I now understand what bothers me so much about micro-blogging in general — it's the content... it's all about the very mundane things in life.
What I ate for breakfast. What coffee I'm drinking today. The number of lattes I've had today. My gym workout session. What new book I'm reading. A new selfie. A new photo of my pet. Etc... etc...
They all have the potential to be a great read. But almost all stop short of depth.
“Today I ate tacos for breakfast...” — Okay, there must be a story there. Why did you eat tacos instead of say a bagel? Oh wait, that's all there is in the post?
“Today I finished reading this book...” — And??? Was it good? Was it entertaining? Did you learn something from it? Why did you read the book in the first place?
“This app/tool is the best one I've used...” — Why is it the best? What makes it the best? What others have you compared it with?
Obviously what I have above are generic examples of micro-blogging. Not everyone blogs that way. But they are representative of what I've seen online, when I find myself checking out some feeds.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But they feel like a waste of time. They're like conversation starters shouted into the void, hoping someone will put in the effort to start a conversation.
Maybe that's how I need to look at it — they are conversation starters. But if the people behind those posts put in just a little more effort, I feel like they could come up with something more substantial. Something more respectful of people's time.
Creating, publishing, sharing valuable content anonymously is a sort of emptying of the ego. This is because the work you share cannot be credited back to your real identity. If say you write something that turned out to be really useful content, and the masses loved it, you can't really say, “Hey, it was me, <insert name here > who wrote it.” Therefore, you can't use it to boost your ego. It is a way to draw attention to the work you created, as opposed to drawing attention to yourself.
Why would you even want to create content that you can't credit back to yourself? To avoid using it as a way to boost your ego. To avoid using it as a crutch to make you feel better.
This is not to say that there's no reason to publish content under your real identity anymore. I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about the difference between creating content to make yourself feel better, to boost your ego, versus creating content or doing work for the sheer joy of it. The former can mess with your head. While the latter, well that can be liberating.
The real winner of a street race, is the driver who can keep his foot off the gas pedal when the light turns green.
I'm telling this to myself as much as I'm telling others.
Street racing is stupid and deadly. Therefore, the real winner is the one who doesn't engage in it. Once you frame it in this way, you can feel good about actually not indulging your need for speed.
This post was triggered by an event a few weeks ago. I was driving the family around in our family car. After crossing an intersection, I noticed a driver in a Mustang GT peel out right behind us. He was on the throttle so hard, that he was fishtailing his way as he passed cars in front of him. He drove in this manner all the way to the next traffic light. He was being chased by another Mustang GT driver. Fools.
A slight jerk of the steering wheel from a scared driver and there would have been an accident. Thankfully, everyone else on the road stayed in their lanes. And the fishtailing Mustang GT successfully passed everyone without incident. Still, that was extremely stupid on the part of the Mustang GT driver.
If you want to race, take your car to a race track. Otherwise, don't endanger innocent people on the road with your antics.
Life is such a precious and fragile gift. One day you're talking to someone, the next day they're gone.
You'll never know when someone's time is up. So cherish your moments with your family and friends as best you can. You'll never know when it's their time to go.
This has been on my mind the past few weeks already. When I say information pollution, I'm not talking about environmental pollution per se — not the pollution that comes from running the servers that store information. That's still pollution, but not the kind of pollution I've been thinking about. When I say information pollution, I mean this constant overflow of information from various sources in our daily lives, but mostly from online.
There's the news on TV and the internet. There's all the status updates, photos, memes and everything else from social media timelines and feeds. There's the never-ending blog posts from all over the internet. And everyone and their grandma is running some kind of email newsletter campaign nowadays. There's so much information floating around us. I feel like they take the form of needles, each one trying to prick my brain. Each one trying to make its way in. Each one trying to take my attention. Each one trying to take a bit of my time.
One quick way to determine whether you should write your thoughts down on paper or on a digital device, is to ask yourself this question: “Am I concerned about someone else reading this?”
If the answer is yes, then definitely write it down on paper and not on a digital device. And definitely don't put it out online.
Yes, I understand that leaving your notebook laying around is not safer than say, an encrypted note-taking app. But to that I will say, don't leave your notebook laying around for other people to pick up.
I do not understand the outrage over the Basecamp debacle. I even slept on it and still don't understand it. There's not enough information online to truly understand what's going on. Yet the toxicity of the discussion about what might have happened, is bleeding through even to the blogs I'm following. I stopped following news to avoid toxicity. Should I stop following blogs now as well?
The founders are trying to reign things in and keep their employees focused on what they should be working on. Is that wrong?
Employees are leaving because they don't like the new rules and policies. Is that wrong?
Who's right and who's wrong here? That answer depends on your set of principles and beliefs. In which case, there is no right or wrong answer. In which case, what's the point of speculating about an internal company matter?
Why do people not involved in the company feel so affected by it? Some are even switching email services because of it. Is that not a bit of an overreaction?
Why does everything have to be political nowadays?
All of these questions just make me want to go offline.
I'm sorry for adding fuel to the fire. I wrote this post to better understand where my frustration on the matter comes from. And I realized from writing this, that my frustration comes from the time I wasted trying to understand the issue.
It came up multiple times on the feeds of bloggers I follow, that I ended up wasting time on Twitter looking at the threads regarding this topic. I even tried researching the matter and read articles from The Verge and other outlets. And what did I gain in the process? Nothing. Let me say that again. Nothing.
Nothing I learned could change what happened, or change anything in the company itself. In other words, it was an utter waste of time.
So I finally tried the Impossible Whopper from Burger King. And I can truthfully say, that it is, at least for me, impossible to tell that there was no meat in that burger. This might be my new go-to burger from now on.
If I didn’t really care about readers, or didn’t care about my posts being read, then why am I publishing posts online for everyone else to read?
There’s this idea that I ran into — writing for yourself versus writing to an audience. I used to be in the writing for yourself camp. But lately I found myself asking the question, “but why share my posts online?”
If I really only wanted to write for myself, I could write down my thoughts on Evernote and call it a day. Or better yet, write it down on a notebook where there’s no risk of getting hacked.
But I do not. I have blogs and websites. Multiple blogs and websites. So am I really writing for myself? Or am I writing to an audience?
I’ve got five Write.as Pro blogs/sites and they cost me less than $10 a month. They all come with support for custom domains, SSL, email newsletters, built-in audience, image hosting, custom JavaScript and custom CSS. The platform is built with user privacy in mind. And has a minimalistic, “keep it simple” design.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that’s a heck of a deal?