Popularity is a trending sound. Respect is the song people still play five years later.

One of these is a function of the moment and disappears with it; the other accumulates and survives being out of fashion. Popularity needs constant renewal because it is about being current, while respect is about what people concluded about you and then stopped reconsidering. Chasing the first tends to cost you the second.

Ask which of the two you have been chasing lately, honestly. If it is attention, pick one thing to become genuinely good at instead and give it a year of quiet work. Five years from now, nobody will be able to tell you what was trending this month.