In this episode, Kahran and Divya discuss why Divya doesn't feel like she is able to find her audience or this podcast's audience. Kahran goes deep into exploring different facets of the problem. This is part 1 of the series.
In this episode, Kahran and Divya discuss why Divya doesn't feel like she is able to find her audience or this podcast's audience. Kahran goes deep into exploring different facets of the problem. This is part 1 of the series.
There's a game of attention and there's a game of building trust. You can win the first without the second, but you can't win the second without some of the first.
The content she makes didn't change, but the way she makes it has really changed. There's a certain production value, a certain intentionality that compounds over time.
I don't think that you have ever felt like the podcast is successful. I haven't felt like the podcast is successful. I feel like some episodes have been successful. Podcast has not been a success thing. It's a consistency thing.
It's successful in the way that we've shown up. We have experimented. It's not successful in the way that, you know, piece of media is generally evaluated. Well, you say that, but, you know, I'm now part of a tradition of
the lineage of people who really whose work was often read by, you know, a handful of people. If that, like a lot of the poets of the era that my MFA is kind of built around is they were just not well read. Some are now more well read and way after their lifetimes or in the
twilight of their careers. A lot of them were not like celebrated during their lives. Yeah. I don't know. I think that, like, do you change the story you tell when it's to a bigger audience? I don't think it is that.
I don't know what it is. It's a barrier that I'm running running into in all areas of my life. So I don't know what the solution is. Wait, what's the barrier? Like there's a small niche group that can like my work,
but I don't know how to get it to a bigger group. It's the same thing as like, you know, a lot of people will not interact with what I create, but one or two people might be like, oh, this was amazing. And I really liked what they said, etc, etc, which is fine. I'm not disagreeing with that, but I just feel like I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to maintain connection with authenticity. Like I feel like when I try to be authentic, the connection breaks. It's like when my friends would read my bug logs, they would say, oh, I never comment because it feels like I'm reading your diary and like it feels too personal. And I just feel like there's something like there's some insight in that.
I'm not saying that we don't have important things to say. But I think there's something about it in the way that maybe we are creating a frame around what we are saying that is not correct. Maybe we are not talking about it enough. Maybe we don't internally feel like sharing it to people.
I don't know. There's some something I also honestly don't know what it is. So if I gave you my way of a counter example of someone else, I have a very good friend in Seattle who has a sister who has started doing an open mic night. And what she's been doing is she started off at like some kind of more like random
venues on like Tuesday nights, but she went in like hosted an open mic and then got some people, you know, some of her friends to come and but she really like tried to send a wide net into the community, but it gets open for anything. Right. Like you could do read poetry. You could read your own poetry.
You could read someone else's poetry. You could come up and play a song. You could come up and make a speech. Right. But like there was some kind of basic rules. Unfortunately, I was not in Seattle for any of them.
So I haven't actually been, but it steadily kind of grown into a place where now I think she's she I think it's regularly scheduled, maybe like monthly, a couple of different venues and or across a couple of different venues. And I think that it was there was a there was a reach that happened into that community that already existed.
So like what kind of establishments would have things like that? And then how can I reach out into those establishments so that I'm leveraging the fact that that community that exists in the world has been gathering somewhere. Right. And now I'm trying to introduce myself as saying this is a new gathering place for you, but I'm going to do that by going into your own gathering place,
your existing gathering place. So I don't know. I wonder if maybe that is the thing that wasn't so much happening. Right. Like I don't feel like we've taken our gathering hole to visit the gathering places that exist for the community already.
What do you mean? Kind of kind of taking it to our own gathering hole. So OK, let me give you an example. So there's certain like tech meetups, right, that are kind of centered around different sorts of communities.
My sister was part of one because she was at MIT and she was part of their accelerator. And so they will, you know, they invite the alumni to come back and help judge the contest and it becomes there's a whole little like, you know, you gather with kind of your your fellow alumni who have gone and done things. Right. And there's a there's a cross-proflation of ideas that can happen there.
