6 ms·

I'm sort of more interested in the effect this has mentally on people. Not from a FOMO point of view but from a "what is my place in the world" point of view.

by dmje 4y ago

I'm sort of more interested in the effect this has mentally on people. Not from a FOMO point of view but from a "what is my place in the world" point of view. If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are? I'm 50 and sufficiently old / mature to be able to cope with this but even so, when I do a search for "linocut" (one of my hobbies) and see 82,000 results (just on Etsy) - and they're all really good and incredibly cheap... this dents something in me. As I say, I'm realistic enough to know I'm not the world's best artist and I'm not trying to make a living out of it - it's also great, and useful, to see other people's work...but it's also somehow galling as well, in a way that's quite hard to define. It's a bit like Douglas Adams' infinity - it isn't infinity but it feels sufficiently big to make one teeter a bit and wonder at one's place in the universe...

nicbou 4y ago
I have the same feeling as a traveler. There's always a Greater Badass who has been on the same adventures as you, but roughed it out the entire way. There's an 80 year old guy who did it in half the time, and another that did it on one foot. It's hard to look back at an identity-defining motorcycle trip, and realise that it's not that special. In a way though, it's liberating. One-upping the entire world is so out of reach that you can focus on your own experience. Just go there and have your fun. If my place in the universe is to be a mediocre artist and a passable rider, so be it.
- CGamesPlay 4y ago
  I agree with your conclusion here. And a big thing to keep in mind is that you are that guy to a lot of the people you’ll meet. As an expat living in exotic places, I find that I consistently impress people with my story and meet people with more impressive stories than me, often on the same day.
  - ohwellhere 4y ago
    Sage advice. In comparing ourselves to others -- wealth, beauty, fitness, career, etc -- we tend to look up (and feel unsuccessful) rather than look down (and feel successful).
- lexapro 4y ago
  >There's an 80 year old guy who did it in half the time Isn't that worse when it comes to travelling? I'd rather experience 7 things in 7 days than 7 things in 2 days.
  - checkyoursudo 4y ago
    Some people are speed-runners, and some people are completionists, but most people are just "filthy casuals," and we're fine with that. :)
- bsenftner 4y ago
  It's all about the bragging rights, everything, every moment you feel is worth remembering: so you can tell others. But that is not a bad thing, we're social animals. We just need to drop the competitive aspect and share joy in others achievements, rather than use them as a mirror for self depreciation.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  > In a way though, it's liberating. One-upping the entire world is so out of reach that you can focus on your own experience. Just go there and have your fun. I haven't gotten my head around that one. If I'm nothing but some random nobody and nothing I do really matters, why should I care about my own experience enough to focus on it? What's the fun in randomly killing time? If that's all it's about, I might as well just zone out and watch netflix, or whatever the easiest way to kill time happens to be.
  - Victerius 4y ago
    https://media.tenor.com/R4bqdpchzfoAAAAd/buzz-lightyear-factory.gif https://media.tenor.com/R4bqdpchzfoAAAAd/buzz-lightyear-fact...
  - ohwellhere 4y ago
    The blessing and the curse is that you get to choose. Choose Netflix, choose a hobby, choose a career, choose a family, pick several of the above, and/or choose to try to surmount the mountain and be the best among billions. There's no meaning of life, but there's the meaning you choose for your life. As with best practices in goals and games, I suggest placing meaning in the choices where success is defined by what is within your control, not on what is outside of your control.
    - mikrl 4y ago
      But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got the internet?
  - dento 4y ago
    Life has no meaning. We are all as insignificant as grains of sand on a beach. Uniqueness is a big lie that everyone wants to believe. If you enjoy watching netflix more than doing slightly-less-common experiences, you should probably do so. The point of not just passively consuming content is creating memories that can be enjoyed later as well, particularly when discussing with other people.
tartoran 4y ago
Totally but in the end it’s not about being better but about having more fun (and not necessarily quantitative). The moment you say I’ve seen enough how tos and turn off the computer/phone and say I’m gonna have a blast winging this, let the fun start! But I hear you though, Im often neighboring with a little existential crisis. But again I remind myself why I am doing this ‘hobby’ and how I’m free to take any direction and am not constrained to become the best because it’s really not a competition. But the noise is certainly dizzying if not deafening
dragontamer 4y ago
