10 ms·

Writing is networking for introverts

335 points by whoisnnamdi 5y ago

arvinsim 5y ago
I am interested in how to improve one's writing, especially in creative nonfiction. Unlike programming where you can get feedback immediately from the computer if you make a mistake, it's usually not easy to find a mentor to give feedback if one's writing is improving or regressing.
- 9387367 5y ago
  I’ll curse your writing style for free and will rewrite it for $1 a word plus $5 for each word I can eliminate.
version_five 5y ago
This sounds more like "socially awkward but want to talk to lots of people" than strictly introverted (which itself generally gets used to mean many things). I have some "introvert" traits: talking to people tires me out, I have no interest in low quality conversations - I dont like chit-chatting with strangers. If this is what's going to happen at an event I'd rather avoid it altogether than have a pretext for people to come talk to me. But I'm not socially awkward really (imo) more just conserving my energy because I do find talking tiring. So all that to say I'd rather focus on high quality interaction - smaller groups with mutual interests, vs make bulk unsolicited networking easier for me. I can see the article makes sense for the author and would work for people who for some reason want to have idle banter with others.
- blowski 5y ago
  I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree. For example, I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up. I wouldn’t consider myself to be either introvert or extrovert, merely some set of personality traits.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up. FWIW, this pretty much exactly describes an introvert. Being introverted doesn't mean you don't like socialising at all.
    - blowski 5y ago
      There are so many definitions of introvert that it’s mostly lost any meaning.
      - zamfi 5y ago
        Perhaps, but this sounds like what someone who doesn't know many extraverts would say. If your default preferred way of being isn't "with other people" -- to the point where you feel anxious when you're alone for any reasonable length of time -- you're probably some flavor of introvert?
        blowski 5y ago
        How many humans even have “default modes”?
  - watwut 5y ago
    > I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree. Well of course. Because majority of people is exactly in the middle between extroverts and introverts. The extremes are fairly rare. Most of us are a mix of introvert and extrovert traits, because it is normal distribution. The way people talk about it, you would think there are two distinct species with no overlap.
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    It's a skill though, that can be trained like any other. You don't have enough practice. I always thought my father was just like me, no nonsense, no chit chat, just to the point. Until I went with him when he was looking for storage space, and had heard an 80-year old farmer a bit outside of our town had some. They talked about essentially nothing for twenty minutes but if you listened very carefully, somewhere in between the farmer had asked what my father was looking for, and a few minutes later my father had spent a few sentences on it, and then later it was mentioned that Xx who is the brother of Y you may know him has that company and he is using storage now but in a month half of it will be free and who knows and the rest depends on what Z does in the spring. In the end my dad kept a lot of stuff there for years paying hardly anything. And in the meantime they understood exactly who the other was, what kind of people they were from, and so on. I was in awe (I just stood there listening), they just had a whole type of conversation that I couldn't do. So now I try to practice when I have the chance.
- xvector 5y ago
  > I have no interest in low quality conversations These are typically a gateway/warm-up to high quality conversations.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    I think parent would still go through those warm-ups if there was a legitimate chance for the conversation to go further. Speaking for myself, if I was sitting at a social gathering I'd totally bear through any length of ice breaking to get to the meat of the conversation. If it was on a queue at the grocery store I'd bail out at the first 5 seconds. It's a matter of expectations.
  - introaway 5y ago
    "Typically" is a bit overly optimistic IMO. "Possibly" seems more accurate - low quality conversations (e.g. the weather, sports, etc.) are typically just psychological glue so folks don't feel awkward during silence. And I think it's fair to say that extroverts value that glue more than introverts, generally speaking. For an introvert, the value of the glue may even be exceeded by the cost of discussing some random nonsense they don't really care about.
    - IWantToRelocate 5y ago
      there's a guy in my building that 100% of the time he talks about the weather when we met in the elevator. its kinda funny that some people can't deal with silence for a few seconds
      - diegoperini 5y ago
        I love those guys. It shows how important it is for them to not cause trouble or create surprises for random strangers that they are willing to repeat the same conversation with that level of dedication. It is the purest form of empathy and yet unfortunately also the most invisible kind.
        5y ago
- b0rsuk 5y ago
  What you call "low-quality conversation", smalltalk, is particularly disliked by people with Aspergers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Chris2048 5y ago
  I think the difference is: - is energised by interacting with people vs - is de-energised by interacting with people But there is a social skills / anxiety aspect to this. Some people aren't particularly inherently energised by social interaction, so will always be introverted. That doesn't mean some social interaction isn't beneficial though - It might mean that they need a lot less though, like how some people biologically need less sleep than others, or degrade slower when deprived of it. Incidentally, I wonder whether "coping mechanisms" are the difference - that introverts develop stronger internal dialogues that substitute for normal (external) social interaction(s).
Kvasier 5y ago
I would argue, that the basic discussion about introverts and extroverts is to easy. I think it is way more complex than just two groups. And when we use these two categories, than please JUST to distinguish the basics. But you can not argue with it it this case. I personaly do not know any "classic" intro- or extrovert...
jstx1 5y ago
I change my opinions way too frequently for it. Reading stuff that I wrote as recently as a year ago is mildly painful and annoying.
