The internet is a place of digital abundance with zero friction to publishing. Building an audience is increasingly important for one’s long-term prospects. This leads to deep niches filling the internet.
This is mostly a good thing—interesting content for more people and diversity of things—but also makes it harder to contain multitudes on today’s internet.
There are penalties built into the way we publish and consume content. For example, you can find your 1000 true fans in some obscure automatic watch community but they probably don’t want to hear about you learning to program Rust. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TicToc, and to a lesser extent, forums and chat groups, aggregate audiences that only want to hear from a limited part of you.
As a founder, tinkerer, programmer, and writer, I find myself in this generalist dilemma all the time. How do you contain multitudes on the internet?
Somewhat inspired by this post, The internet wants to be fragmented by Noahpinion because I don’t want to be fragmented.
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Principles for Living a Rich Digital Life
I’ve been thinking more about how to live a rich digital life and what that means in a world of abundance. The following is a work-in-progress list of principles that are starting to form. (Epistemic status: low).
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There are many different layers to the web that people inhabit. The small, closed communities that exist within chat groups and apps like Slack are free from the industrialized public spaces that giants like Facebook and Twitter inhabit. On the cozy web, people can have better conversations with like-minded people.