Elaborate on each quote by providing more quotes(4-5) from sources (research papers within the last 5 years...no articles or Britannica or Wikipedia or reddit or anything like that). To clarify: for every quote there will be 4-5 more expanding off of it. For each of the quotes you're looking at: address nuances and provide flavor(how social media is different from things we've seen artists struggle with in the past, what makes social media unique(think the scale and speed)). Don't quote things that overlook and deny other sides to the story (like using the word "never"). Try to tie in different authors too like because Bishop has been cited so often find different sources that support her. Cite in APA.

<span></span>

I. Scale and Speed as Defining Forces

• “Instagram shifts the spaces, scale, speed, and terms of visual culture. It generates new terms (#instafame) and forms (the selfie) and creates and organizes new audiences. Overall, Instagram affects the institutions of the art world.” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021)

• “Though the new modes of attention, speed, scale and relationships to the image would challenge many older models of art-making, artists would be among those who most successfully adapted to these new conditions.” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021)

• “Having experienced the evolution from analog to digital networks, [one artist] noted that the arts had not been shielded from the culture of accelerated production. If before, art was developed through private reflection and encounters with the physical world; today, the artist is in a performative role, responding to simulated experiences, managing the (hyper)creation of work under the expectation of opening up processes, sharing — perhaps before work is ready… — and perpetuating a culture of consumption of simulated experiences.” (Stearns, 2023)

• “From a start-up in Palo Alto in 2010 to its current size – a billion-dollar valuation and a billion users uploading 95 million images per day – the rise of Instagram is legendary.” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021)

II. The Mirage of Access at Scale

• “On the accessibility front, while digital platforms have ‘democratized’ access to art, they have also concentrated the distribution power into the hands of a few global corporations, thus impacting how and which artworks are seen and valued.” (Amozurrutia, 2025)

• “Now, in the algorithmic era… rather than seeking to please those human gatekeepers… the metric is just how much engagement you can get on these digital platforms. So the measure of your success is how many likes did you get… anyone can put out their work and anyone can get heard. But that means to succeed, you also have to… adapt to these algorithmic ecosystems that… don’t always let the most interesting work get heard or seen.” (Chayka, 2024)

• “Social media changed how artists share their work… an algorithm decides who sees what. One day, an artist’s post gets thousands of likes. The next, it barely reaches their own followers. Why? Because platforms prioritize engagement, trends, and whatever keeps users scrolling. Artists aren’t just competing with other creatives. They’re up against influencers, viral challenges, and trending memes.” (La-Gaffe, 2025)

• “Social media can feel like a double-edged sword. It offers exposure but also limits who actually sees the work.” (La-Gaffe, 2025)

III. New Structures, Old Tensions

• “There are advantages and disadvantages to both… regimes. Like, on the internet, anyone can put out their work and anyone can get heard. But… to succeed, you also have to placate or adapt to these algorithmic ecosystems that… don’t always let the most interesting work get heard or seen.” (Chayka, 2024)

• “Influencer creep… has generated accelerated demands to consistently perform and maintain an artistic identity across social media platforms, which may… deepen well-documented existing inequalities in cultural and creative work.” (Bishop, 2023)

• “Art worlds have always involved filters—gatekeepers, curators, markets. Social media replaces deliberation with reaction… The visibility may be broader, but the demands are sharper.” (paraphrasing the recurring critique) (This is a thematic summary supported by multiple sources: e.g., Chayka 2024 on engagement metrics, Bishop 2023 on inequality, etc.)

• “Social media is forcing us to judge based on… superficial likes and clever comments… Whole artistic movements… succeeded on going against popular aesthetics. Unfortunately, social media prevents us from working with the pieces. We either accept it or reject it immediately.” (James, 2014) (Although published slightly outside the 5-year window, this quote by critic Phil James incisively captures how instantaneous, binary reactions on social platforms leave little room for the slow deliberation that more complex or challenging art often requires.)

IV. Art as Feed: The Aesthetic of Acceleration

• “At the heart of the Instagram design was the ‘home feed’, carefully designed to appear as a near-frictionless stream and to show a sliver of the next image, generating the impression of an endless train of images in what some termed an addictive engagement.” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021)

• “The limitations of Instagram’s square grid, curated exposure through algorithms, and repetitive styles restrict accessibility and dilute creativity. Artists design pieces to fit the 1:1 dimensions of an Instagram post, using it as a basis to create, consequently limiting the scope of their ideas.” (Daya, 2022)

• “These broadened digital platforms gave birth to new genres, like experiential art, where the piece relies on its ability to be captured by a phone and deemed Instagram worthy. Success is measured by reposts, comments and the audience’s ability to repurpose a piece for their personal social media….” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021, as described in Daya, 2022)

• “[Algorithms] pressure artists and other content creators to shape their work in ways that fit the feeds. For musicians… this might mean recording catchy hooks that occur right at the beginning of a song — when a user is most likely to hear it.” (Chayka, 2024)

V. Performance and Persona in High-Speed Culture

• “Influencer cultures have originated key social practices that now animate creative labour… This process is defined as influencer creep. Influencer creep… [entails] self-branding, optimisation and authenticity… The article shows how artists… take up strategic techniques of algorithmic optimisation and share more of their authentic (yet highly stylised) selves online. I conclude that influencer creep has generated accelerated demands to consistently perform and maintain an artistic identity across social media platforms….” (Bishop, 2023)

• “Participants informed me they needed to include images of their face in their Instagram content… first, because it was what their audience wanted to see, but second, [because] they were what they perceived the Instagram algorithm wanted them to do. Influencer creep shows that cultural practices are ultimately entangled with technical ones… Through a deepened mandate to include the self in social media content, influencer creep can deepen the inequalities that… women of colour have long experienced in art worlds….” (Bishop, 2023)