- nawgz 5y ago
  How do you hold an opinion if it has no basis that can persist over time? I personally imagine for reading one's own writing, just like listening to my own singing, the exact "pain points" you feel would also be felt by any audience and therefore are the most valuable feedback you could possibly receive...
  - jstx1 5y ago
    It's mostly due to learning more things and having different interests. Sometimes it's a change of opinion, other times it's more like "is this even worth talking about" or "I would phrase things differently if I was writing this now".
    - nawgz 5y ago
      > "I would phrase things differently if I was writing this now" This is the point that matters most, and I would pay careful attention to and hone this instinct. It is the one that would truly reduce the "pain" of consuming your own efforts. Otherwise, I am not sure what to say, it is of course possible to write for different reasons and with different efforts and expectations, so I would not fret too much about how much you "care" about something over time, just how much it interests you to read your own points about it
  - belval 5y ago
    Not the person you replied to, but it's usually more of a shift in desired tone/writing style than just a general objective evaluation. For example I can write a post and feel the tone is good, then come back to it and find it too informal, not expert-y enough. Then I'll write a new article and some time later find it too academic and not engaging enough. That might just be me though.
scottcodie 5y ago
This can be better said as 'Writing as communication to an anonymous audience is an introverted activity', which is almost a tautology.
m0zg 5y ago
I don't see how it would be - most of what's written is never read.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
  Speaking from personal experience, writing something once increases the chance that future me will say something in direct conversation with at least one other person. So for me, there is a positive, non zero benefit.
- codazoda 5y ago
  I’m not sure that’s true for all forms of writing but I’d love to hear more about it. Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people. Same with a book. If I’m writing in a personal notebook, than no, it’s not likely to be read. On the whole, the statement is probably true, but for specific forms, I suspect it’s false.
  - prionassembly 5y ago
    > Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people. No it isn't.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >most of what's written is never read Most of what is spoken isn't really listened to, either.
- sanat 5y ago
  If you see it the other way around - you just need one person to discover your writing to unlock the depth of your thinking as a person. Writing for the internet > Doing that one on one through networking IRL
codazoda 5y ago
I wonder how people recognize you from your writing since your face isn’t attached to it. I do see the micro-celebrity in action with my adult son, who is a YouTuber. People recognize him pretty often, so his small following must be relatively local and has this effect. But that’s video where he can easily be recognized. On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. If I see a video of someone, I’m not likely to recognize them in public. Perhaps I have a bit of this condition of an inability to recognize faces mentioned in the article.
- kall 5y ago
  Depending on the kinds of videos he makes, people may have spend more hours focused on his face, and paying attention to his mannerisms, than some friends of theirs.
- andreyk 5y ago
  It depends on how you publish - on medium the face is hidden, but if you have a personal blog it's easy to make your face and name up front (eg my own https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/lessons-learned-from-failures/ https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/lessons-learned-...).
- rhizome 5y ago
  tl;dr: faces usually don't matter I read blogs from authors I have no idea what they look like or where they live or anything, some for almost 20 years, and longer than even that with ppl on IRC. All you need is some consistent identity for people to internalize, which in a lot of cases is a nickname, username, or whatever. Heck, I'm certain a site that used only database IDs to identify users would see (stronger, perhaps) connections form just the same as you see on LinkedIn. "On 11/21/21, 384372 wrote:..." Furthermore I'd bet that there are people who still think to themselves something like "I wonder what happened to 'gardenfloot' on Napster." >On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. It's him because it's his (I assume) channel and username. That's a reasonable assumption under the social contract such that any aberration would likely be an emergency or a successful hack or something. There have also been groups of people who act as a single online identity, but yours doesn't sound like it's that at all. I also think celebrity itself is transforming into something a little less oriented around mobbing and paparazzi, and that being recognized is something relative nobodies can get and somebodies can lose, increasing the number of doppelgangers and diluting the entire celebrity industry.
muglug 5y ago
I see writing slightly differently: it's a way to present your ideas without any performance-related anxiety getting in the way. To prepare a good conference talk generally takes a long time, and an otherwise solid talk can be made less engaging by poor delivery. Writing a comparable article can take the same amount of time, but it's much easier to get feedback on it, and it's far easier to track updates. There's no single moment where you can really screw it up.
lumenwrites 5y ago
The biggest challenge is getting people to read what you wrote, and care enough to respond. I started a blog recently where I want to write notes for my writing practice and explore different subjects I'm interested in. Of course it'd be nice if someone had actually read it, for my personal vanity, and all those conversations and opportunities people claim blogging leads to. But it's not the kind of project it would make sense to drive ads to, or even to niche down and grow an audience around a specific topic, since the whole point is to write whatever "gratifies my intellectual curiosity". But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons. There's no obvious way to promote it and put it in front of people. Instead of blogging I could try engaging in conversations here and on reddit (and maybe on discord or twitter), and that, at least HN and reddit, works amazingly well for having good discussions (if not for making personal connections). But the biggest problem with engaging in social media is that it quickly becomes extremely unhealthy and addictive (in the way that blogging doesn't). I want to write, and I want to talk to people, but I don't want to get addicted to refreshing my profile page to look for upvotes and comment notifications (I do have a big problem with the internet addiction). I'm not sure what the right solution to that would be. Does anyone have good ideas? How do you make actual human connection over the internet and engage in intelligent conversations, without getting your dopamine hijacked and skinnerboxed by the social media algorithms? Maybe there's a space for a platform that would encourage thoughtful discussion somehow, and limit the immediate rewards that make social media so addictive. But then nobody would use that platform, right?
