Why Put Anything Online?

02 Apr 2021

I haven’t written to this blog in long while. There’s a few reasons for this. I made this at the tail end of two semesters of pretty much just math and CS courses, and desperately needed a creative outlet: now, my courseload is a good bit more balanced and the itch is scratched. Also, I’ve been struggling to come up with ideas to write about that merited being shared.

What could I possibly put up on the internet that would be of value to anyone? I don’t think what I’ve written is particularly interesting, entertaining, or informative to anyone who isn’t invested in me as a person. But at the same time, the posts I’ve written aren’t just for me - it’d be a bit strange to link to your dotfiles in diary. Instead, these posts have been in a middle ground: clearly written for an audience other than me, but that audience is not well defined.

I have two strains of thought writing this post. Firstly, that I don’t want to shout into the internet void simply to ‘build a brand’ or ‘market myself’. I read an excellent piece by Sean Blanda at 99U about the purported “Creative World’s Bullshit Industrial Complex” that got me thinking about what exactly this. Even if building a brand was part of my intention with this blog, how could I begin to do that without regurgitating learnings from elsewhere?

Secondly, I do write quite a bit just for myself. Most of this is frustrations with current events or things going on in my life, or structural changes I’d like to see, and the personal beliefs that underly either of those two. However, to be frank, I’m 21 years old and I know practically nothing. The chances that in 4-5 years I stand behind 100% of what I write today are slim to none - yet if I were to post those things today, and this blog were still around then or had been archived, the words attributed to me would be 100% the same then. What do I gain from going on the record publicly today?

Journalists and politicians write publicly all the time, but with purpose. It comes back to bite them in the ass regularly, but the risk:reward makes sense for them – communication is integral to their careers. People in both of those roles, though politicians much more so, often can’t afford to change their positions when presented with new information. The expectation is that they have thought this stuff out so well, and so thoroughly, and that they stand behind their beliefs so strongly, that any shift in opinion needs to have a great deal of impetus. So the question is, would that be (to any extent) my fate were I to publish what I’m thinking today?

These two concerns point towards a potential test for whether to post something: Is it original or transformative, and is it objective or low stakes? Let’s demonstrate this with some examples.

Say I were to post about implementing a pre-existing algorithm in a niche programming language. This is reasonably original, since if it has been done before, it is likely not a very common project. It’s also objective - the code either works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then that’s embarrassing perhaps, but fixable with relative ease.

Say I were to post a collection of thoughts on the positions of a politician. This could very well be original, but it’s not objective. Is it low stakes? Maybe! Depends on what the positions are and what my thoughts are. Revealing myself as a radical communist (which I am not), for example, could be a very bad thing were I ever to run for office or attempt to exist in a political sphere. Providing my take on gun control may not win me any friends, but it also likely won’t get me fired. What is difficult here is that it’s not easy to gauge how others may react to what I have to say. This sort of post would be a judgement call.

Say, for a final example, that I were to get on here and repackage the entrepreneurship advice I’ve collected from listening to The Knowledge Project (big plug for that podcast, by the way). That’s not original, and likely not transformative either. While it may be low stakes to post something like that, it’s intellectually lazy, and were I to do it enough, I’d start to sound like any one of the workfluencer grifters on LinkedIn.

All of this is to say, I’m probably overthinking the burden of having a personal blog. Regardless, since I’m the sort of person that likes a procedure to follow, I’m going to try to stick with that test of what deserves to be thrown up on the internet and attached to my name.