Do they not see what they're doing?
Love or hate Elon Musk, he does have moments of clarity.
Like this moment from November 2022, back when X was still Twitter:
I love when people complain about Twitter … on Twitter 🤣🤣
Um … yeah.
“That's a nice collection of 2 million followers you have. Would be a shame if they were to disappear.”
Your continued participation is at their pleasure
Generating content on a website is the same as being a guest in someone's home.
If you cause trouble:
- torment their pet
- dis the meal they prepared
- comment that the wall color is ugly
- whatever
… you risk not getting invited back.
You may even get shown the door early.
Content creators complain about the very platforms they create on, when they'd never think about being rude when they're a house guest.
Doesn't make any sense to me.
We ignore a three-hundred-year-old expression
Biting the hand that feeds you has been an English-language expression since 1711.
But we've come to do it with alacrity in 2025.
Let's say I griped about something Medium is changing, and I do it in a Medium story.
They may tolerate it from me. Kind of like overlooking a rude comment about the drapes.
I might even get away with doing it repeatedly, if I'm drawing a lot of people to the platform.
But as soon as I become more trouble than I'm worth ….
BLIP. There goes my account.
I could cry foul, but really … what did I think would happen?
Even stranger … we don't have a backup
Many creators are ditching their websites and going to 3rd party platforms.
There are certainly many advantages to blogging on Medium or Substack or wherever. There's a built-in audience already active on the site.
Same thing for social media platforms. All the topics in all of the conversations that can help you to promote your brand, build your tribe, or do any number of things.
All good things.
But again, these are other people's houses.
And if we're living in them, that makes us renters, and renters need to follow rules to keep living there.
We create on these platforms, and then put it all at risk by spouting off on them.
Do we not see that our entire presence here can be taken away? And if we do, do we fully realize the impact to our business, our online presence, if it does?
Rebuilding scares the crap out of me
It might be that I actually have a mailing list and I can move it around and point people to different places should one of my accounts get canceled.
Even if I could do that, it still is a level of rebuilding that I'd rather not do.
Some other creators I have relationships with are aware of this, and the prospect of rebuilding a following or re-establishing presence doesn't seem to bother them.
Personally, that's not for me. Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
And acquaintances will look elsewhere if they have to work too hard to follow you.
Weigh how you fool around and find out
I've seen too many people can bring a world of hurt upon themselves by biting the hand that feeds them.
Playing it safe all the time as a recipe for wholly unimpressive growth.
It's a matter of what you focus on when you decide to poke the bear. If you're differentiating your audience with what you say, that's a good thing.
I would argue that poking the platform itself is ill-advised. The risk is way higher than the reward.
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I'm John and I encourage people to work for themselves, and on themselves, every day to sleep better at night.
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