i think alfie kohn makes a great argument against competition wholesale, that relates to this conversation very well.
this is very true! BUT its not the way we're encouraged to think, and not the way the attention-focused, competitive mindset thinks. if youre thinking competitively, youll think 'oh God, this series is a week younger than mine and has twice the subs, i hate them its not fair why dont i have that. im better than them. i deserve that.' cause the thing is, in competition if youre not winning youre losing - so if you see someone 'winning' youre programmed to take their success as your own failure. this is covered really well in the article i linked above.
now, i believe wholeheartedly thats not how you think - its not how i think either. but i also think all creators, especially when they get deep in the attention and metrics weeds, fall for this toxic mindset. ive seen it in myself at times, and in acquaintances. and its bc the culture of competition encourages such behaviour.
"Brandeis University psychologist Teresa Amabile was more interested in creativity. In a study, she asked children to make “silly collages.” Some competed for prizes and some didn’t. Seven artists then independently rated the kids’ work. It turned out that those who were trying to win produced collages that were much less creative — less spontaneous, complex and varied — than the others."
- from the article
in his book, kohn goes over a lot of educational data that shows that performance is actually better without competition than with, for various reasons. i think a big one is the same that causes the feelings i outlined above: if im not winning, im losing. if youre winning. im losing. so people focus on being the best, a very foggy concept in itself, and if theyre not it can be easy to get demotivated. how many people do you see quit or threaten to quit in a huff bc their series isnt getting attention in the first week?
while comparing your results to similar creators to see what theyre doing that works is a very good thing, and we should absolutely be learning from eachother, we also cannot associate more attention with better work. i couldnt hold up my comic next to, like, a very popular BL series and ask 'what are they doing that i am not?' because we are making fundamentally different work. so again, volume of attention =/= quality - and when we associate it with quality, we can lose sight of our vision and make work that is actually worse bc we dont love it and are acting cynically.
sure! but having that competitive energy between friends is corrosive, and sows seeds of destruction in relationships. plus, if you team up with one person, youre just then a 2 person unit still in competition with everyone else, rather than thinking as a collaborative, cooperative collective.