Fuck the Algorithm: Dog rescue taught me that you should do things for love alone, and the rest will fall into place
I started writing for Medium in April after reading Write A Book, A Short Read by David Kadavy. I wanted to write a book about my years working as a police officer for L.A.P.D. and had already started but I was seeking inspiration on how to structure my book, my writing habits etc. I was also embarking on a travel adventure with my new husband; we retired a little early ( under the “you can always get more money but you can’t get more time” philosophy), sold everything in Los Angeles, and were making our way around the Carribean and then Europe, ultimate destination Amsterdam where the plan was to apply for the Dutch American Friendship Visa.
Under that treaty you have to have a business plan and work and one of my ideas at the time was a travel blog. But then I was a little frozen as to how can you earn money doing a blog, are blogs dead, is the market too saturated etc. etc. And I came across Kadavy’s book that had so much actionable and useful advice, and one of the most exciting to me was to create a Medium account and write in it daily. I have since abandoned the idea of a blog, and I do not write in Medium daily as our travel schedule has not allowed for that but I have found the practice of writing on different subjects good exercise for my book. And a pleasure unto itself.
But just a few weeks into writing for Medium and the pattern has been this; counting my 5 followers grow to 10 — yah! whooo-hoooo!! whoop whoop, break open the bubbly! Every single read or follow so thrilling — and then I hit publish on a piece that I spent pieces of my heart writing, thinking that I’m going to get lots of engagement… not seeing anyone read it, and losing motivation.
I realize that I have to change my mind-set.
And I think back to my YouTube experience.
I hadn’t even heard of algorithms when I started a YouTube channel many years ago while I was volunteering at L.A. Animal Services. I was going to the South L.A. Animal shelter every weekend and many days after an exhausting day at work to try to network the poor dogs from the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles that wound up there. Doing my videos was a labor of love, something I did because I cared about those dogs so damn much and I was desperately trying to save as many of them as possible. I cared not a whit about digital prosperity at the time.
When I went to the animal shelter and a dog came to my attention I wouldn’t rest until I was able to get them saved. Sometimes it was a horrible Sophie’s Choice, I knew that a dog who I shone the light on and networked with sad videos and photos would be saved but chances are the dog in the cage next to him would either go to a lousy un-screened South Central home and be chained up or thrown in a backyard again, or killed at the high volume, high-kill South L.A. shelter.
I used YouTube not as a medium to get followers but as a tool to save dogs who were otherwise going to be euthanized. I would create emails to the trusted list of rescuers I had developed relationships with and was forever networking to, and I would add photos and YouTube videos and do a write-up that I hoped would get that animal rescued.
I was not tech savvy at all, but my desire to create compelling videos forced me to learn the basics on iMovie; I wanted to learn more and make better crafted videos, use better music, take my time, but time is not on your side when you have dogs who are on the euthanasia list and are desperate to get a video uploaded and approved by YouTube for immediate use.
I found that if I used any unlicensed music other than the free music available on Youtube they would flag the video for potential copyright infringement and it would take longer to approve, hours and sometimes days I didn't have in the race to get a dog’s life saved.
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I didn’t respond to comments, my “engagement” with viewers that one is taught is so vital when building an audience was almost non-existent at the time. But I didn’t want to build “engagement” or viewer numbers. I just wanted to make a fast video to get a local rescue I trusted in Los Angeles to save that particular dog. I didn’t want to send dogs to unchecked homes in Kansas or wherever the viewers who would say “send him to me, I’ll take him” were. I knew all too well about irresponsible rescue and what could happen to animals when they are adopted or rescued by the wrong hands. I had a group of trusted local rescues who I knew did home-checks, would screen a dog’s new home after they had already suffered so much in terrible and sometimes abusive homes.
[p.s. there was a huge learning curve in my early years as a volunteer as to who was who in the rescue zoo and what constituted a good rescue, something I will save for a later piece].
And I was just exhausted all the time, I had no time to check people out myself, I was working 12, 13 hours, or longer shifts as police officer, coming home and then getting on the computer for hours creating videos and responding to emails from rescues. Some of the dogs were dogs that I saw in awful conditions while working as a police officer and who I would call Animal Control to come— and then of course the race was on to get them rescued if they were seized. I just didn't have the time or bandwidth to be a social media maven on top of that.
But when I woke up from the grind years later I found that some of the videos I had made had hundreds of thousands of views and hundreds, sometimes thousands of [often] heartbreakingly sweet and supportive comments. I’m sure some people were puzzled at getting a thank you or a response 6 years or more after they had left a comment but some were so kind that they made me cry. There were also some who were mean. I had one video in particular in which I am talking to a dog in a high-pitched extremely embarrassing and annoying voice, and there were many comments directed at my voice and the YouTube music I had used. Some were mad at my lack of follow-up videos but I just didn’t have time, the point was to get the animals rescued not make followers happy or updated. And I don’t blame them for being mad at me.
If I’m truthful, I see a couple of folks who were doing what I was doing in Los Angeles and who did follow up and who did the whole social media thing very well and succesfully parlayed their rescue videos into multimillion dollar plus incomes, and I think “hmmmm.” Had I had different ambitions I could have grown my channel into a money maker, not the $2 dollar monthly revenue I currently get, and that would have been nice. Nice for me and nice for the animals who I could have helped with that money.
But at the end of the day I know that many of the uber successful folks cared more about money and followers than the actual animals and many of the dogs in their videos did not end up in good places because their bottom line wasn’t about the animals it was about making money.
In the end while I wish I had been a little more savvy at the time, I’m glad for how and why I did things the way I did, pretty much all the good I currently have in my life comes from animal rescue work, and the way I did things; genuine friends who love me, a life I love, and pride in what I accomplished. Had my goal been to build a channel, make money, I don’t think that I would have been as rewarded as I was in the other less tangible ways.
I want to be successful here, but how do you measure success? True success has to be organic, I have to write about what I care about not that which I think will be popular. Yes, I do want to write my book on being a woman in the L.A.P.D. all those years, and I want to have more than 20 friends read it but I know that I won’t get that from “trying” to get more readers.
I have read everything from pieces from highly successful writers who make it look really easy and say they spend next to no time writing to those who seem to work every moment of their waking lives, those who say that you can get so much more views if you include key words…and I know I have to come up with my own rhythms and motivation and not chase trends or algorithms.
And I should neither pop champagne bottles nor lose motivation based on the ebbs and flows of writing successes, or lack thereof. I stilll remember reading in some motivational book I had picked up because I was so introverted and sensitive that it was affecting my daily life, “Praise and blame, it’s all the same.” That really resonated with me at the time, but like all words that motivate the trick is to keep the motivation after that initial eureka moment. So I need to remember to do things because they satisfy me, and make me proud. And the success, in whatever form that success manifests itself, will follow.
