Relevance is fake.
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Towards the end of my career at the agency where I spent a decade, we went all in on "relevance."
We did this—not because it was the smartest business strategy, but—because it satisfied the egos of the executives in our company and those we called clients.
So, when social media gave us a way to measure our relevance in real time, everything changed.
Being the center of attention delivers a dose of dopamine that becomes addicting.
It was inside this system, that I was told my relevance determined my worth.
And that irrelevance was a death sentence.
So, I played the game.
I posted content multiple times a day.
I inserted my own take into every trending topic.
I spent dozens of hours on social media apps each week—engaging, liking and commenting to ensure my numbers continued to rise.
I knew how to identify the undercurrent and ride the wave.
With only 26,000 followers on Instagram,
I was generating more than five million impressions a month.
The over-performance of my content made me a darling of the algorithm.
I fed the algorithm.
And the algorithm fed me back.
More followers.
More impressions.
More engagement.
More visibility.
I was being rewarded by the machine, so I kept giving the machine what it wanted.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped being a writer—
and became a content creator.
There’s a difference.
A writer produces what they need to say.
A content creator performs what the algorithm wants to see.
I know I'm not the only person who has lost an integral piece of their work while trying to make sure people saw it.
Maybe you're a healer—
who began documenting your medium before you fully discovered it.
Maybe you're an artist—
who anticipated how the art would perform before you'd finished creating it.
Maybe you're an activist—
who started crafting a response post before you'd processed what actually happened.
Maybe you're a community builder—
who planned the messaging for what the gathering accomplished before anyone even arrived.
Maybe you're a chef—
who developed the reel—before the recipe—of the dish you planned to feature.
Originally, social media existed to showcase the work.
Today, social media has stolen the show from what we came here to do.
Maintaining the distribution mechanism began requiring so much labor that eventually, we started producing for the distribution mechanism itself.
And that's when something much more consequential happened.
The demand for distribution moved upstream.
It was no longer:
What do I want to create?
followed by:
How do I get people to see it?
It became:
What will people see?
followed by:
What should I create?
The algorithm has made its way into our creative center.
We started prioritizing reception before creation.
We learned what performed, what traveled, what generated engagement, what format was being favored, what conversations were trending and what version of ourselves received the greatest response.
And then we did that.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because whatever you allow to determine your relevance
will eventually influence what you create to maintain it.
If an industry determines your relevance—
you learn to produce what the industry rewards.
If the market determines your relevance—
you learn to produce what sells.
If an audience determines your relevance—
you learn to produce what receives the most likes.
If the algorithm determines your relevance—
you learn to produce what gets distributed.
You will perpetually chase relevance if you allow something outside of yourself to tell you that you—and your work—matter.
Because relevance is fake.
It's manufactured.
It's subjective.
It's externally assigned.
It's existence lives entirely in the eye of the beholder.
Relevant to whom?
Relevant at what moment?
Relevant according to what?
A person can be relevant because a company says she is.
An idea can be relevant because the culture is suddenly discussing it.
A creator can be relevant because an algorithm distributes her.
A story can be relevant because the news cycle elevates it.
And every one of those conditions can disappear—in a split second—without warning.
Without a single change to the person, idea, creation or story that started it all.
The work didn't change.
The distribution of it did.
And yet we have allowed those conditions to become evidence of our value.
I know I did.
I was hustling to maintain my relevance because I understood—deep down—a truth I didn't yet have the courage to accept:
Relevance never lasts.
If I stopped publishing multiple times a day—
would people forget about me?
If I stopped participating in every trend—
would I disappear from the conversation?
If I stopped performing for the algorithm—
would the algorithm stop promoting me?
Yes.
The answer is yes.
And the fear of realizing that truth kept me chasing what I could never permanently hold.
Over the past several months, I have dramatically changed the way I create and run my business.
I stopped publishing multiple times a day.
I stopped saying something about everything.
I stopped chasing virality.
I stopped treating every cultural moment as an opportunity to insert myself into the conversation.
I stopped asking the machine what it wanted from me—
and started asking myself what I wanted to make.
And my impressions tanked.
There is no triumphant plot twist here in which I stopped caring about the algorithm and the algorithm suddenly rewarded my healthy detachment.
It moved on.
Of course it did.
Today, I might generate 40,000 impressions in a month.
I used to reach that number—easily—in a day.
By the measurements I spent years using to define my influence, I have become significantly less relevant.
And that statistic is now irrelevant to me.
Because while my impressions were collapsing, something more meaningful was strengthening.
My writing practice solidified.
My ideas became deeper.
My body of work became clearer.
My business began to grow.
My community became more intentional.
My nervous system settled.
My ability to be present increased.
My superficial relationships disappeared.
I began moving my work away from rented spaces toward property I own:
my website
my email list
my app
my essays
my book
my salons
my dinners
my cohorts
I stopped chasing relevance and started paying attention to resonance.
Because they are not the same.
Relevance makes people see you.
Resonance helps them see themselves.
Five million impressions sounds enormous—
until you understand what an "impression" actually is.
Someone saw you.
Maybe.
For a second.
Before they swiped.
When I think about the work I want to spend the rest of my life creating, this isn't the question I want to organize around anymore:
Did they see me?
That's the question relevance asks.
Did they see my post?
Did they see my face?
Did they see my name?
Did they see my comment?
Did they see my opinion?
Resonance asks an entirely different question.
Do they see themselves?
Does she recognize something she’s never been able to name?
Does she feel less alone in an experience she thought was isolated only to her?
Does she understand herself differently?
Does she remember who she was before the world told her who she had to become?
Does she now have new language she can carry into her own life?
You can be relevant without resonating.
We see it every day.
Someone can occupy the entire internet for 24 hours and leave almost nothing behind.
But resonance will outlast relevance, every single time.
A book published decades ago can change a person’s life today.
A message written by someone you don't know can become part of your vocabulary.
A video can leave the feed and continue moving through people for years.
That is a very different ambition.
And it's the one I'm focused on.
Because relevance centers the creator.
Resonance surrounds the receiver.
Relevance is an external validator.
Resonance is an internal knowing.
Relevance is temporary.
Resonance endures.
There may never be an analytics dashboard capable of showing us resonance.
Because that kind of impact is felt, not seen.
It makes me wonder how much of our human resonance we've sacrificed in place of being deemed relevant by a machine.
So here are a few questions for us to explore together:
What did you come here to do—
before the algorithm told you you needed to be seen doing it?
Do you want to spend the rest of your life trying to achieve relevance?
To continually prove that people should still be looking at you?
To create quickly enough that they don't look away?
To remain interesting enough that the machine continues distributing you?
To turn yourself into an inexhaustible source of content so that you can retain an attention that was never yours to begin with?
I no longer can.
I knew how to do it.
I was good at it.
And it burnt me to the ground.
The fear underneath all of it was: if I stop, I'll become irrelevant.
Well, guess what?
I stopped.
I became irrelevant.
And I'm still here.
I don't want the distribution mechanism sitting at my creative table anymore.
I want to make the work first.
Then, I can decide how to distribute it.
Maybe five million people see it.
Maybe 40,000 do.
Maybe only 400.
The distribution can change without changing the integrity of the work.
Because I am not interested in more people seeing me.
I am dedicated to more people seeing themselves.
I'm sharing more about my shift inside the HYPE WOMEN Community this week.
→ Come join me.
And if my writing has made you feel seen, I want to make sure I can keep doing it.
xoxo,
Erin
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