> If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are? No different than when a child enters high school and finds that the Varsity baseball team (or soccer team or whatever) is on a league above-and-beyond their abilities. You either get better to join the level of the competition, or you drop out. It happens again in the highschool -> college transition. Learning your place in the world is part of growing up. Any kid growing up thinking they're hot stuff because of their performance in grade school gets a rude wakeup call in high school and/or college. -------------------- As a Kid, I thought I was pretty good at chess. Turns out my adult skill in chess is roughly class D and I peaked at 1500 Elo (and as an adult, I'm way better at chess than I used to be). As a kid, I also thought I was good at Starcraft: Brood War. I even played the Blizzard ladder pretty decently. But when I sought the competitive community, I barely made rank D- on Teamliquid. I always was reasonably humble about my abilities with regards to sports, but I have plenty of friends who got a rude awakening that their skills weren't varsity level. I fortunately was in less ego-driven sports, such as Track and Field, where the teams are always accepting of you regardless of your abilities. A runner who can do 5-minute miles would rather run with a teammate for good discussion / less boredom, even if those teammates are 1 to 2-minutes slower. And we all can have fun with discus or shot-put even if I'm much weaker than everyone else. Meanwhile, a lot of grade-school baseball pitchers or point-guards couldn't make the high school team. Going from "best in grade school" to "not even on the team" in high school really was quite a shock for them... Its better to learn your place in the world sooner, rather than later. Getting blasted with the right amount of humility is more important for proper psychological development than thinking you're the best at the world at (insert sport / activity / skill here) and just being completely delusional until adulthood. ------------ As we grow up and specialize into various subjects, the opposite happens. Lets say... GPU programming. I've probably spent more time searching for the community (be it online, or in person) to find people who can even discuss the subject with me because its so specialized. Its because the number of GPU-programmers is much smaller than say, the number of people who try to get good at running a mile, play baseball, or play chess. (And most people who do get into the subject just use Python Tensorflow, rather than discussing the lower level programming details). It is here where the internet shines. You really need a network that connects to the "entire world" just to find other people who can talk to you about this subject.
gsatic 4y ago
It doesn't matter, as long as you have a few people around you who need your skills. There are few billion vids on how to boil an egg and the mindless algos will rank them just cuz thats their job. That doesn't mean it has any great value cause how many people really need the skills of the best egg boiler in the world? As corporate wonderland and the mega machine that it represents, grow more and more efficient, out of control and mindless, it targets and uses the best of the best for whatever shit its stuck in loop trying to optimize. They are treated like machine parts and discarded and replaced, the moment they think, say or do anything the machine doesn't need. Who needs that? Only the clueless.
dijonman2 4y ago
The solution to belonging is to live in the moment. I don’t care what other people think of my travels, it’s about me and my experiences. The moment I start doing something for others is the moment I stop being true to myself. I’m genuinely happy other people do things better than I do.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Many of the people selling linocuts (or whatever) will have been to art school or at least had some significant training. And they will have spent years doing nothing but art. A hobbyist, especially one who isn't trying to make a career out of it, isn't going to be able to compete with that. Which is fair enough. Why would you, as a hobbyist, expect to compete with full-time professionals? But it's also true creative markets are a bell curve. The big money is in the mediocre middle. It's why a novel series like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey sells in dumper truck quantities, while something more adventurous and original probably won't even be picked up. Most people are mediocre at what they do (by definition) but it's still possible to be financially successful, especially in a middle class career. If you want mass praise and attention, that's a different problem.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >But it's also true creative markets are a bell curve. There is no middle in the creative markets, the top dozen people take everything and no one else can make a living.
  - WA 4y ago
    I think they meant that the type of content/art is a bell curve distribution. Most popular stuff is what most people like by definition. Hence, the "average" taste is what sells the most (produced by the top dozen people). An extremely niche art/book/movie will never make big money, even if the work is from an artistic genius.
ehnto 4y ago
There was a great article once upon a time, about picking the arena you fight in essentially. You have to recognize which arena you're participating in both literally and mentally, and decide whether or not that's where you want to be. If your arena is the internet, then it's essentially the whole world. But if you focus more on smaller scale communities and the people around you, it's much easier to find a way to contribute that makes you proud and accomplished. The fact that the best guitar player in the world is accessible on the internet is neat, but they are probably not available to play a gig in your town. It's great that there are better software developers out there, but only a few of them are working on a project you're part of, etc.
nonima 4y ago
What do you mean by "better"? I know some people are technically better than me at making music but technically impressive doesn't always mean good (by good I mean something I would like because it's all subjective). Music I make is some of my favorite music because I'm the only person who knows my taste best so it makes sense, I can make exactly what I want to hear. And I don't like sharing it with random people I mostly just show it to my friends. But the main reason I make it is because the process feels so good and when I'm done I have a new favorite song to listen to.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  I’m going to prod a little bit: share it with your neighbors as well! If there is a block party or something see if you can perform or play some recordings. Who knows, maybe there’s someone within walking distance that wants to jam! You neighbors will appreciate living in such a creative community!