• “Sometimes [artists] felt exigent pressure to perform for followers – one interviewee said, ‘You feel like you get so caught up in it, having to turn up every day and give this really lengthy, emotional speech about why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you love it so much…’” (quoted in Bishop, 2023)

• “We may ask – who has the time, resources and means to forge and consistently perform an artistic identity across social media platforms? Charges of pervasive inequality are true of creative industries… Accelerated and relentless demands to consistently perform and maintain an artistic identity… may well contribute to… inequalities in cultural and creative work.” (Bishop, 2023)

VI. Scale Flattens Culture: Diversity Without Depth

• “Social media platforms have democratized access to art, allowing for a broader and more diverse audience to engage with artistic works. However, this accessibility has also led to challenges in maintaining the quality and depth of art criticism. The rapid dissemination and superficial engagement fostered by social media can trivialize cultural and artistic appreciation.” (Ugwu, 2024)

• “[An] algorithmic… curation has made us docile consumers and flattened our likes and tastes. ‘For us consumers, [the platforms] are making us more passive just by feeding us so much stuff… recommending things that we’re going to tolerate but not find too surprising or challenging,’ [author Kyle] Chayka says.” (Mosley interview with Chayka, 2024)

• “The ease of access fosters a culture of disposability; art becomes something to consume quickly rather than savour deeply.” (Subramanian, 2025)

• “On an individual level, [personalization] keeps you in your comfort zone, limiting your exposure to new and diverse… content. On a wider level, algorithmic feedback loops… mean that popular content gets prioritized over niche, lesser-known works… what’s popular continues becoming more dominant, while everything else gets buried. …Popular works from certain cultural backgrounds… might lead to continued underrepresentation of… marginalized groups.” (CulturArt, 2023)

VII. Not the First Shift, But the Fastest

• “Art works always bear the marks of the system that distributes them.” (Becker, 2008, as cited in Bishop, 2023). In other words, changes in distribution technology—from the printing press to photography to the internet—have always reshaped art; what’s different now is the unprecedented velocity of those changes.

• “When Napster was released in 1999, it started a new way of collecting, sharing, and trading. Before this, people could copy tapes and CDs for friends, but the scale, speed, and ease of sharing through p2p systems made this new way fundamentally different from what came before.” (Reas, 2019)

• “If the modernity… of the 20th century was epitomized by increases in power through the acceleration of movement, speed itself moved into hyperspace in the first decade of the 21st – like speed, on speed.” (Diduck, 2016, interpreting Virilio)

• “Instagram represents not simply a new device or technological form but… a new cultural logic of the networked art image… from a photo-sharing app in 2010… to a platform for interaction, communication and culture with its own aesthetics and practices… Instagram remains primarily a photography platform, its norms hinging on the personal – the documentation of the self… overall, Instagram affects the institutions of the art world.” (MacDowall & Budge, 2021)

VIII. Psychological Load and Systemic Strain

• “When creators prioritise quantity over quality to keep up with algorithms, the focus shifts to simply staying visible in an overcrowded marketplace.” (The Hindu, 2025)

• “Discussions on social media [in the music industry] were enlightening. Managers felt too much time and resources were needed for social media, which compromises mental health… The demand for social content has become insatiable. Labels insist on increased engagement, meaning artists rarely have ‘time out’ from social media. This leads to stress, anxiety and other mental health issues.” (Music Managers Forum report, 2023)

• “I witnessed a take-up of entrepreneurial artistic creativity [during the pandemic] against a backdrop of deepened personal risk… accelerated and relentless demands to consistently perform and maintain an artistic identity across social media platforms… deepen… inequalities in cultural and creative work.” (Bishop, 2023)

• “The sheer volume of release and content demands on artists can be overwhelmingly crippling, especially in an overcrowded marketplace… [It] is further complicated by the expectation that artists require a significant social following to even receive [industry] support… Mental health [is] often compromised by a rise in anxiety caused by a perceived lack of control… With a lot of activity and engagement online, the need to create and maintain momentum… created a huge responsibility for all artists and managers, which contributed to… digital fatigue.” (Music Managers Forum, 2023)

IX. Creating New Rhythms, Not Just Alternatives

• “If the significance of works of art is determined… slowly, then cultural value arrives stretched out: it takes time for meaning to grow on things.” (Diduck, 2019)

• “Many people don't know how to look at and love art… Visitors to galleries often see art from their phones, and slow art is an antidote to that. By slowing down, it helps us to see art in a new way that energizes rather than demoralizes.” (Phil Terry, Slow Art Day founder, 2019)

• “Slow art, especially against the backdrop of a fast-fuelled internet, might be as nourishing for the mind as slow food is for the body.” (Diduck, 2016)

• “If art is food for thought, then works of slow art… assist in the construction of a counter-temporal space, occupying online time for the pleasure and benefit of the social subject rather than the corporate conglomerate.” (Diduck, 2016)

X. Conclusion: Holding Attention Without Losing Depth

• “The resulting culture, dominated by instant gratification and clickbait, risks diluting the depth of artistic engagement. …In the quest for making art digestible in a sea of rapidly scrolling content, are we at risk of losing touch with the true essence of meaningful art?” (Bela, 2023)

• “Many creators have adapted their content to be more ‘algorithm-friendly’… the allure of virality often makes it hard to resist altering content in ways that prioritize algorithmic approval over originality and individuality.” (CulturArt, 2023)

• “The digital landscape demands a delicate balance between leveraging its vast reach and preserving the integrity of the artistic process. It is imperative for artists to navigate these waters with a strategic approach to ensure their art thrives.” (LinkedFrame, 2023)