So there could be a place where it's like, oh, if I was thinking about maybe launching something that was going to be a, you know, a startup accelerator, one of the places that I could go and kind of like, you know, expand with that that a community that's already interested in that idea is by going to one of those existing startup accelerator, you know, judging or something and being
able to solicit and socialize that idea there. Right. Because that's a that's a place where that community outside of my own direct community, but that community that's that's gathered by that idea already will go and meet there. So I can go and leverage the fact that that community gathers for that idea there.
So that's, I guess, what I'm saying, right? Like, I wonder what is it? What community is your art part of? Or what community is our podcast part of? And how do we take it to the gathering place for that community or those communities?
Right. So would that be a marketing problem? Like, you haven't chosen the market correctly. Is it like a storytelling problem that you're not telling the story of who is this right for correctly? What is the gap?
So when I was submitting my poetry last summer, there was some feedback I was getting from some journals that this wasn't so much the type of poetry they published, but there was journals that did publish the type of poetry. And it was interesting because I remember one of them was like, you're very much in the like beat like style, like look at some of those journals.
And this way I wasn't really familiar with what like the beat generation of poets was and the beat poets were. So it was just funny now to look back at that feedback and be like, oh, how funny. Now I'm going to school. That's entirely in that lineage.
I don't know. I'm also kind of reminded of what Remi was saying on that podcast we had with him where he was talking about how there wasn't really a place for theater that had been made in the way they had made theater because they had made theater without needing a crew.
Right. Like they'd mean theater they could run on their laptop and theater just didn't know how to show theater like that. Are we making something so different that there isn't a place that these things have a home?
I don't know if that's true. That doesn't feel true. Yeah. Honestly, like that's also something that I don't know. Does that mean that like I need to change who I am completely to be able to
reach people and like whatever quote unquote I have to say doesn't have a home in the world? That feels like somehow instinctively that feels like no, that's like trying to solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution. No, I think it's you have to.
I think there's a game of attention and there's a game of building trust. I was looking at one of my close friends, his cousin moved to France, moved to Leon, maybe like a decade, maybe more ago, 15 years ago. And she has an Instagram page that now has 110,000 followers. I noticed this morning.
And in the member in the early years, she always was hovering around like four or 5,000 followers, right? Like she'd really that was kind of where she was. And then it started to grow a few years ago. And I don't think the content she has made changed, but the way she's made the
content has really changed, right? There's a certain production value, right? Like everything is shot in very low depth of field. Her audio is perfect. She like has captured, she has screened the covers for all of her Instagram reels
that are like with words on them. They're not actually in the video, but are like just what you expect, right? And I think that there is a certain amount of like playing the unfortunately, where it's like, yes, you can still authentically tell a story, but you have to play the social media game in order to get awareness, right?
You have to stand out somehow in this like plethora of content because otherwise just people don't even see it. And once they see it and engage with it, it does happen, right? Like I think we saw that with some reels from that podcast a few weeks ago with Anuki, right?
Like there was something very real about that. And once it had enough differentiation to break through, right? And maybe that was just the cross between like her audience and our audience being different enough that it like, you know, the algorithms are like, oh, this seems to have cross border appeal.
Let me show it to the world. Maybe that is right. Like it is thinking about what is those certain things. Maybe it was not so much that it was my dad that was that podcast that did so well. Maybe it was the fact that I shared it across eight different groups.
And there was so much suddenly intersection that it got showed to all of these different people. Interesting. So I wonder if it's the how, right? That we're really need to examine more carefully.
And we've been too focused on the what. I mean, like it could be a strategic solution. It could be a tactical solution. It could be somewhere in between something operational. I also don't know.
One has to create something that appeals to the masses or whatever. And that also has a derogatory connotation to it that I don't want. I do feel like I want to create something that appeals to more people than it does to right now, or maybe said a different way. I feel like the work I'm creating and the audience it's reaching the scale is
not proportional. Like this work could be relatable to more people. But I also feel like part of it is that, you know, how sometimes people don't know how to separate the work from themselves. So the work can only push as far as they can go a little bit like, you know,
founder run companies who don't have good successors or like, you know, so they stop growing or like artists who think that they're starting a movement. But the movement ends with their death because like, you know, there was not enough in the thing to sort of carry its own weight forward. I wonder if like, you know, it's something like that.
