/performance experiments i’m going to do run, i came up with this yesterday. and I’m proud of it.

F. B. I.

Fuck Becoming Influencer.

isn’t that clever.

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Next week we are going to be looking at:

• what future do actors who want to perform on social media have.
• actors who are making it work
• proof its possible without losing yourself
• micro-dramas- good idea for actors? christ
• Creating a street theatre company
• Other things
• Is there a simple route for you to make money from your work?

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If you know someone who’s figured this all out – reply to this email – i’m collecting case studies.

This Weeks Reader Wins!

• Massive shout out to reader Theo who did his first standup this week – I wasn’t sent a picture of the audience but I’m fairly sure this was the vibe.

• And this is from new reader Louis, another terrific example of an actor just going out and doing the thing.

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• A huge welcome to YOU if you are one of the 10 new readers reading this week.

(if you have a self-produced win or you know someone who has – reply to this email with it and I will make sure my notifications are on loud so that no matter what time you send it it will ping and wake my wife up)

It’s that time of the 2 months

I did it again

Changed my bank account

Which means i have now made £775 in the last year from less than 20 mins work in total.

That means i’m making £2,325 p/h (it doesnt)

That’s almost as much as the stath got for the meg 2 (it’s not)

Here (Money Saving Expert) is a reminder of where you can do the same and make around £200 by doing practically nothing*.

If you do it – sign up to Martin Lewis’ (the money saving expert) newsletter as well – I steal everything from him anyway so you can just cut out the middle man.

*avoid this if you need to use your credit rating within the next few weeks, one of the only downsides of this is that it goes down for a few weeks but then it goes back up again.

What I watched this week:

I stood and looked at this painting for 15 mins.

It was an exercise semi inspired by this one: (New York Times)

Great for anyone who finds art inaccessible (me).

Useful and deep counter to short form living.

What I worry about sometimes is this –

am I avoiding working through these platforms because it lets me off the hook?

e.g. “hey I could have created something and published it easy – what was stopping me?”

Is it because I was scared?

Am I going to care about this on my deathbed?

Or am I giving myself a reputation in the industry that means I will never work as an actor again (i wasn’t really working loads anyway though)

I guess we’ll figure that out over the next few weeks.

I hope, if you have felt any of the above, you see that you are not broken, and you are not alone. That this is what makes you a complex, curious human actor person.

Have a great week.

A x

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P.s. thanks all of your awesome cool replies it’s so nice to hear from you.

p.p.s Huge thanks to SR, Ollie and Kishore for your very kind testimonials.

p.p.p.s Let me know what you thought of this week’s newsletter by taking the quick poll below 👇