- pddpro 5y ago
  Maybe someone somewhere will come up with a NLP based solution which will cluster people with similar ideas (by means of their blogs) so that you may find people who share your interests within the cluster or explore other idea clusters. Would be a great way of making friends if nothing else.
  - lumenwrites 5y ago
    I think that subreddits work extremely well for finding people with similar interests, they're basically the perfect tool for that. Discord servers too. If anything, the issue is that they're too good, so I get addicted, and have to force myself to stop. There could be some kind of solution, based on NLP, or maybe even just finding patterns and clusters in links. But it'd suffer from the same problem subreddits and google do - instantly getting hijacked by the spammers and SEO people trying to promote their stuff. To the degree that having a popular blog is valuable, people will be motivated to find ways to promote it. And when people want to promote stuff, they'll try game whatever system is available. And so the system will have to implement the anti-spam measures, leading to moderation and probably banning most of the blogs. Hmm... Maybe that's why we ended up with HN comments and subreddit text-posts working so well. Yes, you can't get the "networking" value out of them (because nobody cares about your username, and there's no such thing as subscribers), but it's not a bug, but a feature - without the personal value there's no incentive to game the system, so you just have people posting for the sake of the conversation. But that would also mean that becoming even a "micro" celebrity will always be at least somewhat difficult - to the extent that it's valuable, there will be people trying to game the system, and measures trying to stop that, and competition.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
More like, networking is writing for extroverts
codegladiator 5y ago
no
decebalus1 5y ago
You know what really enhances your networking via writing endeavor? Not using medium.
hntddt1 5y ago
komi can't communicate is a good demonstration in anime
fnord77 5y ago
As an introvert, I think introversion is a legitimate disorder. Anyway, so where besides medium and f*cebook are good places to write?
- sanat 5y ago
  Twitter, Linkedin, your own website
urthor 5y ago
It is. It's also more than that. Writing is a communication medium. For some of the reasons we want to communicate, it's the perfect tool for the job. For some of the reasons we want to communicate it's a bit rubbish. Writing is extremely abstract. It has less of a connection to our subconscious, it's a long, long way from the real world. Humans are creatures driven by human shaped, in person interaction. Quieter cats love writing for exactly that reason, the emotional ups and downs are much more mellow. I find though, many people use writing and other tools as a band-aid for how they deal with their emotions. Instead of exploring them. Instead of seeking, enjoying, laughing, crying, being curious about at all the joys of life, they use multiple abstractions to control their emotions. Rather than throwing themselves into an emotional whirlwind and growing as a person, they throw up safety barriers. They never figure out how they, themselves actually work. They'll happily devote years of their lives towards optimizing language compilers, without even thinking to learn what makes the Mountain Dew compiler tick.
sanat 5y ago
I used to run a services business, and thought that attending conferences and meet-ups would give me business. Networking (in real life) is not something I enjoyed - but had to do to get more business. Some of the best business and personal relationships I've had IRL, have been a byproduct of writing something online. Some the advantages that I can think of 1. Putting yourself out there has a lot more scale when you broadcast your thoughts by writing online. Even reaching 10s of people takes more time in real life. 2. Cumulative and compounding - someone can find out a lot more about you by just reading more of the things that you've written about in the past. 3. Pull vs Push - It lets the best connections come to you - instead of putting the impetus on you finding the best connection.
rootsudo 5y ago
That's a nice way to put it. I guess it is. I also feel much more appreciated when someone reaches out to me because of something I wrote and it's easier to make a connection - it acts as a great filter, straight to the point and can be a jumping point to more conversation.
rStar 5y ago
but what if i’m good at both?
cblconfederate 5y ago
Apart from natural inclinations one needs to account the time it takes. Networking is boring and slow process , and nerds are impatient. It seems like there is a problem to solve there, rather than considering it an unfixable natural handicap. Writing (becoming famous) may be one way but it still too indirect, hard if you re not good writer, and probably hit-or-miss way to succeed in. The problem with the global and centralizing nature of our current social instruments is that markets in every niche are global, which means that all buyers and all sellers are in the same spot trying to network. This is monolithic. It is good for finding global optima, but it misses all the value that exists in local optima.
Borrible 5y ago
Don't know if it's networking for introverts, but it is asynchronous, can be anonymized, is much easier to distribute, has a wider audience, can be used as a playground, supports the thought process, reduces social pressure in and gives more control over face to face situations, pleases the ego and so on. You can use it as a shell. You might use it as a sting.
spoonjim 5y ago
How do you get your writing seen though? It’s largely by being promoted by your friends and acquaintances when you post something, which requires... networking.