Like, do people know who to recommend thinking on thinking to? Even if somebody regularly listens, do they know who they should recommend it to? Maybe I'm thinking about all of this because I have written an article and submitted an application for a grant today. Why do you feel like people should listen to you?
This should should is not the term. Sorry, let me rephrase that you're entirely right to push back on that. What do you feel is like, are you trying to say why do I feel like there would be more right audience for me that I haven't found? Kind of, but I'm trying to say it in a slightly both more aggressive and more
general way. So why do I think that like my work can reach more people than it is reaching right now? If it right, like let's say this was in a grant application or something or whatever, right? But like, why do you feel like you deserve to be listened to or you deserve to be
shown or you deserve deserving is the wrong question. Is it? I was trying to think of something that was more like nobody does your story unique because I think that's too like, I don't want to pigeonhole in that way. But because sometimes it's like you're challenging a social norm, right?
Or you're feeling like, but like, why is it that you feel what is it that you're trying to do? Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. What is it that you're trying to do through your work? That is different.
I think like you you're asking two very different questions. What am I trying to have my work? So I am saying I'm getting some market signal and I think the market signal is skewed and I should be getting a very different market signal, right? And this is why I so like I'll answer the why do I think more people would
resonate with it? And then I'll answer that other question. So I feel like a lot of the reactions I get are very strong, but the chances that you like, but strong reactions are fringe reactions, which means that like there has to be some curve.
I have enough signal to know that I'm not the on the on the back end of the curve, but like I'm just not seeing the middle of the distribution is how I'm going to put it, right? And I'm just like there I'm just applying mathematical logic that it should be like, you know, it can't be that like 100 people see it, five people feel
really strongly about it. And then 95 people feel nothing, right? Like it will be some like whether it's a poison distribution or somehow there's self selection happening before, right? So that you are only showing to a much smaller audience, like of your potential
audience, which you're exactly right, right? Would be like this somehow you're only showing to this end of it and you're not showing to the big number who would feel more. Yeah. So what do you thought of as should that is what I'm trying to say that I think
my market segmentation is off. Like I'm not reaching the right people. I was trying to ask from a different place, but go on first and then I'll clarify if I need to. So like that is one part.
And then what I understood as like, you know, what you were asking is like, what is the kind of change that I'm trying to create with my work? And like, I feel like possibly I'm not getting enough force behind it. Is that a fair assessment of your question? Closer.
Yes. Okay. Um, I don't know, actually, like I don't think I'm like particularly trying to change too much with what I'm doing. Maybe that's the problem.
Well, no, that's why I didn't want to frame it as change. Unless that like verb was very resonant to you, because I think it doesn't have to be change that I know the words like should or deserve are really loaded. So I'm trying to figure out one that's more broad because it doesn't necessarily be that you're trying to change something with your work.
Sometimes you can just be like creating work to do, I don't know, for the sake of creation, right? Sometimes you're creating work because you want to point out that this is a thing that's overlooked. Sometimes because I feel like if I was just creating for me, I would not be
putting things out there. I do think I'm creating for connection. I understand that, I guess. What I would ask though is you may be creating for connection in your work, but or as an outcome of your work.
But I wonder like there's a different thing that you're exploring with your work. Like you always have these young girls or in so much of your work, there are these like young heroines featured, right? And often they're against the world in different ways, right? Or they're showing just kind of different, they're exploring the world in
different ways. And I think that there is something so beautiful about that. And I wonder if there's a way to articulate like, is that part of a story? Is that part of a story of what your art is telling? And is there other stories that are part of that story that is your art is telling?
This is a lot of this is coming out of a conversation one of our professors had with me earlier this year, had with us, which is she's like, you know, there is always going to be oftentimes a certain repetitiveness to your work, right? There will be ideas you keep coming back to and things that you just find you or what you want to explore.
