The Algorithm Doesn’t Like You (And It Never Will)

Can you let me be delusional for a few minutes?

I genuinely think I would have 2 million followers if I actually stuck with a niche on social media. But because I like so many things (tech, painting, starting businesses, matcha, my morning routine, writing a bestselling book), the algorithm just doesn’t know what to do with me.

I have three gripes with social media right now and I’d like to do a rage essay with you if you don’t mind. And if you do mind, you’re welcome to swipe away now.

Okay so.

1. Evergreen content is dead and I’m furious about it.

I was scrolling the other day (because of course I was) and came across something Jackie Aina said about how her makeup looks from years ago are still valid. Still useful. Still beautiful. And something in my brain got so annoyed.

Because YES. Exactly. THAT.

So much of what we create, especially those of us making educational or tutorial content, is evergreen. It doesn’t expire. The business productivity frameworks I shared two years ago? Still work. Still relevant. Still helping people who discover them for the first time today.

But here’s the infuriating part: those people will probably never see them.

Why? Because the algorithm has decided that if it’s not NEW, it’s not worth showing.

Instagram and TikTok have essentially gamified content creation into this bizarre sprint where the only metric that matters is: did you post today? And yesterday? And the day before that? It doesn’t matter if what you posted last week was genuinely valuable, beautifully crafted, or actually helpful. If you’re not feeding the machine RIGHT NOW, you’re invisible.

And the cruelest part? The people who have literally opted in to follow us, people who said “yes, I want to see this person’s content,” won’t see it unless we’re posting constantly. It’s like having a friend who says they want to hang out, but then a third party stands between you and decides “eh, they can only see you if you’re doing something new and exciting every single day.”

How is that not absurd?

2. My emails from 2022 are outperforming my Reels from last week.

I have emails from months or even years ago that still get responses. Usually because someone else forwarded it or they went hunting through their inbox to read it again. That content is STILL HELPING PEOPLE. Its actually the cutest thing when I see a notification from someone taking one of my old email challenges on how to start a business or hire their first employee.

But if it had been on social? The algorithm buried it approximately 47 seconds after I posted it because I had the audacity to not post something new immediately after.

Do you know how backward that is? We’re creating this massive library of valuable, searchable, helpful content, and it’s essentially locked in a vault that no one can access unless they scroll through 500 of your posts to find it. This is annoying and someone should find a way for us fix this.

3. Why do we all have mini production studios in our houses now?

Mic. Ring light. That suction sticky thing on the back of our phones. Tripods. Multiple tripods. A drawer full of cords we’ll never organize.

And somehow, despite all of us becoming baby hobbyist videographers and editors, content is getting worse. Not better. Worse.

This constant pressure to create more, more, MORE isn’t just exhausting. It’s creating this weird phenomenon where we’re watching our own lives through the lens of our phones. When you’re sprinting to feed the algorithm, you don’t have time to sit with an idea. To refine it. To make it truly valuable. You’re just trying to get something, anything, out the door so you don’t disappear into the void because you didn’t post for a week.

The guilt when we take a day off. The anxiety watching engagement drop if we didn’t script the right hook. The weird shame of “falling off” posting when we’re literally just... living our lives? Building sustainable businesses? Creating things that actually matter?

It’s wild that we’ve accepted this as normal.

Let me be clear about what’s happening here.

These platforms have figured out that keeping us on the hamster wheel is profitable. For them. Not for us.

The more we post, the more content they have to serve. The more content they serve, the more ad inventory they can sell. They’ve convinced us that our worth as creators is tied to our posting frequency, when really, it’s just serving their bottom line.

You could post perfectly for six months straight. You could follow every trend, use every sound, post at the “optimal” times. You could do everything right. And the algorithm would still bury your best work the moment you took a weekend off. It’s not evaluating your value. It’s evaluating your usefulness to the platform. And the second you stop being useful, you’re invisible.

That’s the part that took me way too long to understand. The algorithm doesn’t dislike your content. It doesn’t have opinions about quality. It simply doesn’t care about you at all. You’re not a creator to the algorithm. You’re a content supply chain.

Meanwhile, genuinely useful, evergreen content (the stuff that could actually help people for years) gets buried because it’s not “fresh” enough for the algorithm’s taste.

I hope Substack doesn’t fall into this same trap. But I fear it already has with the evolution of Notes and their recent mobile app redesign. I do pray that the #vlogmas trend stays off this platform.

Here’s where I put on my CEO hat for a second.

As the head of a media company, I have access to way more resources and data than the average creator. And you know what that data shows me?

Web content gets visits on repeat. Years later. People are actively searching for and finding value in things we published ages ago on a .com. It sounds archaic but yes, people still read articles online.

At Blavity we literally have an internal process where we update our archives because we understand that evergreen content has ongoing value. Our brand Travel Noire and our city guides product are perfect examples. It’s crucial that we check to make sure that little hole-in-the-wall restaurant we recommended in Bahia, Brazil is still there before we send you there. That content needs to be maintained, refreshed, and accessible because people are still using it.

My team spent YEARS building SEO, creating valuable resources, optimizing content so it could be found when people needed it. And now? Frankly, it’s possible that Google’s AI suggestions could kill most of that traffic in the next 18 months. Just wipe it out. Its also entirely possible that the reverse happens, that AI gets so general that our brands do well because there are real human editors with taste creating content every day.

So if I’m struggling with it as someone running a media company, how is a solo creator supposed to manage? How is someone who’s just trying to share their expertise, build community, or grow their business supposed to compete with this impossible engine of possibilities?

The answer is: they’re not. We’re not.

It’s not designed for us to win. It’s designed to keep us running.

So what do we do?

Part of me wants to rage-quit and just put everything on a blog or newsletter (hi, you’re reading one right now, so maybe I’m already halfway there). Part of me knows that social media is still where my community is, and abandoning it entirely feels like abandoning them. I also make more money on social media than I do with my own W-2 salary. So there’s that.

But I do know this: we need to start questioning this framework we’ve all accepted. The idea that “posting consistently” means posting constantly. That our content is only valuable for 24 hours. That reaching people who WANT to hear from us should require us to perform like circus animals on an endless treadmill.

Your work has value beyond the algorithm’s attention span. The frameworks you’ve built, the knowledge you’ve shared, the content you’ve created... it doesn’t expire just because the platform says it does.

Maybe it’s time we started building spaces where evergreen actually means something. Where depth matters more than frequency. Where people who want to find your work can actually find it without you having to reshoot the same concept fifteen different ways to satisfy an algorithm that doesn’t even like you.

Because it doesn’t. And it never will

. That’s just how it was built.

I don’t have all the answers. But I know this isn’t sustainable. And I know we’re all tired.

So maybe the first step is just saying it out loud: this is ridiculous. We know it’s ridiculous. And once you stop expecting the algorithm to reward you, you can finally start building something that actually will.

Are you feeling this too, or am I just yelling into the void again?

xx

P.S. If you’ve been creating content for a while, drop a comment with something you made that’s still helping people years later. Let’s celebrate evergreen work in a world that’s obsessed with “new.”