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I might be the kind of person that requires external validation, what I noticed is I simply stopped writing online, for the most part. It just feels like writin

by herval 2y ago

I might be the kind of person that requires external validation, what I noticed is I simply stopped writing online, for the most part. It just feels like writing/tweeting/etc into a cacophony, makes me slightly uncomfortable adding to the noise and discouraged that nobody (no human at least) will read anyway. So I just write what would be blog posts on Notes app and don’t post anywhere…

dan00 2y ago
It's the few highlights in the cacophony called life, that makes life worth living.
Swizec 2y ago
I read this comment. That said I have also found myself writing less, but not because I think it’s less worthwhile than it was 15 years ago when I started, it’s that the internet feels like it has become less deep. Probably not because the internet has changed but because I’ve learned more so fewer and fewer things tickle that curious part of the brain and feel worth writing about. The things that do feel worth it are so off the deep end that there are fewer and fewer readers who are interested.
- strken 2y ago
  Writing on the internet sometimes feels like being a blob of uranium in a reactor where control rods are slowly being inserted at the same time as the reaction chamber is being expanded. There is factually more fissile material out there, but it's no longer as close to critical mass.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I am not a blogger, but was very active on StackOverflow for years -- mostly asking, but sometimes answering. I used it to learn and to create digital footprints, similar to blogging. I blame most of my slow down on experience and age (same-same, but different). After a while, my questions for SO became so hard, they would only get a few views and no answers. I'm no genius, but with enough experience, you will stumble across some never-before-answered problem.
fhd2 2y ago
So you actually enjoy writing, without getting anything in return. Sounds like it'd be the good kind of blog (as opposed to content marketing, personal branding and all that hustling). If you were to publish it, maybe one person will come across it and get something out of it. There's this Spider Man quote I like: "If you help someone, you help everyone". I think it's not comic canon but just from the PS4 game. So getting meta here, that random line a writer for a random video game came up with had a big impression on me. It's a typical programmer fallacy to avoid redundancy. If somebody else already wrote about something, why would you? Yet in communication, redundancy and repetition is actually quite key. We need to hear ideas multiple times and from different angles before they land.
simianparrot 2y ago
I used to blog and write a lot and I never cared how many — if any — read it. Purposefully avoided analytics tools etc. But after the last few years with the proliferation of “AI” tools and the increasing amount of noise on every level I just don’t like feeding the “grey goo of information”. It might be unreasonable but I’ve felt it for over a year now and it’s not going away. Instead I value interpersonal conversations a lot more again. I hang out in discord voice chats with a few people at a time. Text communication feels soulless and low signal to noise in general now. Anecdotally almost every text chat server I’m on has less active users writing than I’ve ever seen in 25+ years of using the internet. Might be a coincidence but I wouldn’t be surprised if people’s behaviours are changing. Just like knowing you’re being watched changes your behaviour, knowing text content may or may not be fed to or generated by a slop machine algorithm probably changes how you view text as well.
- gerdesj 2y ago
  "I just don’t like feeding the “grey goo of information”" If your voice isn't spoken then it will go unheard. It is of course up to you but I think that blogs and websites run by real people are invaluable (and I'd love to see what AI makes of that word!) This is the bigger issue at the moment: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1008897/bbe01d846ec5e9cd/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1008897/bbe01d846ec5e9cd/
  - Retric 2y ago
    Scraping is a short term anomaly. The hype cycle is already dying which quickly reduces the amount of resources devoted to such efforts. Where I think that post failed is poisoning the well of anyone ignoring Robots.txt is arguably a moral imperative. That post was concerned with wasting kWh, but ensuring that bad actors don’t profit discourages people from being bad actors.
  - simianparrot 2y ago
    My «voice» isn’t heard from a trained LLM anyway. Only a vague, blended and remixed imitation at best. As a human I have no interest in feeding that beast.
TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
All of my best writing has largely gone unwritten.
xpe 2y ago
15 years ago felt very different to me as well. Many of us lucked into the conditions that made many online interactions feel worthwhile. The loss of these settings sucks.* But such a creative environment is still attainable and can be found in pockets. * To be fair, nostalgia around many off these communities can be misleading. Many were never designed to sustain realistic growth nor the inevitable pressures to monetize them. They were naive and ignored human nature, a product of the mentality of their creators or perhaps their participants or both. We know better now. Community building is tricky and worthwhile, rarely a matter of formulaic scaling.
grumpy_coder 2y ago
Me too. At least i can be wrong in private that way.

by herval 2y ago

dan00 2y ago

It's the few highlights in the cacophony called life, that makes life worth living.

