Stop Looking at Other Artists' Instagrams...
The most dangerous thing you can do for your creative career is study the people who do what you do.
You know the drill.
You open Instagram, and within three minutes you’ve looked at six artists in your medium, four musicians in your genre, two filmmakers who got into the festival you didn’t, and a photographer whose client list makes you want to close your laptop and never pitch again.
You tell yourself it’s research. You tell yourself you’re staying current. You tell yourself you need to know what’s working.
But what actually happens is this: you start making work that looks like theirs. You start posting the way they post. You start writing your bio the way they wrote theirs. You start pricing the way you think they price. You start pitching the galleries they pitch, using language that sounds like their language.
And slowly — without realizing it — you disappear.
Not because you stopped creating. But because you stopped being you.
The trap is the same across every discipline.
If you’re a visual artist, you scroll other artists’ feeds and start second-guessing your palette, your scale, your subject matter. You see someone land a gallery show and you start reverse-engineering their aesthetic instead of pushing deeper into your own. You write an artist statement that sounds like theirs because theirs seemed to work. Six months later, a curator scrolls your page and sees... nothing memorable. Because you look like everyone else who was also copying that same artist.
If you’re a musician, you study the artists who got the Spotify editorial placement or the sync deal. You start tweaking your sound to fit what seems to be landing — slightly more ambient, a little more lo-fi, whatever the algorithm is rewarding this month. You write a press kit that sounds like every other indie artist’s press kit because you modeled it off theirs. A music supervisor listens to your track and skips it in three seconds. Not because it’s bad. Because it sounds like everything else in their inbox.
If you’re a filmmaker, you watch the shorts that got into Sundance and start framing your next project around what worked for them — the pacing, the tone, the subject matter. You write a director’s statement that echoes theirs. You build your deck around their visual language. A programmer reads your submission and it feels... familiar. Not in a good way. In a “I’ve seen this before” way.
If you’re a photographer, you scroll through the feeds of the photographers getting the gallery shows and the festival selections. You start adjusting your work — same muted tones, same large-format compositions, same conceptual framing that feels vaguely like theirs. You submit to the same open call with a project statement that could have been written by any of the twenty photographers they reviewed that day. A curator flips through your portfolio and moves on. Not because the work is weak. Because it doesn’t feel like it belongs to anyone in particular.
The pattern is identical no matter what you make. You optimize around your peers. And whatever group you optimize around is the group you start to look like.
Here’s what nobody tells you.
The people who are actually booking the work — getting the gallery shows, landing the sync placements, winning the festival slots, signing the commercial clients — they aren’t looking at their competitors’ Instagram feeds for direction.
They’re looking at the people who buy.
The gallerist. The curator. The music supervisor. The art director. The festival programmer. The collector. The brand manager. The publisher.
These are the people whose attention actually matters. And what they respond to is fundamentally different from what impresses your peers.
Your peers are impressed by aesthetic. The buyer is impressed by clarity. Clarity about what you do, who it’s for, why it matters, and what makes it different from the other 200 submissions in their inbox this month.
A gallerist doesn’t pick the artist with the best Instagram grid. They’re looking for the work that stops them — something they haven’t seen before, something that makes them feel like they discovered it first. Every gallerist wants to be the one who found the next Basquiat, the next Kara Walker, the next Wolfgang Tillmans. They want a voice that’s unmistakably its own. And when a pitch email lands in their inbox and tells them, clearly and confidently, why this work exists and why it belongs in their program — that’s what gets a reply. Not a beautiful grid. A clear voice.
A music supervisor doesn’t pick the track that sounds most like what’s trending. They’re trying to solve a problem — a specific scene needs a specific feeling, and they’re scrolling through hundreds of submissions looking for the one that gives them chills. The artist who sounds like a slightly different version of what’s already charting gets skipped. The one with a sound they can’t quite place? That’s the one they send to the director.
A festival programmer doesn’t pick the short film that looks like last year’s Palme d’Or winner. They’ve watched 3,000 submissions. They’re tired. They’re looking for the filmmaker who made them forget they were watching a screener — the one with a perspective so specific it couldn’t have come from anyone else. The films that feel like they were made to fit a festival’s taste get rejected. The ones that feel like they had to be made get programmed.
A publisher doesn’t pick the manuscript that reads like a polished version of what’s already on the shelf. They’re looking for the writer whose voice they can hear after one page — the one who makes them think, “I haven’t read anything like this.” The proposal that mirrors the bestseller list gets a pass. The one that carves out its own space gets a meeting.
The pattern is the same everywhere. The people making decisions aren’t looking for the next version of what already exists. They’re looking for something they haven’t seen yet. And you’ll never become that by studying what everyone else is doing.
The practical shift.
This isn’t about ignoring your industry entirely. It’s about changing where you get your direction from.
Instead of scrolling other artists’ feeds and asking “what are they doing that I should be doing?”, try asking a different set of questions:
What does the person on the other side of my pitch actually need to see? A gallerist needs to know your work fits their program. A music supervisor needs to hear a track that solves a specific brief. A brand needs to see that your photography matches their visual identity. An editor needs to know your manuscript fills a gap in their list. Start there — not with what other creatives are posting.
What does a great submission in my field actually look like? Not from the creator’s perspective — from the reviewer’s. Talk to a gallerist about what makes them stop scrolling. Ask a music supervisor what makes a pitch stand out. Read interviews with festival programmers about what they look for. The answers will surprise you, because they’re almost never about the work itself. They’re about the communication around the work.
What am I doing that nobody else in my space is doing? This is your actual advantage, and you’ll never find it by looking at competitors. You find it by looking inward — at your background, your perspective, your combination of influences, your specific way of seeing. The musician who used to be an architect. The painter who spent a decade in finance. The filmmaker who grew up on a cattle ranch. Those aren’t quirks to hide. They’re the things that make your work — and your pitch — unforgettable.
The hardest part.
The hardest part of this isn’t the strategy. It’s the discipline.
Because scrolling your peers feels productive. It feels like you’re learning. It feels like due diligence.
But it’s actually procrastination dressed up as research. And it’s slowly making you less distinctive, less confident, and less likely to make the work that only you can make.
The next time you open Instagram and start drifting toward the feeds of people who do what you do, close the app. Open your email instead. Send one pitch. Write one statement. Follow up with one contact.
That’s the work that actually moves your career forward. Not watching someone else move theirs.
One more thing.
If this kind of thinking resonates with you — the business side of a creative career, how to pitch, how to write about your work, how to actually get it in front of the people who matter — that’s what we’ll be exploring inside The Creative Practice, a community for creatives across every discipline launching soon.
If you want to learn more about The Creative Practice and be among the first in when it opens:
👉🏻 Join the waitlist → creativepractice.io
Until next time…
— Chris