May 21, 2026
1 min read
Written by Awen Null
There is an entire economy built on the performance of support.
You know it. You've seen it. The heart. The fire emoji. The "this is so important" reblog that costs nothing and changes nothing. The creator gets the notification, the platform gets the engagement metric, and somewhere in a data centre a number goes up that has nothing to do with whether that creator can pay their hosting bill this month.
We have been trained to mistake visibility for value. They are not the same thing.
We know this. Fuck. We've known it for years.
The platforms understood this before we did. Every like, every share, every comment is unpaid labour generating revenue for systems that own your content the moment you post it. The supporter feels virtuous. The algorithm is fed. The creator is still broke.
And then there are the purists. The ones with strong opinions about what you should make, how you should make it, what compromises are acceptable and which ones constitute selling out; opinions delivered via a heart button on a platform owned by one of the largest advertising companies in human history.
The ethics of creativity, debated inside a machine designed to monetise the debate.
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