“I was going to share that post,” claims man on Facebook, “but then I found out my friend made it.”

DALLAS/FORT WORTH—A man pointed out Tuesday morning that he really liked his friend’s creative post on Facebook, but didn’t share it because he found out that it was created by someone he knows.

“I thought the idea was really cool,” he said. “I really like the way it was made and I absolutely would’ve shared it had I not noticed that it was made by a good friend of mine.”

The man who called himself a friend of the original creator continued by saying, “Things are always cooler if I don’t know the person who originally made them.”

Once word got out to the original poster, they replied saying, “Yeah that’s a usual thing, unfortunately.”

“People buy shitty re-prints of paintings from Target and Walmart all the time, but if they just asked one of their artist friends, they would’ve gotten their own cool original painting for about the same price,” they said. “The same thing applies to memes, books, board games, and funny satire articles. If they catch wind that a friend made it, they won’t share it. I don’t know why.”

Another original content creator joined the discussion by informing us that they’d done some research on the topic.

“Turns out, most big name artists had to create a pseudonym and create content outside of their group of friends,” they said. “I didn’t know this for a long time, but creators like XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, and lots of others didn’t use their name publicly because their friends wouldn’t have shared their posts.”

After a large group of creative artists joined the discussion, we reached out to each of them individually and asked them the same question: What is the #1 best thing that a friend could do to help someone who wants to create content?

They were given many available options including donating, buying merch, giving feedback, etc.

But every single creative artist had the same response: “Share it on Social Media.”

One creator followed the claim up by saying, “Word of mouth is most important. People don’t get that their friends’ content is good because they know how they talk, how they paint, and how they act—but strangers don’t know that. To friends of friends, it’s all new and fresh. I just wish there was a way to get that message out to people I love.”

“Other than sharing it on social media, of course,” they clarified. “They don’t ever do that.”