Why Write Anything Anymore?
Why create content which the internet trivializes?
Have you ever read an interesting article on the internet or watched an intriguing YouTube video, had the impulse to enter the discussion by writing down your thoughts in the comment section, but balked when you saw that there were already hundreds or even thousands of comments there? Did you lose heart when you realized your comment would be lost in that sea of responses?
Comment sections on the web may once have been meant to be uplifting tributes to individual liberty. We’re free to share our thoughts and we can even form impromptu communities of likeminded individuals. But there’s an unintended consequence when an enormous crowd of readers or viewers shows up to offer their opinions too, so that the individual who’s meant to be sovereign in a free society is swept up in a mob mentality or is overcome by the glut of data.
The question presents itself: Why write at all when so many other people now are doing so? Why add your comment to an article you like when in the hundreds of other comments that have already appeared there, your point has likely already been made? More than that, though, why write articles when the internet as a whole is afflicted with oversupply at all levels? Why make YouTube videos or podcasts? Why write novels or draw pictures or make…
