The world modelA composite, not a person
Sam
26Portland
Barista and ceramicist
One post did well a year ago, and everything since has been an attempt to repeat it.
At a glance
Online
- Dead hours, 2 to 4
- Kiln nights
Where
- Instagram because the studio account is half the reason commissions arrive.
- TikTok because one throwing video did numbers once, and hope springs eternal.
In the field
Posts most weeksEvenings
The day
Sam has two jobs and posts from the seam between them: the dead hours in the café at two, and the nights spent waiting on a kiln. The studio account brings in about half the commissions, which makes it real work and not a hobby.
A throwing video did unusually well once. Every video since has been a variation on it, each doing a little worse than the last, and the account has slowly become an impression of its own best day.
Field notes
What is observable about this kind of audience, and the published work that describes it.
01Intermittent reward sustains repetition
An unpredictable success is the most persistent kind of reinforcement there is, which is why one outlier post can direct a year of work. The schedule of reward, not the quality of the outcome, explains the behaviour (Ferster and Skinner, 1957).
02Reach without fit distorts the baseline
The spike brought followers with no interest in ceramics. Every subsequent rate is measured against an audience that was never his, so his own history stops being a usable comparison unless the spike is excluded from it.
03Physical processes set the calendar
A firing takes as long as it takes. Availability governed by a physical constraint is more stable than any preference a person reports about when they intend to post.
Who sits nearby
Nearness in the field is behavioural, not geographic. The unnamed individuals around a reference persona are people whose observable behaviour resembles theirs.
References
- Ferster, C. B. and Skinner, B. F. (1957). Schedules of Reinforcement. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
- Berger, J. and Milkman, K. L. (2012). What Makes Online Content Viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2).