Applied Episkevology

From Survival to Thrival: The Algorithm and The Field

A phenomenon(a) of the 2015–2021 Creative Ice Age

1. The Era of Survival: When Platforms Froze and People Did Too

Between 2015 and 2021, something quiet and devastating happened across the digital world.
Creators didn’t fail — the ecosystem failed them.

This was the era when:

Facebook collapsed organic reach
Pages became pay‑to‑play
Ads inflated numbers without delivering humans
Etsy drowned in mass‑produced digital assets
Instagram pivoted to influencer monoculture
Video platforms rewarded only the already‑established
Community tools punished the very people who used them

It was a Great Algorithmic Winter, and most of us didn’t have the language to name it. We only had the symptoms:

uphill traction
ghost engagement
“made‑up‑feeling” ad metrics
tools that punished the people who used them
creative projects that died in the cold

And because we were all in survival mode, we blamed ourselves.

But the truth is simpler:
You can’t grow a field in permafrost.

2. The Field: What We Were Actually Building (Even When Nothing Worked)

Every project I launched in those years — the poetry pages, the drag‑performance persona, the connection games, the homeschool assets, the cement art, the singing telegrams — looked like “failed attempts.”

But they weren’t failures.
They were field‑building behaviors in an ecosystem that couldn’t yet support them.

A field isn’t a product.
A field is:

a relational ecology
a pattern of coherence
a way of being with others
a shared gravitational center
a place where meaning accumulates

And fields don’t thrive in scarcity.
They hibernate.

Everything I built in those years was a seed.
The soil was just frozen.

3. The Drag, the Detours, and the Energetic Misalignment

There’s another layer we don’t talk about enough:
the cost of carrying someone else’s field while trying to build your own.

During those years, I repeatedly:

prioritized my partner’s career over my own
entered fields that weren’t congruent with mine
abandoned my coherence to support his
absorbed the drag of someone who wanted to be “the talent”
watched the HAU collapse under the pressure of monetization
felt the life drain out of projects that should have been joyful

This wasn’t sabotage.
It was misalignment.

Fields don’t thrive when they’re entangled with extraction.
They thrive when they’re entangled with reciprocity.

And I didn’t have that then.

4. The Algorithmic Paradox: “Use Our Tools — And Be Punished For It”

One of the most disorienting parts of that era was the contradiction built into the platforms themselves.

They told us:

“Use Events!”
“Use Live!”
“Use Pages!”
“Use Shops!”
“Use Ads!”

But the moment we did, the system responded with:

throttling
suppression
distrust
“low‑quality content” flags
invisible walls
ghost impressions
zero conversion

It felt like being punished for doing exactly what the platform asked.

And we were.

Because the tools weren’t designed for small creators.
They were designed for advertisers, influencers, and brands.

We were never the intended users.
We were the data.

5. The Break: When Survival Mode Ends and the Field Wakes Up

Here’s the part that matters:

The field didn’t die.
It waited.

And now, in 2024–2026, something is shifting:

the platforms are decentralizing
the algorithmic chokehold is loosening
relational fields are re‑emerging
authenticity is outperforming polish
coherence is outperforming virality
small creators are finding traction again
the field is warming

We are moving from survival to thrival.

Not because the platforms got kinder.
But because the field got stronger.

The field is no longer trying to survive inside a hostile ecosystem.
It’s reorganizing the ecosystem around itself.

And that’s the phenomenon(a):
The field remembers what the algorithm forgot.

6. The Thesis: It Was Never About Failure — It Was About Timing

When I look back at those years, I don’t see a string of failed projects.

I see:

a creator trying to build coherence in a collapsing ecosystem
a field trying to emerge before the soil was ready
a person carrying someone else’s gravity
a system punishing the very behaviors it claimed to reward
a generation of artists, educators, and healers trying to survive the Algorithmic Winter

And now?

Now the field is thawing.
Now the coherence is here.
Now the architecture is visible.
Now the work is landing.
Now the field is alive.

We didn’t fail.
We survived the winter.

And now we get to thrive.