Swizec 2y ago

I read this comment. That said I have also found myself writing less, but not because I think it’s less worthwhile than it was 15 years ago when I started, it’s that the internet feels like it has become less deep. Probably not because the internet has changed but because I’ve learned more so fewer and fewer things tickle that curious part of the brain and feel worth writing about. The things that do feel worth it are so off the deep end that there are fewer and fewer readers who are interested.

strken 2y ago
Writing on the internet sometimes feels like being a blob of uranium in a reactor where control rods are slowly being inserted at the same time as the reaction chamber is being expanded. There is factually more fissile material out there, but it's no longer as close to critical mass.
throwaway2037 2y ago
I am not a blogger, but was very active on StackOverflow for years -- mostly asking, but sometimes answering. I used it to learn and to create digital footprints, similar to blogging. I blame most of my slow down on experience and age (same-same, but different). After a while, my questions for SO became so hard, they would only get a few views and no answers. I'm no genius, but with enough experience, you will stumble across some never-before-answered problem.

fhd2 2y ago

So you actually enjoy writing, without getting anything in return. Sounds like it'd be the good kind of blog (as opposed to content marketing, personal branding and all that hustling). If you were to publish it, maybe one person will come across it and get something out of it. There's this Spider Man quote I like: "If you help someone, you help everyone". I think it's not comic canon but just from the PS4 game. So getting meta here, that random line a writer for a random video game came up with had a big impression on me. It's a typical programmer fallacy to avoid redundancy. If somebody else already wrote about something, why would you? Yet in communication, redundancy and repetition is actually quite key. We need to hear ideas multiple times and from different angles before they land.

simianparrot 2y ago

I used to blog and write a lot and I never cared how many — if any — read it. Purposefully avoided analytics tools etc. But after the last few years with the proliferation of “AI” tools and the increasing amount of noise on every level I just don’t like feeding the “grey goo of information”. It might be unreasonable but I’ve felt it for over a year now and it’s not going away. Instead I value interpersonal conversations a lot more again. I hang out in discord voice chats with a few people at a time. Text communication feels soulless and low signal to noise in general now. Anecdotally almost every text chat server I’m on has less active users writing than I’ve ever seen in 25+ years of using the internet. Might be a coincidence but I wouldn’t be surprised if people’s behaviours are changing. Just like knowing you’re being watched changes your behaviour, knowing text content may or may not be fed to or generated by a slop machine algorithm probably changes how you view text as well.

gerdesj 2y ago
"I just don’t like feeding the “grey goo of information”" If your voice isn't spoken then it will go unheard. It is of course up to you but I think that blogs and websites run by real people are invaluable (and I'd love to see what AI makes of that word!) This is the bigger issue at the moment: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1008897/bbe01d846ec5e9cd/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1008897/bbe01d846ec5e9cd/
- Retric 2y ago
  Scraping is a short term anomaly. The hype cycle is already dying which quickly reduces the amount of resources devoted to such efforts. Where I think that post failed is poisoning the well of anyone ignoring Robots.txt is arguably a moral imperative. That post was concerned with wasting kWh, but ensuring that bad actors don’t profit discourages people from being bad actors.
- simianparrot 2y ago
  My «voice» isn’t heard from a trained LLM anyway. Only a vague, blended and remixed imitation at best. As a human I have no interest in feeding that beast.

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

All of my best writing has largely gone unwritten.

xpe 2y ago

15 years ago felt very different to me as well. Many of us lucked into the conditions that made many online interactions feel worthwhile. The loss of these settings sucks.* But such a creative environment is still attainable and can be found in pockets. * To be fair, nostalgia around many off these communities can be misleading. Many were never designed to sustain realistic growth nor the inevitable pressures to monetize them. They were naive and ignored human nature, a product of the mentality of their creators or perhaps their participants or both. We know better now. Community building is tricky and worthwhile, rarely a matter of formulaic scaling.

grumpy_coder 2y ago

Me too. At least i can be wrong in private that way.