自我营销
在 Reddit 上翻 Bo Burham 三年前做的 AMA, 讲给年轻艺人的「自我营销」建议。觉得说得很好，分享过来。原链接在文末。
Reddit User: I have looked up to you for years and I love performing and everything that comes with it. What is some advice you can give for young performers to get themselves out there?
Bo Burham: You know I sort of fell into an audience at a young age because I went #VIRAL so any advice I’d give on starting out building a career would be silly as I got very lucky very early. But I do think there’s a lot working against young people who are wanting to make things right now, and they are things I’ve struggled with and continue to struggle with and I don’t feel are talked about enough. Everyone talks about how great these new internet distribution models are—and they are, they’re more democratic and from the bottom and up and they allow people to be in control of how they share their work with others—but I also think they create really toxic impulses. Brand-building, self-promotion. These are fine things to do once you’ve actually worked hard enough to get good enough where you can make something worthy of being shared. But it should never be a starting point. The first step when starting out should always be to get as good as you possibly can at the thing you’re doing. Learn a ton, try different things, challenge yourself, fuck up, learn more. And I’m not saying this to say “fuck success, do the work”—I really do believe that good work is the best promotion—that if you want to have your thing seen by a lot of people, the best chance you have is to make it as good as possible. In getting an audience early, I realized how incredibly fluky and volatile people’s attention was. And that trying to control it directly was impossible. The only thing I ever have had control of was the actual work. And for me, the corny truth at the center of it is that you should try to follow your impulse to GIVE something to people, not the impulse to get something from them. I try to tell myself to just shut the fuck up and work hard on something that I think is good and important and make it as good as I can and when I’m done with it, share it. Self-promotion should be the last step, not the first. But also I got super lucky and didn’t have to promote myself so I’m a bit of a privileged hypocrite – but like that self-branding shit is pretty gross and I just think like makes you feel icky and unsatisfied and I don’t think leads to happiness even when it works. But making things is fun. So make stuff! Hope that made any sense.