And you can lean into that and you'll branch out sometimes, but just expect that maybe they'll just pop up, you know, in a way you didn't expect. And I think in some ways that is what makes our work, everyone's work so special, right? It is that is the uniqueness that is the kind of like certain flavor that is your, you know, fingerprint, if you will.
Hear you, but I don't know how to, can you actually say more about like, how do you implement it? Implement is the wrong word, but like, how does one put it, fold it in? Like, yeah, there are these like, in a weird way, sort of like representations of me in most of my work, like it started back when I started making comics
in 2012, 13, I like, you know, these small characters, like soft versions of me, they would keep showing up. They are, I don't know, they are always recurring in my work. It's true. In some ways, my work is autobiographical, but also it is like
imaginative, it's not necessarily this is what happened, but this is what could happen kind of a thing. But at the same time, like, I don't know what that has to do with Relatability. Well, that's where I was going with it, right?
So I think once you start getting a sense of what are these ideas you're exploring, and I think in some ways this is what is so fun about the GPT I've made the custom GPT, the linear literary lens, because you give it some of your work, and it will show you the lineage is that you're part of. And I think it's just fun to understand who else has been exploring these
same ideas. Some may be alive, some may not be alive. Some may be like, you know, in a totally different context than you. Some people may be exploring some more forms, but different themes. And I think it's just fun finding the community that you exist in.
And then that also tells you the community that's excited about these ideas. I think in some ways it is the equivalent of knowing, like, I don't know, where the startup entrepreneurs gather, you know, periodically, it's knowing, like, OK, there is these people who also found, you know, maybe in my context, like, find someone like C.A. Conrad's work really inspiring and find a lot of
those themes in their own work, right? And now I know that if I want to go and connect with people who like to see those, that type of poetry and explore those ideas, like, there are people I can reach out to who are also fans of this other person, right? There's a community around this other person that I can leverage for the
community I'm trying to build. And that's so that's like, I think, part of the how side. And I think the other big part of the how side is how is where's your community living, right? Like, and how are we creating it as a community?
I don't know community is such a big word. Honestly, like in some ways it scares me a little. And maybe then what you're doing is more joining a community. Like, maybe it is saying, OK, where are there people who are excited about comics or excited about like photo comics or these kinds of ideas?
And how do I go and share to those people? Maybe they exist as like a version of, I guess there's no flicker anymore, right? What is it? Oh, deviant art. Yeah, like, there is some like there is bands. There are like other places.
But then I feel like all of these are rather this is how I feel. Feel like there is a gap. There is a high level thinking of this is how things should be. And then there is like social media operates like this. But like there is some missing links in between the two.
Maybe you don't connect to that, like, but I feel that way some part. Yeah, I mean, I think what you're highlighting is actually a much bigger problem, right? And it's something that I've talked about with some of our clients and other people in different contexts. But we got introduced to an algorithmic world in a way for most of us, through
most social media, in a way that we didn't control the algorithm, right? So most algorithms for most people who work in tech or work with them, you control it, right? Like you're setting it up to do something for you. And then it comes back having done that task for us, through social media, someone else set up this algorithm and algorithm was designed to keep you as the
user engaged and then bring you back to the product, right? But we didn't control the algorithm, right? We weren't able to say, oh, you know, today I need cheering up. I want to see a feed that cheers me up or, you know, I'm not feeling connected to my high school friends.
I want to see a feed that shows me my high school friends or I'm missing my family far away from here. I want to really be engaged with them, show me things that will let me have a conversation with them offline next time I make a phone call to them, right? Like we didn't have that control, even though that is really how that
algorithm could have been structured. And I think because of that, there's this, this been the strange way the product has evolved. And because you have to kind of play these weird games because we are not, it shouldn't have evolved this way, right?
Like in an ideal world, we would have ability to control the content that we're seeing and be able to kind of like have some ability. Sure. Maybe you're handing off that curatorial right to someone else, but you're having some amount more control.
But then that was true always, right? Like you can't control what is shown on the TV. You couldn't control what is in the news, not in the beginning. And even if you do change the channel, you can never really control what is just like you can go from Instagram to Twitter.
