A More Nuanced Look at QRTs: A Thread

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Disclaimer: I asked for and received @/Fulemy's permission to conduct the "experiment" below and share screenshots of her post and page.

First I will share some screenshots accompanied by brief explanations.

There are 5 screenshots total and I ask that you please take a moment to observe & read them before you move on to the rest of the thread. They're not very long reads.

The last screenshot & conclusion.

The reason why I’m sharing this is because I understand that you all aren’t privy to what I can see, and even though this effect was predictable for me based on previous results and I tried communicating that through text, I figured I was going to have to show as well as tell.

Now, to be absolutely clear, this is NOT intended to be an argument in favor of using QRTs over other methods of interaction.

It is an argument against the blanket dismissal of their usefulness. As with most Art Twitter Discourse, it deserves more nuance than that.

So, here’s what I know. There are situations where QRTs are more effective than RTs and situations where they’re not, and in most situations it simply doesn’t really matter.

The bigger problem here is that people seem to have lost sight of what marketing yourself is about.

Contrary to what is now apparently popular belief, marketing is about more than trying to squeeze the most numbers out of any given post by painstakingly trying to optimize your “fight against the algorithm” and treating your audience members as footsoldiers in the battle.

If you’re a content creator, whether you’re doing this for business or just because you want to share your work with the world, what matters is that people find you, connect meaningfully with what you make and hopefully feel inclined to share it so that more people may find you.

Trying to control how people do that, inadvertently or intentionally making them feel bad about how they do, creating an atmosphere of hostility around features the platform offers (and even encourages people to use currently) is just not going to help you here.

It's not the responsibility of your audience to optimize your reach or your anticipate your expectations or really do anything for you. They owe you nothing. You are, frankly, in a position where all you can really do is give, and optimize and manage how and what you're giving.

And if people decide to give back with a QRT, for whatever reason they may have, however suboptimal it may (but won't necessarily) be, they're giving you something. They connected. They're sharing. They're helping other people find you.

(I've said this before but to be clear, people using QRTs to be shitty is a problem with people being shitty, not with QRTs)

The anxiety and panic that ripples through our community every time the algorithm does something funny is symptomatic of how we've come to frame audience growth and success as being mostly dependent on outsmarting the invisible robot instead of what is actually more important.

That is, understanding and paying attention to what aspects of your content clicks with people, fostering positive connections and being appreciative of every form that takes, including QRTs. Focusing on improving your content and learning what you can and Just Not Giving Up.

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Those are my thoughts anyway. It's really entirely up to you whether or not you take any of this information on board, I'm sharing it in the hopes that it might be helpful or reassuring in some way.

Thanks for reading, if you made it all the way here.