- mvexel 4y ago
  This was the sentiment I was scrolling down hoping to find reflected in the discussion. I agree with you, but I was going to frame it a little differently: only you bring your own unique talent and lived experience to what you do. That makes the way you practice your music, visual art, craft (including programming), and its output, valuable. Even if—for the moment—you are the only person enjoying it.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > What do you mean by "better"? I believe the OP is referring to e.g. Salieri vs. Mozart.
CaptArmchair 4y ago
I'm going to link this fragment of a documentary on the Belgian artist Sam Dillemans called "Madness in the detail". He talks about his work and his struggle to get to that elusive point where he finally reaches his artistic vision, as well as his impressions on how the rest of the world approaches art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5pmZfIc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5pmZfIc0 Clearly, everything else is subservient to art as far as Sam Dillemans is concerned. That's who he is. That's the mind space in which he operates. It's his innate personality. Do you have to be like Sam Dillemans? Do you want to be like Sam Dillemans? Sure, there are aspects of him that everyone recognizes within themselves. It's up to you, though, to figure out what you want to take from that and how far you want to take that for yourself. Everyone is living their own unique, personal experience of life. There's only one Sam Dillemans living the life of Sam Dillemans. Trying to become Sam Dillemans is futile. Trying to become yourself, well, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
- williamcotton 4y ago
  > Trying to become yourself, well, that's what it's all about, isn't it? It truly is. I felt inadequate as a musician until I found “my voice”. Now it seems incoherent to compare myself to another artist. I’ve also found myself a lot more accepting of other art because it doesn’t seem to be a competition any longer.
- lioeters 4y ago
  > Trying to become yourself That sums up the thread for me. It's a noble goal, thank you for the reminder. Being an artist, a human being, is not about competing with others as to who is better, it's about becoming truly and deeply yourself. Recently I wrote down the following, from an eulogy by Conan O'Brien about an advice he got from a respected elder. "Be yourself. That's the only way it can work." - Johnny Carson
  - sprkwd 4y ago
    I've always liked: "Be yourself, everybody else is taken."
- 4y ago
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
what's the result though if you are the best linocut person in the world and aren't succeeding but you see the 82000 results of people evidently succeeding with something worse than what you offer. that must suck worse.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Karellen 4y ago
There are a lot of software developers out there better than me, faster than me, more knowledgable than me. I'll never be in the top 10% of software devs. Sometimes when I look at the posts here, and follow software dev sites and blogs, and about things going on in e.g. the Linux kernel, or compiler development, I wonder if I'll ever be in the top 90% of software devs.⁰ Then I realise it doesn't matter that there are thousands of devs out there better than me. They might be able to do any project I might want to get involved in better than I can - but they can't do all the projects that interest me. No matter how good the top 1% of software devs are, they can't do all the software dev work that desperately needs doing, let alone all the software dev work that is merely "important". There's just too much that could be done. So I can get on with my own projects in peace. It doesn't matter that other people could do my projects better than me, because they're busy on their own projects instead. I can still work on my stuff, and that's fine. ⁰ I always forget about the existence of thousands of devs who struggle with fizzbuzz, because my brain is mean to me.
t43562 4y ago
You want to be uniquely good and I think it's because we all want to feel "safe" in our tribe - as if our unique skill makes us specially valuable. Now our Tribe seems to be enormously large and it's far harder to feel special - there is fierce competition. But in reality we are all part of a system that is not a tribe but we're still trying to think of it as if it was and one can be "safe" in it and happy without having to feel too unique. You can be locally famous for things still. Live music is still better than recordings and a painting by someone you know is still better than one you bought off the internet. I suggest ignoring the vastness of talent out there because it's not the right way to draw a feeling of safety and self worth. You only have to be the best dad in the world to your own kids - the other kids in the world have their own best dad.
scoutt 4y ago
