Overcoming The Bystander Effect is Important For Building Your Audience as a Creator

Imagine that you're drowning, flailing your arms and doing your best to shout for help. Would you rather have a crowded beach full of potential rescuers to come to your aid, or just one person who happened to be walking by in your time of need? While a lot of us might think that the former situation means you'd have more people to come help, it seems you're actually more likely to get help if there's one person around to throw you a line.

This is called the Bystander Effect, and it is a serious problem for creators of all kinds out there.

Don't worry, you've got this!

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Even Murder Can't Get People Off The Sidelines

One of the most famous examples of the Bystander Effect as pointed out by Psychology Today is the murder of Kitty Genovese. In 1964 this young woman was stabbed to death outside her apartment in broad daylight with dozens of witnesses. No one stepped up to stop the assault, or even to call the police; everyone watched, but no one did anything, and the killers walked away.

Why did this happen?

Anybody got a problem?

It's a complicated situation to be sure, but it also works as a great example of the Bystander Effect. The two major factors involved, according to Latane and Darley, are called diffusion of responsibility and social influence. Diffusion of responsibility can be described as, "Well surely somebody is going to help?" Because if you're alone, and someone is in trouble, you know it's down to you to help. If you're in a group of 30+ people, though, that responsibility doesn't feel quite so heavy on your own shoulders. Social influence refers to how we often look around and examine the behavior of others to see what's the appropriate thing to do in any given situation is. And if nobody else is helping, we feel like maybe we aren't supposed to help either. And even if we'd like to help, we have to overcome that inertia to be the ones to start the ball rolling.

This is where the Catch-22 for creators comes in. Because we need literally tens of thousands of people to step up and help us make our projects successful, but when you address large audiences to try to rally those numbers you get a lot of people all agreeing that somebody should help you, but nobody lifts a finger to actually assist you in hitting your goals.

Become an Atheist (A Parable)

There's a story about a holy man who said that God made everything, and one of his students asked, "If God made everything, then why did he make atheists?" The holy man smiled, and said that atheists existed to provide an example for everyone. For when an atheist gave someone food, shelter, and care, they did not do so because they believed that God would judge them, or because they needed to avoid hell, but because they saw a problem and chose to step up and fix it because it was the right thing to do.

So when you come across someone in need, do not pray for God to help them. Rather, in that moment, become an atheist, and be the help they need.

I got you, brother.

Something I would tack onto this is something known as Rule .303. I talked about this in Want To Get Your Character Involved in Plot? Remember Rule .303, but for those who've never come across it can be stated simply as, "If you have the means and the opportunity, that confers upon you the duty to help."

Once you get into the mindset of someone who wants to help creators you care about (whether they're making things you like, or they're fellows in the industry you want to support), you find out that there's actually a ton of stuff you can do... and a lot of it is actually free!

How You Can Help Today!

Take a moment and think about a creator whose work you enjoy. Whether they're an author, a podcaster, a YouTuber, a game designer, or any other kind of creator, ask what you're doing to support them.

If you have money:

- Buy their work (for yourself, or as a present).

- Become a patron on Patreon.

- Give them a tip on Ko-Fi (or any other tipping platform).

- Buy their merch (seriously, tee shirt proceeds are how a lot of folks pay their bills).

If you don't have money:

- Subscribe to their social media (algorithms decide who gets promoted based on follower count).

- Like, share, comment, and reblog to boost their signal (again, interaction persuades the algorithm).

- Review their work (particularly important for Amazon).

- Talk about them in groups (I call this "doom posting," where I big-up people's signals en masse).

- Consume their content (read articles, watch videos, listen to casts, etc. even if it's muted, because these numbers are what contributes to their paychecks).

If you made it this far and you'd like to help me, specifically, here's some things you can do!

- Follow My Facebook

- Check Out My LinkTree

- Subscribe to My Weekly Newsletter

- Subscribe to The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- Subscribe to My Daily Motion Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!