335 points by whoisnnamdi 5y ago

I am interested in how to improve one's writing, especially in creative nonfiction. Unlike programming where you can get feedback immediately from the computer if you make a mistake, it's usually not easy to find a mentor to give feedback if one's writing is improving or regressing.

9387367 5y ago
I’ll curse your writing style for free and will rewrite it for $1 a word plus $5 for each word I can eliminate.

version_five 5y ago

This sounds more like "socially awkward but want to talk to lots of people" than strictly introverted (which itself generally gets used to mean many things). I have some "introvert" traits: talking to people tires me out, I have no interest in low quality conversations - I dont like chit-chatting with strangers. If this is what's going to happen at an event I'd rather avoid it altogether than have a pretext for people to come talk to me. But I'm not socially awkward really (imo) more just conserving my energy because I do find talking tiring. So all that to say I'd rather focus on high quality interaction - smaller groups with mutual interests, vs make bulk unsolicited networking easier for me. I can see the article makes sense for the author and would work for people who for some reason want to have idle banter with others.

blowski 5y ago
I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree. For example, I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up. I wouldn’t consider myself to be either introvert or extrovert, merely some set of personality traits.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > I find smalltalk with people I don’t really know to be extremely challenging and tiring. And yet with people I do know, or in conversations on topics where I feel confident, I struggle to shut myself up. FWIW, this pretty much exactly describes an introvert. Being introverted doesn't mean you don't like socialising at all.
  - blowski 5y ago
    There are so many definitions of introvert that it’s mostly lost any meaning.
    - zamfi 5y ago
      Perhaps, but this sounds like what someone who doesn't know many extraverts would say. If your default preferred way of being isn't "with other people" -- to the point where you feel anxious when you're alone for any reasonable length of time -- you're probably some flavor of introvert?
      - blowski 5y ago
        How many humans even have “default modes”?
- watwut 5y ago
  > I agree. The whole introvert thing is so loosely defined that it covers everyone to some degree. Well of course. Because majority of people is exactly in the middle between extroverts and introverts. The extremes are fairly rare. Most of us are a mix of introvert and extrovert traits, because it is normal distribution. The way people talk about it, you would think there are two distinct species with no overlap.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  It's a skill though, that can be trained like any other. You don't have enough practice. I always thought my father was just like me, no nonsense, no chit chat, just to the point. Until I went with him when he was looking for storage space, and had heard an 80-year old farmer a bit outside of our town had some. They talked about essentially nothing for twenty minutes but if you listened very carefully, somewhere in between the farmer had asked what my father was looking for, and a few minutes later my father had spent a few sentences on it, and then later it was mentioned that Xx who is the brother of Y you may know him has that company and he is using storage now but in a month half of it will be free and who knows and the rest depends on what Z does in the spring. In the end my dad kept a lot of stuff there for years paying hardly anything. And in the meantime they understood exactly who the other was, what kind of people they were from, and so on. I was in awe (I just stood there listening), they just had a whole type of conversation that I couldn't do. So now I try to practice when I have the chance.
xvector 5y ago
> I have no interest in low quality conversations These are typically a gateway/warm-up to high quality conversations.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I think parent would still go through those warm-ups if there was a legitimate chance for the conversation to go further. Speaking for myself, if I was sitting at a social gathering I'd totally bear through any length of ice breaking to get to the meat of the conversation. If it was on a queue at the grocery store I'd bail out at the first 5 seconds. It's a matter of expectations.