> If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are? "hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are" existed much before internet. But when the world gets too big I take a walk downtown, and ask myself how many of these people I am looking at are famous, content-producing top talent developers. Probably I am the only embedded C developer walking on this street right now. Maybe the only one in town? How many of these people care about Vim vs Emacs, Rust vs C, etc? How many care about that guy that cheated on the wife? How many towns like this, with none or a few software developers, there are in the world? The answers to all those questions confort me.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  > "hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are" existed much before internet. Yes... but the population has exploded so exponentially that 8% of all people who have ever lived in history are alive today[1], so people back then also had less people to compete with to stand out during their time. They also had less and less previous generations of people's achievements accumulated to study and be aware of to build off of as well. Also they had much more low-hanging fruit they could tackle. It's much harder to find something novel or likely to lead to a scientific breakthrough to pursue, creative or scientific, nowadays. And also didn't have an internet full of constant distractions, so they were likely more productive in their respective field(s). https://www.techopian.com/eight-per-cent-of-people-who-have-ever-lived-are-alive-today/ https://www.techopian.com/eight-per-cent-of-people-who-have-...
  - scoutt 4y ago
    I'm not so sure. Isn't this like justifying why we "fail"? "Back then there was less people to compete with. Accumulated knowledge was less than today. There were more easier topics to explore. On top of that, I am constantly distracted. It's OK if I don't breakthrough in anything today". 10000 years in the future there may be someone saying the exact same thing as they travel through a lab-generated wormhole to their home in another galaxy.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
The time to yank out the Desiderata: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."
Bakary 4y ago
Why do you need to justify your place in the world in the first place? You aren't responsible for the world. You came to life because of some whim and happenstance from your parents. The things you experience might have been done before, but it's you who is experiencing them right now. All of the greats before you would have traded their entire legacy to have a few more conscious moments. Sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench has happened millions of times yet it's still going to be extraordinary each and every time, to paraphrase Einstein. These emotions are normal when faced with the internet, but some perspective is important. Or rather, it helps to focus on the basic facts of life and its finiteness.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
roywiggins 4y ago
> It's a bit like Douglas Adams' infinity or his Total Perspective Vortex: "when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here.”"
acuozzo 4y ago
What worries me about this is the impact it has on teenagers. My hunch is that this is behind a great deal of the mental health problems we're starting to see them have. Growing gusto depends, in part, on naïveté since it's so easy to be deflated when you're just starting to explore something.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Hah. Yes. I still remember thinking I was being sophisticated music critic when I talked about "Evanescence" as an example of conversation that is not completely unlike an opera. I also remember the stares I got from older students. I still chuckle at the memory sometimes. To be young again. I think I kinda disagree about the impact on younger people though. If anything, they are more likely to develop appropriate filters than we are.
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    > If anything, they are more likely to develop appropriate filters than we are. I thought so too, but the data seems to suggest that they're not. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02206-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02206-9
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Fascinating stuff. Thank you for sharing this. Since this one is focused on US, is there a similar study done not for US ( I am curious if some US-specific aspects could play a role here ). I am particularly concerned about girls depression rate jump.
tshaddox 4y ago
For most things, especially art, I would think that the expanded access to like-minded people would more than make up for the expanded visibility of people more skilled than you. Before the internet, would your place in the world have been defined around you being the most skilled linocut artist in your small town? That doesn’t seem likely. Surely now you have access to a relatively vast community of people interested in linocut art, nearly all of which are not among the few most skilled artists in the form.
enobrev 4y ago
I have similar thoughts in regards to the creative outputs of our various cultures and how we'll deal with that - as creatives, as fans, as critics, etc. When I was young, it seemed impossible to me to think that someone could know ALL of recorded music, or ALL of cinema, because there was so much of it. But there really isn't _that_ much. Not as of the 1990s. And there are music and film buffs who have encyclopedic knowledge of these things, who impress me to this day - if at least for the dedication of time, mindspace, and memory. But we're at a stage where the output could potentially surpass a single human's ability to input. Where it might be impossible for a person, not only to hear all the music in a single genre, but in a single decade. It's possible that there would be so much music made in a single genre, in a single decade, that a person could not know all of it. That's amazing to me. It's something we haven't experienced collectively - an unfathomable mass of creative output. The potential to hear a new song every 5 minutes of every day of the rest of your life. What does music critique look like in that world? What does fandom look like? How do the pretentious maintain their imagined status if their pedestals are too short? I love the idea that a musician could make a living from the proceeds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans, whom most in the world would have never heard of. It's a scale our current culture can't comprehend. I marvel at the potential and consider it as beautiful, scary, and liberating as seeing thousands of galaxies in a pinhead-sized portion of the night sky.

