Those of you who came to my signings know I have conflicted feelings about social media right now. I understand that my career relies on people knowing about my work, but I also believe that social media is destroying culture and art in a very real, very insidious way. Thread.

if I look around, there is an entire generation of writers who are almost indistinguishable from each other because they’re all writing to satisfy the same algorithms. Specifically in the online poetry space.

What I'm saying is, is that these writers, whether consciously or unconsciously, based on the feedback they get, are writing not for an audience, let alone themselves, they're writing for machines.

If you took 20 different poets and their poems in this space, I would challenge you to be able to tell me whose poem belonged to who - with obvious exceptions that I am thankful for.

Social media platforms have encouraged a kind of writing that I can only describe as weaponised mediocrity, designed to be innocuous while dressed in the trappings of spiritually, affirmation and progressiveness - a way to look challenging without doing any of the work.

And why not? Based off the feedback through likes and followers and retweets and faves and shares, writers are taught that this works. You might say that this is what people are interested in and that art holds up a mirror to society -

But this isn't true. People don't see what the algorithms don't like. So in this instance, we aren't looking at a neutral mirror, we are looking at something warped by opaque directives from companies in silicon valley.

I believe we are far more varied, interesting and unique than the algorithms would have us think.

Lastly, I don’t consider myself an arbiter of good taste and I don’t believe we should begrudge people the things they like, I just feel like all this is really, really unhealthy.

It's culture by unseen committee, enforcing strict punishment by algorithmic isolation for anything original or any deviation from set principles. I’m not announcing anything, or doing anything - I’m just saying if you’re not worried about this, I think you should be.

Hashtag, socialmediadestroysart. Hashtag, noonewillseethis.