- introaway 5y ago
  "Typically" is a bit overly optimistic IMO. "Possibly" seems more accurate - low quality conversations (e.g. the weather, sports, etc.) are typically just psychological glue so folks don't feel awkward during silence. And I think it's fair to say that extroverts value that glue more than introverts, generally speaking. For an introvert, the value of the glue may even be exceeded by the cost of discussing some random nonsense they don't really care about.
  - IWantToRelocate 5y ago
    there's a guy in my building that 100% of the time he talks about the weather when we met in the elevator. its kinda funny that some people can't deal with silence for a few seconds
    - diegoperini 5y ago
      I love those guys. It shows how important it is for them to not cause trouble or create surprises for random strangers that they are willing to repeat the same conversation with that level of dedication. It is the purest form of empathy and yet unfortunately also the most invisible kind.
      - 5y ago
b0rsuk 5y ago
What you call "low-quality conversation", smalltalk, is particularly disliked by people with Aspergers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Chris2048 5y ago
I think the difference is: - is energised by interacting with people vs - is de-energised by interacting with people But there is a social skills / anxiety aspect to this. Some people aren't particularly inherently energised by social interaction, so will always be introverted. That doesn't mean some social interaction isn't beneficial though - It might mean that they need a lot less though, like how some people biologically need less sleep than others, or degrade slower when deprived of it. Incidentally, I wonder whether "coping mechanisms" are the difference - that introverts develop stronger internal dialogues that substitute for normal (external) social interaction(s).

Kvasier 5y ago

I would argue, that the basic discussion about introverts and extroverts is to easy. I think it is way more complex than just two groups. And when we use these two categories, than please JUST to distinguish the basics. But you can not argue with it it this case. I personaly do not know any "classic" intro- or extrovert...

jstx1 5y ago

I change my opinions way too frequently for it. Reading stuff that I wrote as recently as a year ago is mildly painful and annoying.

nawgz 5y ago
How do you hold an opinion if it has no basis that can persist over time? I personally imagine for reading one's own writing, just like listening to my own singing, the exact "pain points" you feel would also be felt by any audience and therefore are the most valuable feedback you could possibly receive...
- jstx1 5y ago
  It's mostly due to learning more things and having different interests. Sometimes it's a change of opinion, other times it's more like "is this even worth talking about" or "I would phrase things differently if I was writing this now".
  - nawgz 5y ago
    > "I would phrase things differently if I was writing this now" This is the point that matters most, and I would pay careful attention to and hone this instinct. It is the one that would truly reduce the "pain" of consuming your own efforts. Otherwise, I am not sure what to say, it is of course possible to write for different reasons and with different efforts and expectations, so I would not fret too much about how much you "care" about something over time, just how much it interests you to read your own points about it
- belval 5y ago
  Not the person you replied to, but it's usually more of a shift in desired tone/writing style than just a general objective evaluation. For example I can write a post and feel the tone is good, then come back to it and find it too informal, not expert-y enough. Then I'll write a new article and some time later find it too academic and not engaging enough. That might just be me though.

scottcodie 5y ago

This can be better said as 'Writing as communication to an anonymous audience is an introverted activity', which is almost a tautology.

m0zg 5y ago

I don't see how it would be - most of what's written is never read.

bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
Speaking from personal experience, writing something once increases the chance that future me will say something in direct conversation with at least one other person. So for me, there is a positive, non zero benefit.
codazoda 5y ago
I’m not sure that’s true for all forms of writing but I’d love to hear more about it. Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people. Same with a book. If I’m writing in a personal notebook, than no, it’s not likely to be read. On the whole, the statement is probably true, but for specific forms, I suspect it’s false.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  > Publishing a blog, for example, is pretty likely to be read by at least a small group of people. No it isn't.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>most of what's written is never read Most of what is spoken isn't really listened to, either.
sanat 5y ago
If you see it the other way around - you just need one person to discover your writing to unlock the depth of your thinking as a person. Writing for the internet > Doing that one on one through networking IRL

codazoda 5y ago

I wonder how people recognize you from your writing since your face isn’t attached to it. I do see the micro-celebrity in action with my adult son, who is a YouTuber. People recognize him pretty often, so his small following must be relatively local and has this effect. But that’s video where he can easily be recognized. On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. If I see a video of someone, I’m not likely to recognize them in public. Perhaps I have a bit of this condition of an inability to recognize faces mentioned in the article.

kall 5y ago
Depending on the kinds of videos he makes, people may have spend more hours focused on his face, and paying attention to his mannerisms, than some friends of theirs.
andreyk 5y ago
It depends on how you publish - on medium the face is hidden, but if you have a personal blog it's easy to make your face and name up front (eg my own https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/lessons-learned-from-failures/ https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/lessons-learned-...).
rhizome 5y ago
tl;dr: faces usually don't matter I read blogs from authors I have no idea what they look like or where they live or anything, some for almost 20 years, and longer than even that with ppl on IRC. All you need is some consistent identity for people to internalize, which in a lot of cases is a nickname, username, or whatever. Heck, I'm certain a site that used only database IDs to identify users would see (stronger, perhaps) connections form just the same as you see on LinkedIn. "On 11/21/21, 384372 wrote:..." Furthermore I'd bet that there are people who still think to themselves something like "I wonder what happened to 'gardenfloot' on Napster." >On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. It's him because it's his (I assume) channel and username. That's a reasonable assumption under the social contract such that any aberration would likely be an emergency or a successful hack or something. There have also been groups of people who act as a single online identity, but yours doesn't sound like it's that at all. I also think celebrity itself is transforming into something a little less oriented around mobbing and paparazzi, and that being recognized is something relative nobodies can get and somebodies can lose, increasing the number of doppelgangers and diluting the entire celebrity industry.

muglug 5y ago

I see writing slightly differently: it's a way to present your ideas without any performance-related anxiety getting in the way. To prepare a good conference talk generally takes a long time, and an otherwise solid talk can be made less engaging by poor delivery. Writing a comparable article can take the same amount of time, but it's much easier to get feedback on it, and it's far easier to track updates. There's no single moment where you can really screw it up.

lumenwrites 5y ago

The biggest challenge is getting people to read what you wrote, and care enough to respond. I started a blog recently where I want to write notes for my writing practice and explore different subjects I'm interested in. Of course it'd be nice if someone had actually read it, for my personal vanity, and all those conversations and opportunities people claim blogging leads to. But it's not the kind of project it would make sense to drive ads to, or even to niche down and grow an audience around a specific topic, since the whole point is to write whatever "gratifies my intellectual curiosity". But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons. There's no obvious way to promote it and put it in front of people. Instead of blogging I could try engaging in conversations here and on reddit (and maybe on discord or twitter), and that, at least HN and reddit, works amazingly well for having good discussions (if not for making personal connections). But the biggest problem with engaging in social media is that it quickly becomes extremely unhealthy and addictive (in the way that blogging doesn't). I want to write, and I want to talk to people, but I don't want to get addicted to refreshing my profile page to look for upvotes and comment notifications (I do have a big problem with the internet addiction). I'm not sure what the right solution to that would be. Does anyone have good ideas? How do you make actual human connection over the internet and engage in intelligent conversations, without getting your dopamine hijacked and skinnerboxed by the social media algorithms? Maybe there's a space for a platform that would encourage thoughtful discussion somehow, and limit the immediate rewards that make social media so addictive. But then nobody would use that platform, right?