by dmje 4y ago

nicbou 4y ago

I have the same feeling as a traveler. There's always a Greater Badass who has been on the same adventures as you, but roughed it out the entire way. There's an 80 year old guy who did it in half the time, and another that did it on one foot. It's hard to look back at an identity-defining motorcycle trip, and realise that it's not that special. In a way though, it's liberating. One-upping the entire world is so out of reach that you can focus on your own experience. Just go there and have your fun. If my place in the universe is to be a mediocre artist and a passable rider, so be it.

CGamesPlay 4y ago
I agree with your conclusion here. And a big thing to keep in mind is that you are that guy to a lot of the people you’ll meet. As an expat living in exotic places, I find that I consistently impress people with my story and meet people with more impressive stories than me, often on the same day.
- ohwellhere 4y ago
  Sage advice. In comparing ourselves to others -- wealth, beauty, fitness, career, etc -- we tend to look up (and feel unsuccessful) rather than look down (and feel successful).
lexapro 4y ago
>There's an 80 year old guy who did it in half the time Isn't that worse when it comes to travelling? I'd rather experience 7 things in 7 days than 7 things in 2 days.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  Some people are speed-runners, and some people are completionists, but most people are just "filthy casuals," and we're fine with that. :)
bsenftner 4y ago
It's all about the bragging rights, everything, every moment you feel is worth remembering: so you can tell others. But that is not a bad thing, we're social animals. We just need to drop the competitive aspect and share joy in others achievements, rather than use them as a mirror for self depreciation.
marssaxman 4y ago
> In a way though, it's liberating. One-upping the entire world is so out of reach that you can focus on your own experience. Just go there and have your fun. I haven't gotten my head around that one. If I'm nothing but some random nobody and nothing I do really matters, why should I care about my own experience enough to focus on it? What's the fun in randomly killing time? If that's all it's about, I might as well just zone out and watch netflix, or whatever the easiest way to kill time happens to be.
- Victerius 4y ago
  https://media.tenor.com/R4bqdpchzfoAAAAd/buzz-lightyear-factory.gif https://media.tenor.com/R4bqdpchzfoAAAAd/buzz-lightyear-fact...
- ohwellhere 4y ago
  The blessing and the curse is that you get to choose. Choose Netflix, choose a hobby, choose a career, choose a family, pick several of the above, and/or choose to try to surmount the mountain and be the best among billions. There's no meaning of life, but there's the meaning you choose for your life. As with best practices in goals and games, I suggest placing meaning in the choices where success is defined by what is within your control, not on what is outside of your control.
  - mikrl 4y ago
    But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got the internet?
- dento 4y ago
  Life has no meaning. We are all as insignificant as grains of sand on a beach. Uniqueness is a big lie that everyone wants to believe. If you enjoy watching netflix more than doing slightly-less-common experiences, you should probably do so. The point of not just passively consuming content is creating memories that can be enjoyed later as well, particularly when discussing with other people.

tartoran 4y ago

Totally but in the end it’s not about being better but about having more fun (and not necessarily quantitative). The moment you say I’ve seen enough how tos and turn off the computer/phone and say I’m gonna have a blast winging this, let the fun start! But I hear you though, Im often neighboring with a little existential crisis. But again I remind myself why I am doing this ‘hobby’ and how I’m free to take any direction and am not constrained to become the best because it’s really not a competition. But the noise is certainly dizzying if not deafening