You can quote unquote stop following someone. You could never really control what is printed in the newspaper. What kind of topics books are being written on? Like consumption has never had too much agency. I just think that access to consumable content has increased a lot.
So much so that we call it content instead of like media. I hear you on the notion that once you pick up something, once you pick up your newspaper, pick up a magazine, open a TV program, fine, you don't have control over it. But at the point of choice, there's a bunch of equal options. And I think what's happening here is that we've though that step has been blurred
and moved in a certain way so that your point of choice is after the platform. But it makes you feel like you're having a point of choice within the platform. Right. So you're, you're feeling like, oh, I'm seeing these different pieces of content. And therefore I'm having this ability to have some agency.
But really what's happening is you're being shown content that is being designed to keep you engaged on the platform. Right. So this is all just a long way of getting at why I'm saying that I feel like the social media platforms have developed in a way that you do have to play these
hashtag games and you do have to think about where did the community, how have the communities evolved so that they can see the content that they're wanting to see? Like I think you're right in the fact that like one has to play the game. But then that's the same as like if we, you know, 20 years ago, if you wanted to be published, you had to play the publishing game.
You had to figure out how to get published, how to get an agent, how to write for the times like hunger games became really popular. Suddenly like these dystopian via novels with one protagonist who's going to overthrow a capitalistic, like post-capitalistic exploitative society. Like they just became more and more and more common.
Like it's fine. Like trends again, I'm not saying that social media hasn't put an exponential power to these trends. It has. But at the same time, I just feel like what I was saying was there is the
philosophy and there is the tactical aspect. And I think like the in between lines of like, this is how this philosophy develops into this strategy. This is how this strategy develops into this operational methodology. And then that's how it flows into the tactics that part.
Those two keys are missing. Not to say that we can solve it right now, right? Like obviously if I've been struggling with it for over a decade, I don't think of our long conversation is going to stop it. Like, you know, yeah, solve it.
Well, I think it's a transposing issue because I feel like we do help our clients solve it, you know, like if we think about this as a storytelling problem, we think about this as. Yeah, like what component of the storytelling, there is a way to break this down in a way that is a solvable problem.
Okay. How would we do that? How about we do this? We make this a series. Do I look like that?
You do look a little panicked. But like we just stop here. No, we just stop here for now. This is our problem statement. We have articulated it.
Like what if this was a storytelling problem? Okay. And then like we can record tomorrow or the day after or like, you know, whenever soon ish until like, you know, this thing is in our head and that can be like a three to four part series.
Okay. I like this idea. Fine. Let's try and just articulate where we are though, which I love to do, you know, do you agree that like the problem statement is that this is a storytelling
problem? Are you saying that transposition is what is required here? I think the reason that this feels like a storytelling problem is because there's something that is trying to be told, right? And I think at the heart of most storytelling problems, there's, there's
something that's trying to be told. There's like, there is a story, right? And the story is having some difficulty in either communicating what it's trying to communicate or in reaching the audience it's trying to reach. And I think either one, it is a storytelling problem because it's like, how
are you creating the things to bring people in so that they want to read the rest of your story? How are you making it? Are you making it a story that people are excited about? I love that.
Yeah. And so I think that that's, that's what just what I've arrived at, right? Like, I think that we actually have our own in our, even though this is the thing that we do, right? Like we have a storytelling problem of our own.
And I think that's the story of this podcast. And, and I mean, even for you, right? Like there's a storytelling problem you're feeling about your art. I think about it. I don't know if I feel like I feel a storytelling problem about my poetry yet.
I don't think I know the story of my poetry yet, which is a different kind of poetry. It's storytelling problems. So yeah, I was just thinking about like, you know, storytelling, like it has two words and these feel like the way we articulated it was like, it feels like a
telling problem, not a story problem. Like I'm really excited because, God, I've been like frustrated with this thing for, I've been aware of the problem for a long time. I haven't had this great an articulation for it, of course, but like I've been aware of the problems.
I'm like really excited for us to, I don't know, take a hammer and like break it down a little. Okay. Awesome. I'll see you soon. I'll see you soon.
Bye.