A Rant, Outta Nowhere

This post will likely be my last of this ambitious series of ramblings from a guy filled with a passion for spinning metal toys and a burning desire to type words in hopes that they mean something to someone. A year ago I would have spent an hour making that last bit into a phrase and made it the title of this post. Why? Fuck if I know… But I’m a changed man. I started a new position as a manager in March, and after COVID-19 hit it was a farewell to any motivation I’ve had to do much of anything outside of work. 6 months ago when I started writing this post I intended for the phrase “outta nowhere” to mean something positive, but I’m afraid that the reality is it will take on new undertones seeing as this first part is sort of a rant, and this series is all but forgotten.

I remember the emotion behind the renaming of the series. I set out to spark a change, to infect others not with a virus but a desire to reinvigorate the community in a way that drew heavily upon content creators. I remember earlier on in the series, after posting one of my whatchamacallits on Reddit being overcome with emotion after being told by the great Idlespin that the series was greater than anything he’d ever done. He is a legend, and I was an aspiring influencer. No I’m not talking the shitty Instagram kind, but someone who actually makes a difference in a community, however small. Things were promising for a while, but ultimately I started feeling a lack of motivation. Likely a combination of things going on in my personal life and finally being finished with grad school. I wasn’t really all that interested in writing anymore. I loved the idea of it, and even now I feel a great joy from getting back into it, but my enthusiasm was seriously curbed.

I started writing this in October of 2019. I was filled with optimism, taking on a lot of “projects”, and frankly overcommitting myself, which tends to be the case with me. The unfortunate reality is my heart is in it, but I can get quickly deflated which inevitably leads to getting burned out. Being honest about it is the best thing I can do at this point, so I’m recognizing that I have let the community down. Realistically there is likely only a handful of you who actually read these things, but it did mean something to me to deliver these on a weekly cadence. It was a bit too ambitious for me, and it slowly but surely all fell apart. I’m sorry for that. In an age where even the great Idlespin has disappeared, I feel likely the community needed a great writer. I’m not egotistical enough to assume that I was supposed to be that, but I was holding out hope that the great writer among us would emerge, inspired by what I was doing, and ready to fill that void. Regrettably, I was wrong. Instead, I have failed to do that, feeling as if the majority couldn’t give two shits about writing in an age of pretty pictures and catchy phrases. Perhaps this is because I’m primarily active in the Facebook community, where these things reign supreme. Who in their right mind would want to click and read a post longer than a few sentences when they could just glance at a pretty picture and be on to the next post? That’s more like reality, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, I know I do it myself all the time. That said, it does make writing feel a bit pointless after a while. I felt after a while as though I was only doing it for myself, like I was somehow trying to force-feed the community.

I recognized that what I was doing didn’t align with what the majority of people wanted to see. In the interest of doing something that the community actually enjoyed, I started “Name These Spinners”, a “series” intended to engage the community in a guessing game of sorts. I was inspired by the great Sharifa Yeung, who posted a very memorable series of pictures of her own featuring various figurines. It was a delightful series, and I sought to do something like that if my own. At first, people loved it. I posted in The Daily Fidget, Spinnertalk, and Reddit every day. It was a joyful experience, but that sentiment lasted about a week. After that time, it seemed that people were annoyed. I was downvoted on Reddit, and didn’t get the same amount of engagement as previous days on Facebook. After completing that series, I have a nice list of all spinners I own, the appreciation of a select few dedicated community members, and a lot of empty likes/reactions. So what am I getting at? Why does it seem like I’m complaining? Well that is where the problem lies.

Maybe I’m wrong with my thinking that likes/reactions do not equate to how many people appreciate the effort someone puts into a post, but I do think there is some correlation. What’s happening is someone is not simply scrolling past and actually taking the time to click a button to interact with a given post. I don’t do these things for the clicks or recognition, but it’s nice when people show appreciation and helps keep me going. It’s reaffirming that I’m not just spending 15-30 minutes per day on pictures or 2-3 hours writing a massive wall of text for no reason other than to feel some sense of accomplishment. Without it, motivation wanes and I’m left feeling like I’m just going through the motions. For something day-to-day like Name These Spinners, these are small boosts to get me to the finish line. At the end, I post something showcasing the entire journey like I did the other day, and at that point I get a lot more clicks because of the amount of effort put into it. The clicks don’t have the same meaning at that point. It just feels like someone is appreciating a pretty picture, which is a fairly shallow gesture.

So what did I spend 6 months doing this for? Maybe I don’t get the same engagement because I essentially flooded the group over time with these guessing games that used to be fun but eventually weren’t special anymore. On Reddit I was told that I should gather up pictures day to day and post a dump of them at the end of the week. Would that have been better? Possibly, I don’t know. But would that have really changed things that much where more people would participate, or would that also have become played out? What I’m trying to say here is that content creators here depend upon the community to let them know what is and isn’t worthwhile. You can do that by recognition/thanks/engagement, letting them know what you do and don’t like in a friendly way, or simply by being a dickhead and shitting on them in the manner of your choosing. A few of the long posts I did earned a reaction that I interpreted as “hah, you spent all this time on this and it’s just a long piece of shit I’m not gonna read”. Maybe I read into that a bit too much, but the knee jerk reaction I have to that is “okay, I won’t post this here because clearly the group doesn’t appreciate it”. Is that a fair statement? No, not at all. There are absolutely people who appreciate it in that group. Those bad eggs are not representative of the group as a whole. But honestly, I didn’t care. That’s why I don’t post in Spin Space.

Things like that are what puts a very bad taste in my mouth, and it’s very likely that the same applies to other content creators. There’s not much I or anyone can do to stop people from trolling or being dickheads. I would’ve told you long ago that I do these things because I love doing them and they bring me joy. I can wholeheartedly say that is true, but it starts to seem like a lot of unnecessary work to do if very few people take the time to get involved until the very end. If I make a video review, people will enjoy that when I post it and even long after that. I’ve gotten messages months down the line expressing appreciation for them. I can’t say that I get that with the writing that I do. For that reason, this is a farewell to the Weekly Waffle series. Maybe there’s another way to do it that makes sense for me and is actually do-able, but I don’t really have the time nowadays, and if there’s very little interest then it’s probably for the best. It sucks, and I hate to come to that conclusion, but that’s just reality.

I don’t expect people to love every word I put out there, but a simple tip of the cap from everyone who does appreciate it makes a huge difference. Maybe the community really just doesn’t like these long-winded posts. Maybe that’s the message and it’s taken me this long to get the hint. I couldn’t tell you what the reason for it is, but I’m done with this series. It’s been 6 months so maybe people will appreciate this, especially on a less-frequent basis, but that just isn’t the way I wanted to approach these (at least it wasn’t my intent).

The moral of the story is just make sure you show appreciation to those who are doing something that you like/appreciate. Don’t allow them to feel like they’re doing something for no reason. If you want spinner content, let these content creators know it. If what they’re doing isn’t perfect, have a heart-to-heart with them and tell them what they can do to make it better. What the hell do I know, I don’t even know if what I said up until this point has even made sense. Hopefully it does and it’ll resonate with some of you. I’m just trying to explain things from my perspective, as someone who wanted to be a great content creator and generally someone who wanted to make a difference in the community.

The rest of this section is what I wrote 6 months ago attempting to get people in the mindset of acting in a way that promotes the types of things I think are good for the community. I was very passionate when I wrote it, so I’ll keep it in its original form that I intended to post it since I put a lot of time into it.