dragontamer 4y ago

> If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are? No different than when a child enters high school and finds that the Varsity baseball team (or soccer team or whatever) is on a league above-and-beyond their abilities. You either get better to join the level of the competition, or you drop out. It happens again in the highschool -> college transition. Learning your place in the world is part of growing up. Any kid growing up thinking they're hot stuff because of their performance in grade school gets a rude wakeup call in high school and/or college. -------------------- As a Kid, I thought I was pretty good at chess. Turns out my adult skill in chess is roughly class D and I peaked at 1500 Elo (and as an adult, I'm way better at chess than I used to be). As a kid, I also thought I was good at Starcraft: Brood War. I even played the Blizzard ladder pretty decently. But when I sought the competitive community, I barely made rank D- on Teamliquid. I always was reasonably humble about my abilities with regards to sports, but I have plenty of friends who got a rude awakening that their skills weren't varsity level. I fortunately was in less ego-driven sports, such as Track and Field, where the teams are always accepting of you regardless of your abilities. A runner who can do 5-minute miles would rather run with a teammate for good discussion / less boredom, even if those teammates are 1 to 2-minutes slower. And we all can have fun with discus or shot-put even if I'm much weaker than everyone else. Meanwhile, a lot of grade-school baseball pitchers or point-guards couldn't make the high school team. Going from "best in grade school" to "not even on the team" in high school really was quite a shock for them... Its better to learn your place in the world sooner, rather than later. Getting blasted with the right amount of humility is more important for proper psychological development than thinking you're the best at the world at (insert sport / activity / skill here) and just being completely delusional until adulthood. ------------ As we grow up and specialize into various subjects, the opposite happens. Lets say... GPU programming. I've probably spent more time searching for the community (be it online, or in person) to find people who can even discuss the subject with me because its so specialized. Its because the number of GPU-programmers is much smaller than say, the number of people who try to get good at running a mile, play baseball, or play chess. (And most people who do get into the subject just use Python Tensorflow, rather than discussing the lower level programming details). It is here where the internet shines. You really need a network that connects to the "entire world" just to find other people who can talk to you about this subject.

gsatic 4y ago

It doesn't matter, as long as you have a few people around you who need your skills. There are few billion vids on how to boil an egg and the mindless algos will rank them just cuz thats their job. That doesn't mean it has any great value cause how many people really need the skills of the best egg boiler in the world? As corporate wonderland and the mega machine that it represents, grow more and more efficient, out of control and mindless, it targets and uses the best of the best for whatever shit its stuck in loop trying to optimize. They are treated like machine parts and discarded and replaced, the moment they think, say or do anything the machine doesn't need. Who needs that? Only the clueless.

dijonman2 4y ago

The solution to belonging is to live in the moment. I don’t care what other people think of my travels, it’s about me and my experiences. The moment I start doing something for others is the moment I stop being true to myself. I’m genuinely happy other people do things better than I do.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

Many of the people selling linocuts (or whatever) will have been to art school or at least had some significant training. And they will have spent years doing nothing but art. A hobbyist, especially one who isn't trying to make a career out of it, isn't going to be able to compete with that. Which is fair enough. Why would you, as a hobbyist, expect to compete with full-time professionals? But it's also true creative markets are a bell curve. The big money is in the mediocre middle. It's why a novel series like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey sells in dumper truck quantities, while something more adventurous and original probably won't even be picked up. Most people are mediocre at what they do (by definition) but it's still possible to be financially successful, especially in a middle class career. If you want mass praise and attention, that's a different problem.

thrown_22 4y ago
>But it's also true creative markets are a bell curve. There is no middle in the creative markets, the top dozen people take everything and no one else can make a living.
- WA 4y ago
  I think they meant that the type of content/art is a bell curve distribution. Most popular stuff is what most people like by definition. Hence, the "average" taste is what sells the most (produced by the top dozen people). An extremely niche art/book/movie will never make big money, even if the work is from an artistic genius.

ehnto 4y ago

There was a great article once upon a time, about picking the arena you fight in essentially. You have to recognize which arena you're participating in both literally and mentally, and decide whether or not that's where you want to be. If your arena is the internet, then it's essentially the whole world. But if you focus more on smaller scale communities and the people around you, it's much easier to find a way to contribute that makes you proud and accomplished. The fact that the best guitar player in the world is accessible on the internet is neat, but they are probably not available to play a gig in your town. It's great that there are better software developers out there, but only a few of them are working on a project you're part of, etc.

nonima 4y ago

What do you mean by "better"? I know some people are technically better than me at making music but technically impressive doesn't always mean good (by good I mean something I would like because it's all subjective). Music I make is some of my favorite music because I'm the only person who knows my taste best so it makes sense, I can make exactly what I want to hear. And I don't like sharing it with random people I mostly just show it to my friends. But the main reason I make it is because the process feels so good and when I'm done I have a new favorite song to listen to.

williamcotton 4y ago
I’m going to prod a little bit: share it with your neighbors as well! If there is a block party or something see if you can perform or play some recordings. Who knows, maybe there’s someone within walking distance that wants to jam! You neighbors will appreciate living in such a creative community!
mvexel 4y ago
This was the sentiment I was scrolling down hoping to find reflected in the discussion. I agree with you, but I was going to frame it a little differently: only you bring your own unique talent and lived experience to what you do. That makes the way you practice your music, visual art, craft (including programming), and its output, valuable. Even if—for the moment—you are the only person enjoying it.
acuozzo 4y ago
> What do you mean by "better"? I believe the OP is referring to e.g. Salieri vs. Mozart.