pddpro 5y ago
Maybe someone somewhere will come up with a NLP based solution which will cluster people with similar ideas (by means of their blogs) so that you may find people who share your interests within the cluster or explore other idea clusters. Would be a great way of making friends if nothing else.
- lumenwrites 5y ago
  I think that subreddits work extremely well for finding people with similar interests, they're basically the perfect tool for that. Discord servers too. If anything, the issue is that they're too good, so I get addicted, and have to force myself to stop. There could be some kind of solution, based on NLP, or maybe even just finding patterns and clusters in links. But it'd suffer from the same problem subreddits and google do - instantly getting hijacked by the spammers and SEO people trying to promote their stuff. To the degree that having a popular blog is valuable, people will be motivated to find ways to promote it. And when people want to promote stuff, they'll try game whatever system is available. And so the system will have to implement the anti-spam measures, leading to moderation and probably banning most of the blogs. Hmm... Maybe that's why we ended up with HN comments and subreddit text-posts working so well. Yes, you can't get the "networking" value out of them (because nobody cares about your username, and there's no such thing as subscribers), but it's not a bug, but a feature - without the personal value there's no incentive to game the system, so you just have people posting for the sake of the conversation. But that would also mean that becoming even a "micro" celebrity will always be at least somewhat difficult - to the extent that it's valuable, there will be people trying to game the system, and measures trying to stop that, and competition.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

More like, networking is writing for extroverts

codegladiator 5y ago

decebalus1 5y ago

You know what really enhances your networking via writing endeavor? Not using medium.

hntddt1 5y ago

komi can't communicate is a good demonstration in anime

fnord77 5y ago

As an introvert, I think introversion is a legitimate disorder. Anyway, so where besides medium and f*cebook are good places to write?

sanat 5y ago
Twitter, Linkedin, your own website

urthor 5y ago

It is. It's also more than that. Writing is a communication medium. For some of the reasons we want to communicate, it's the perfect tool for the job. For some of the reasons we want to communicate it's a bit rubbish. Writing is extremely abstract. It has less of a connection to our subconscious, it's a long, long way from the real world. Humans are creatures driven by human shaped, in person interaction. Quieter cats love writing for exactly that reason, the emotional ups and downs are much more mellow. I find though, many people use writing and other tools as a band-aid for how they deal with their emotions. Instead of exploring them. Instead of seeking, enjoying, laughing, crying, being curious about at all the joys of life, they use multiple abstractions to control their emotions. Rather than throwing themselves into an emotional whirlwind and growing as a person, they throw up safety barriers. They never figure out how they, themselves actually work. They'll happily devote years of their lives towards optimizing language compilers, without even thinking to learn what makes the Mountain Dew compiler tick.

sanat 5y ago

I used to run a services business, and thought that attending conferences and meet-ups would give me business. Networking (in real life) is not something I enjoyed - but had to do to get more business. Some of the best business and personal relationships I've had IRL, have been a byproduct of writing something online. Some the advantages that I can think of 1. Putting yourself out there has a lot more scale when you broadcast your thoughts by writing online. Even reaching 10s of people takes more time in real life. 2. Cumulative and compounding - someone can find out a lot more about you by just reading more of the things that you've written about in the past. 3. Pull vs Push - It lets the best connections come to you - instead of putting the impetus on you finding the best connection.

rootsudo 5y ago

That's a nice way to put it. I guess it is. I also feel much more appreciated when someone reaches out to me because of something I wrote and it's easier to make a connection - it acts as a great filter, straight to the point and can be a jumping point to more conversation.

rStar 5y ago

but what if i’m good at both?

cblconfederate 5y ago

Apart from natural inclinations one needs to account the time it takes. Networking is boring and slow process , and nerds are impatient. It seems like there is a problem to solve there, rather than considering it an unfixable natural handicap. Writing (becoming famous) may be one way but it still too indirect, hard if you re not good writer, and probably hit-or-miss way to succeed in. The problem with the global and centralizing nature of our current social instruments is that markets in every niche are global, which means that all buyers and all sellers are in the same spot trying to network. This is monolithic. It is good for finding global optima, but it misses all the value that exists in local optima.

Borrible 5y ago

Don't know if it's networking for introverts, but it is asynchronous, can be anonymized, is much easier to distribute, has a wider audience, can be used as a playground, supports the thought process, reduces social pressure in and gives more control over face to face situations, pleases the ego and so on. You can use it as a shell. You might use it as a sting.

spoonjim 5y ago

How do you get your writing seen though? It’s largely by being promoted by your friends and acquaintances when you post something, which requires... networking.