Jan 17
Is Anyone There?
I’ve been online most of my life and creating some sort of content for most of that time. It still feels like talking into the void.
“Never share any personal information online, you don’t know who might be reading it.” A very useful and important piece of advice that I was given at school when learning about internet safety. As a child of the 2000s, I was raised with the internet and saw the rise of social media with my own eyes. I was more social media averse than my peers, but I always had an interest in internet culture. I’ve also had a few websites, blogs, and YouTube channels and to absolutely no one’s surprise, none of those ever got more than a few views. It’s somewhat contradictory to a young person to hear how you should never share any personal information while at the same time your blog post about video games doesn’t get any readers. Is anyone interested in anything I have to say?
There is new content created online every second and it would take lifetimes to go through it all. So the odds of people finding my teenage self’s blog were low, even if there was less content online back then. So I gave up writing and making videos. I got new hobbies and lived my life, still observing the internet and the people on it. I got more confident not only in myself but in my abilities. Sure, I’m not the best writer. Hell, I’m not the best at anything. But I manage. And isn’t that the most important thing?
My childhood dreams of becoming a famous YouTuber are not going to come true and to be honest, I probably don’t want them to. I suspect that many people that are growing up now are going to have the same realization as they grow up. Maybe that is a part of becoming an adult in today’s digital world. Seeing the internet for what it really is: an amazing place full of wonderful people and new things to learn, and a terrible place full of people who want the worst for you and misinformation that is ready to rot your brain. Just like the real world.
My plan for this year is to contribute to that better side of the internet. Even if nobody reads what I write. And just the thought of that excites me. I’m an adult now (at least in the legal sense of the word) and I hope I now have more perseverance when it comes to achieving my goals than I had when I was a teenager. Teenagers are highly aware of other people’s opinions and I hope I have outgrown that developmental phase. So maybe now I can write even if nobody is reading and still find joy in what I’m doing. I’ll still stick to the advice I got when I was a child (personal information is called personal for a reason).
So now it’s just a matter of writing. And maybe someone will read. If that’s you, I want to thank you. And if I don’t write any more articles after this one, we’ll know that I haven’t matured as much as I thought. We’ll just have to wait and see.
