A young guy at the diner told me my posts were 'too polished' and it stuck with me

I was at a Denny's in Akron last Friday, just eating a late breakfast, and a kid maybe 22 years old recognized me from my gardening page. He said he never comments because my videos look like a commercial, not like a real person sharing something. I've been doing this for 5 years with a proper setup and scripted content, but his honesty made me think. Does anyone else find that raw, off-the-cuff posts actually get more engagement than the stuff you spend hours editing?

3 comments

3 Comments

diana202mo ago

Amen, the raw stuff always gets triple the comments my studio videos do.

emery_lopez2mo ago

YES! That's the realest thing. People can FEEL when something is overproduced, they want the messy truth. I swear my worst mic day got 3x the engagement of my polished song.

ray3631mo ago

My first album was so polished you could eat off it (I mean that literally, we spent like 3 weeks just on the vocal comp). But the track that actually got people talking was a live recording where I flubbed the bridge and just laughed it off. I totally thought production value was king, but you and diana20 are right - that rough stuff feels like a conversation, not a presentation. Now I purposefully leave in little mistakes, even a door creak or a weird breath sound. It's wild how the "flawed" take can feel more real than the one we spent hours fixing.