It's Been a Minute You can break the cycle of overthinking
May 13, 2026
Brandon Taylor, novelist and essayist who writes on race, identity, and art, talks about creative paralysis and how worry about reception can block work. He examines social media’s role in producing a watched self. He discusses race grifts, faith and vocation, and why offering grace matters more than proving you’re right.
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How Imagined Audiences Kill Creativity
- Artists often preemptively invent an audience in their head, which shifts them from creating to worrying about reception.
- Brandon Taylor says publishing makes that audience real and anxiety about motives can destroy the act of making art.
Social Media Creates A Double Consciousness
- Social media creates a constant double consciousness where people carry both self and self-being-watched, estranging lived experience.
- Taylor describes life becoming mediated into identity widgets and narratives dispensed via Instagram or TikTok.
Black Figures Versus Black People
- When Black life is abstracted into social extrapolations, artists become Black figures instead of Black people.
- Taylor argues this detachment turns lived experience into objects and fuels race-art grifts that commodify identity.
