While “discovery” and “engagement” have both taken on new forms in our digital era, they still remain distinct terms. Engagement refers to the amount of internet numbers the thing you’ve posted receives, whereas discovery represents how likely someone is to come across the thing you’ve posted.

And even though discovery and engagement are not synonymous, they do have an interwoven relationship. Put crudely, when a that thing receives a lot of engagement it will become more discoverable—and vice versa. This causal relationship between engagement and discovery is precisely what makes discovery a costly acquisition. In our efforts to increase our discoverability, we endow ourselves with the same burdensome (and ruinous) yolk associated with the cost of engagement.

We accept the fact that “number go up” is a zero sum game and do whatever it takes to be the winner— creativity, and digital well being be dammed. All of this though, seems to be rooted in our long standing aversion to shouting in to the void and our ephemeral fondness for knowing that someone is paying attention to that we’re saying. But the action of shouting into the void, of making things that no one else seems to “get” is apart of the creative process. Learning how to make things that connect with people rather than distract them is the essence of the creative journey and the Deep Magic states that it shan’t be optimized.

Connection is one of the most basic element of creativity, and the true cost of discoverability is that we trade our power and potential to connect for a proclivity and prolificacy to distract. In opting to make the most discoverable thing we can, we chase the favor of the algorithm and loose our sense of agency, artistry, and authenticity in the process.