CaptArmchair 4y ago

I'm going to link this fragment of a documentary on the Belgian artist Sam Dillemans called "Madness in the detail". He talks about his work and his struggle to get to that elusive point where he finally reaches his artistic vision, as well as his impressions on how the rest of the world approaches art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5pmZfIc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ5pmZfIc0 Clearly, everything else is subservient to art as far as Sam Dillemans is concerned. That's who he is. That's the mind space in which he operates. It's his innate personality. Do you have to be like Sam Dillemans? Do you want to be like Sam Dillemans? Sure, there are aspects of him that everyone recognizes within themselves. It's up to you, though, to figure out what you want to take from that and how far you want to take that for yourself. Everyone is living their own unique, personal experience of life. There's only one Sam Dillemans living the life of Sam Dillemans. Trying to become Sam Dillemans is futile. Trying to become yourself, well, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

williamcotton 4y ago
> Trying to become yourself, well, that's what it's all about, isn't it? It truly is. I felt inadequate as a musician until I found “my voice”. Now it seems incoherent to compare myself to another artist. I’ve also found myself a lot more accepting of other art because it doesn’t seem to be a competition any longer.
lioeters 4y ago
> Trying to become yourself That sums up the thread for me. It's a noble goal, thank you for the reminder. Being an artist, a human being, is not about competing with others as to who is better, it's about becoming truly and deeply yourself. Recently I wrote down the following, from an eulogy by Conan O'Brien about an advice he got from a respected elder. "Be yourself. That's the only way it can work." - Johnny Carson
- sprkwd 4y ago
  I've always liked: "Be yourself, everybody else is taken."
4y ago

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

what's the result though if you are the best linocut person in the world and aren't succeeding but you see the 82000 results of people evidently succeeding with something worse than what you offer. that must suck worse.

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Karellen 4y ago

There are a lot of software developers out there better than me, faster than me, more knowledgable than me. I'll never be in the top 10% of software devs. Sometimes when I look at the posts here, and follow software dev sites and blogs, and about things going on in e.g. the Linux kernel, or compiler development, I wonder if I'll ever be in the top 90% of software devs.⁰ Then I realise it doesn't matter that there are thousands of devs out there better than me. They might be able to do any project I might want to get involved in better than I can - but they can't do all the projects that interest me. No matter how good the top 1% of software devs are, they can't do all the software dev work that desperately needs doing, let alone all the software dev work that is merely "important". There's just too much that could be done. So I can get on with my own projects in peace. It doesn't matter that other people could do my projects better than me, because they're busy on their own projects instead. I can still work on my stuff, and that's fine. ⁰ I always forget about the existence of thousands of devs who struggle with fizzbuzz, because my brain is mean to me.

t43562 4y ago

You want to be uniquely good and I think it's because we all want to feel "safe" in our tribe - as if our unique skill makes us specially valuable. Now our Tribe seems to be enormously large and it's far harder to feel special - there is fierce competition. But in reality we are all part of a system that is not a tribe but we're still trying to think of it as if it was and one can be "safe" in it and happy without having to feel too unique. You can be locally famous for things still. Live music is still better than recordings and a painting by someone you know is still better than one you bought off the internet. I suggest ignoring the vastness of talent out there because it's not the right way to draw a feeling of safety and self worth. You only have to be the best dad in the world to your own kids - the other kids in the world have their own best dad.

scoutt 4y ago

> If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are? "hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are" existed much before internet. But when the world gets too big I take a walk downtown, and ask myself how many of these people I am looking at are famous, content-producing top talent developers. Probably I am the only embedded C developer walking on this street right now. Maybe the only one in town? How many of these people care about Vim vs Emacs, Rust vs C, etc? How many care about that guy that cheated on the wife? How many towns like this, with none or a few software developers, there are in the world? The answers to all those questions confort me.

