Lina Guemar, publicly known as UziLina, is a 19-year-old musician living in London. She has released a handful of songs but is currently focusing on studying Music Production at BIMM university, as well as cultivating a social media portfolio for her work. As a social media persona who creates content for self-promotion alongside personal use, she has shared her perception of the relationship between these platforms and the creative scene.
Describe your social media presence.
I focus on TikTok and Instagram. I use them to post snippets of my work and myself. I want my social media to represent my music, because that’s the easiest way to make yourself known. Of course, I want my pages to showcase my music, but posting pictures of myself helps the public know who I am. Putting a face to the music makes people feel they can understand my music more than just what the lyrics say. I think most people are just obsessed with the way people look though on social media. When people are ‘attracted’ to you, the interest in your skill follows it. I use it to network with people, whether it’s other musicians, other creatives, or just people I appeal to.
What is your stance on social media being the biggest promotional tool currently?
It is the easiest, quickest form of advertising. But I don’t think it’s the most effective. Anybody who has social media can advertise, whether it’s their products or they are the product. But with everyone having the same accessibility, that also means that you have to compete for the traction. It doesn’t matter if 100 people are ‘advertising’ themselves if only 10 people’s content succeeds in the algorithm. Influencer culture also effects how much traction my music will get because upcoming artists are outnumbered by social media personas based on their looks alone.
Is it easier to use appearance or skills to gain a social media presence?
My favourite platform to actively maintain my presence is TikTok, it’s my favourite one to promote my music because it’s very easy to gain traction. Even though I gain traction for both, I’ve noticed that the algorithm makes it easier to gain traction for my face, but I’ve seen a lot of musicians blow up for their music. Saying that, I’ve definitely noticed every underground musician who has blown up is somewhat attractive as well. Unless the visual and creative side of the video is really good, then people won’t pay as much attention to your face. Because my algorithm is creative people, I see a lot of creative people not reach the same numbers as those who’s content revolves around their physical appearance.
Are you in creative groups on social media?
I’m in a discord group called ‘The Divine Collective’. It’s a group which creatives who find each other on social media can join. We made a joint TikTok account to collaborate all our music, as well as advertise it for other creatives to join. A few months ago, we made our debut, and one video went mildly viral. But after only one received the attention, we hoped for, we did stop uploading as actively. I noticed that although we were no longer active on this account, people did continue being active on their personal accounts, which centred around themselves rather than their work. I think that on social media, not getting the numbers for your looks rather than work you put time and energy into is an easier pill to swallow. I think the type of videos we posted together had no type of aesthetic, and that’s why people didn’t care. They pay attention to things that are visually stimulating, whether that’s solely looks or skill as well as aesthetic.
Why do you think people use social media for vanity rather than creativity?
This generation lacks a lot of confidence and self-esteem and maybe people use themselves rather than their creativity as they need that validation more. Like what I said before, social media is dominated by looks and attraction. When you have what feels like everyone in the world posting their face on TikTok looking for views, if you don’t get it, it’s less confidence knocking as you can blame it on the algorithm putting thousands of other faces above yours. But when you try and showcase what you feel is your talent, and it doesn’t get appreciation, that will hurt your self-esteem more. I don’t think it’s ‘killing’ creativity; I think it’s just ignoring it. I don’t think it’s necessarily the algorithms ignoring it either, I just think this generation is more focused on vanity, so the algorithm picks that up and enables this vanity culture.
How do the algorisms work?
From my personal use of posting and seeing what blows up, it’s mostly music or other creative things, because that’s what I watch and post. From my posts, the lyric videos or just me will blow up the most. The lyric one’s make engagement and watch time rather than a regular snippet of music, so the algorithm needs talent as well as aesthetic. It needs creativity upon creativity. Also, since I follow a lot of creatives, that community means we promote each other’s music. But on social media, creatives are drawn to creative, whilst the majority want 15 seconds of meaningless aesthetic. So as much as we promote each other, we are still only reaching this small community which is outnumbered by people engaging in physical appeal.
