NET WORTHLESS With JOHNNY SPREADSHEETS: All Engagement Is Good Engagement, Something Something, Algorithm

These days, you have to more than fake it to make it, and typically speaking, it all boils down to personal branding. You have to be a content creator. You have to make every single person on Instagram and TikTok guess which person in your band is actually the drummer, and which of you are faking it. In most cases, it’s the one person who doesn’t play the drums like a total fuckwit.

You need to do reaction videos, review food in your car, schedule three posts a day across all social platforms, share them in your stories, let people share your posts in their stories, and share the stories you’re tagged in that were sourced from your original post.

At some point, you actually have to practice your instrument, and then you need to post the screenshot of your Notes app that’s a wall of text about how you need to pause the project for your mental health.

Gaming the algorithm is serious business, but you’re overthinking it. You want to get pushed to the top of the feed? You have to think outside the box and accept the fact that all and any engagement is your meal ticket out of whatever bullshit sucky town you live in.

The “You Can’t Hear It” Method

Long gone are the days where you can drop a single song ahead of an album’s release because you need to release every single song one-by-one to let the algorithm know you’re coming. By the time your long-anticipated album is finally out there (big things coming, amiright?), everybody already heard the whole thing and they’re no longer interested.

It’s counterintuitive because in order to let streaming services know that people want to hear your music, you need to give them music to listen to in advance. The problem is that you gave away the farm, and repackaged it as groups of singles, EPs, and finally, the final product, which everybody knew would suck well enough in advance thanks to your release strategy.

Congratulations, you shot yourself in the foot.

Next time, don’t release anything at all, but spend six months posting cryptic teaser clips where nobody can actually hear the song. Put a filter over it. Add crowd noise. Talk over the intro. Cut away right before the riff hits. Caption every post, “Wait until you hear this one.”

They won’t.

Every comment asking, “Can we hear the actual song?” counts as engagement. Every angry “This sounds like shit because I can’t hear it” is engagement. Every boomer who accidentally comments “WHAT?” because they think Instagram is customer support is engagement.

Congratulations. You’re trending.

Rage Bait Your Own Fanbase

You know who’s holding your career back? Your fans.

They’re not supporting you at all. They click Like and move on. That’s worthless. What you need is discourse.

Post a picture of your pedal board with the delay pedal at the end of the signal chain. Say the Epiphone Grabber is superior to the original Gibson model. Claim that the snare on St. Anger was actually ahead of its time. Tell everybody that blast beats are overrated and that the greatest metal drummer of all time is the guy from Imagine Dragons.

Watch the comments pour in.

Remember, Spotify pays fractions of a cent per stream. But some guy writing a 1,700-word Facebook comment explaining why you’re an idiot? All eyes on you, baby.

Manufacture A Scandal

Real controversies are risky. Fake ones are scalable.

Announce you’re breaking up.

Twenty-four hours later, clarify that you meant you’re breaking up with your old logo.

The following week, unveil a new logo that’s identical except the sword points slightly farther to the left.

Watch three generations of fans declare that you’ve betrayed the legacy of a band that’s been around for eighteen months.

Become Impossible To Ignore

The algorithm doesn’t know the difference between admiration and irritation. It only knows that people stopped scrolling to pay attention to your face.

That’s why the smartest move isn’t writing a better riff. It’s filming yourself explaining the riff using the wrong technical terms in five separate vertical videos, reacting to someone else’s reaction to the riff, ranking your own riffs, posting a crying selfie because the riff “didn’t connect,” and then announcing the riff has been remixed, remastered, and reimagined before it’s even officially released.

Is any of this healthy?

Absolutely not.

Will it make you a better musician?

Also no.

But somewhere in Silicon Valley, a server just decided you’re interesting, and honestly, that’s about as close to success as any of us are getting.

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