cableshaft 4y ago
> "hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are" existed much before internet. Yes... but the population has exploded so exponentially that 8% of all people who have ever lived in history are alive today[1], so people back then also had less people to compete with to stand out during their time. They also had less and less previous generations of people's achievements accumulated to study and be aware of to build off of as well. Also they had much more low-hanging fruit they could tackle. It's much harder to find something novel or likely to lead to a scientific breakthrough to pursue, creative or scientific, nowadays. And also didn't have an internet full of constant distractions, so they were likely more productive in their respective field(s). https://www.techopian.com/eight-per-cent-of-people-who-have-ever-lived-are-alive-today/ https://www.techopian.com/eight-per-cent-of-people-who-have-...
- scoutt 4y ago
  I'm not so sure. Isn't this like justifying why we "fail"? "Back then there was less people to compete with. Accumulated knowledge was less than today. There were more easier topics to explore. On top of that, I am constantly distracted. It's OK if I don't breakthrough in anything today". 10000 years in the future there may be someone saying the exact same thing as they travel through a lab-generated wormhole to their home in another galaxy.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

The time to yank out the Desiderata: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

Bakary 4y ago

Why do you need to justify your place in the world in the first place? You aren't responsible for the world. You came to life because of some whim and happenstance from your parents. The things you experience might have been done before, but it's you who is experiencing them right now. All of the greats before you would have traded their entire legacy to have a few more conscious moments. Sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench has happened millions of times yet it's still going to be extraordinary each and every time, to paraphrase Einstein. These emotions are normal when faced with the internet, but some perspective is important. Or rather, it helps to focus on the basic facts of life and its finiteness.

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roywiggins 4y ago

> It's a bit like Douglas Adams' infinity or his Total Perspective Vortex: "when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here.”"

acuozzo 4y ago

What worries me about this is the impact it has on teenagers. My hunch is that this is behind a great deal of the mental health problems we're starting to see them have. Growing gusto depends, in part, on naïveté since it's so easy to be deflated when you're just starting to explore something.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Hah. Yes. I still remember thinking I was being sophisticated music critic when I talked about "Evanescence" as an example of conversation that is not completely unlike an opera. I also remember the stares I got from older students. I still chuckle at the memory sometimes. To be young again. I think I kinda disagree about the impact on younger people though. If anything, they are more likely to develop appropriate filters than we are.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > If anything, they are more likely to develop appropriate filters than we are. I thought so too, but the data seems to suggest that they're not. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02206-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02206-9
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Fascinating stuff. Thank you for sharing this. Since this one is focused on US, is there a similar study done not for US ( I am curious if some US-specific aspects could play a role here ). I am particularly concerned about girls depression rate jump.

tshaddox 4y ago

For most things, especially art, I would think that the expanded access to like-minded people would more than make up for the expanded visibility of people more skilled than you. Before the internet, would your place in the world have been defined around you being the most skilled linocut artist in your small town? That doesn’t seem likely. Surely now you have access to a relatively vast community of people interested in linocut art, nearly all of which are not among the few most skilled artists in the form.

enobrev 4y ago

I have similar thoughts in regards to the creative outputs of our various cultures and how we'll deal with that - as creatives, as fans, as critics, etc. When I was young, it seemed impossible to me to think that someone could know ALL of recorded music, or ALL of cinema, because there was so much of it. But there really isn't _that_ much. Not as of the 1990s. And there are music and film buffs who have encyclopedic knowledge of these things, who impress me to this day - if at least for the dedication of time, mindspace, and memory. But we're at a stage where the output could potentially surpass a single human's ability to input. Where it might be impossible for a person, not only to hear all the music in a single genre, but in a single decade. It's possible that there would be so much music made in a single genre, in a single decade, that a person could not know all of it. That's amazing to me. It's something we haven't experienced collectively - an unfathomable mass of creative output. The potential to hear a new song every 5 minutes of every day of the rest of your life. What does music critique look like in that world? What does fandom look like? How do the pretentious maintain their imagined status if their pedestals are too short? I love the idea that a musician could make a living from the proceeds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans, whom most in the world would have never heard of. It's a scale our current culture can't comprehend. I marvel at the potential and consider it as beautiful, scary, and liberating as seeing thousands of galaxies in a pinhead-sized portion of the night sky.