Writing for the Internet Is Exhausting
And I can’t stop.
Can I just say something?
I hate writing for the internet.
Growing up, I always loved to write. The best gift I ever got was an antique typewriter.
You would think I’m overjoyed to make my living as a content marketer. It has its moments, sure, but I wouldn’t call it inspiring. It even takes the magic out of writing a little bit, which I’m sure you can understand. Sometimes doing what you love for a living makes you stop loving it.
Once I moved from a writing/editing role into a managerial one, it took me a long time to get back into the “good stuff.” But I finally did it, I joined Medium and started writing again — just for myself.
Now even the stuff I write for Medium is starting to feel meh. I published something like five posts, the rest are still sitting in Google Docs. That’s how fast it got to “meh.”
Like, yeah, I’m burnt out from work, and writing — even for fun — is also work. It’s mentally taxing, from dissertations and investigative reports to fanfiction. But, it’s not just the burnout that’s getting to me.
Writing for the internet doesn’t feel like the writing I know and love. Once upon a time, I wrote to explore my thoughts and express them, free from any sort of rules about what to write and how. It was empowering. Through that process, I came to know myself. It made me… me.
On the internet, I don’t write for myself. The first thing any content marketer will tell you is to write for the customer. Not yourself. The consumer is at the center of everything, from the topic and tone of a piece down to the spelling and punctuation. You have to write for strangers as if you know them — no, as if you know them better than they know themselves.
It sounds fascinating (and sometimes it is) but a lot of our work isn’t so sexy. My job is all about keywords and search volume, backlinks and conversions. Everything I do is meant to “beat” the search engines and get to the customer so I can convince them that this, right here, is exactly what they need — BUY NOW!
At the end of the day, what is content marketing but manipulation? We study the customers’ behavior, try to get inside their heads, and then anticipate what they need to read and how it should be written, all so we can have them reach into their pockets.
It’s borderline sociopathic.
Web writing transformed the way I used my language in just a few years. Now I write really short sentences. My vocabulary has diminished to that of a sixth-grader. I use about half the punctuation that actually exists in the English language. I start sentences with conjunctions.
But hey, it’s easy to skim.
After a while I didn’t feel like myself, not just because of the writing but because I stopped using it to explore my thoughts and feelings. Even the words coming out of my mouth were simpler, the thoughts I expressed uninspired.
It was time to write for myself. That’s how I ended up here, with five posts. At first I didn’t have any objective; I needed a place to vent and parse through my inner ramblings so they would stop keeping me up at night. But, pretty soon I stopped writing for myself again, even here.
It started with claps. Fuck the claps. Those little shits are dangerous because as soon as you get one, you’re constantly aiming for more. But you can’t get more unless people see your post — and people won’t see your post unless you get it published in a publication — and publications won’t post it unless they like it, but before that they have to add you — and they won’t add you unless you vouch for yourself along with every other clap-hungry writer out there.
It propelled me into a vicious cycle. All of a sudden, I wasn’t here to write, I was here to research every publication I could: What do they write about? What did they publish lately? More importantly, what didn’t they publish so I can write it first?
The sheer volume of content out there overwhelmed me. Everyone has some “insight” on the latest news, “expert” writing advice, or a “woke” lecture to share. All of them are shouting into this abyss, vying for visibility and praying to go viral. There’s an entire community with influencers I never heard of and the politics of getting curated. People keep bragging that they’re a “top writer” in whatever (really, top? Like in the world?)
Oh, and the clapping culture. To clap or not to clap? How many times to clap? (I didn’t even know you could clap more than once per post!) If someone claps for you are you supposed to clap back?
To achieve all this, we have to be people-pleasers. I don’t blame Medium for that, it’s the way of the internet. It’s the reason any of us are here: to be seen. To get our fix of dopamine. But, to please other people we have to write for them, and I find that really exhausting.
Hence, “Meh.”
You have to understand, I’ve never been good at fitting in; I was always determined not to. When all the other girls in kindergarten started wearing headbands I stopped wearing mine. I’m hard-wired to go against the grain.
And yet, I find that my writing still changes because that’s what I’ve been trained to do: adapt to a stranger’s way of thinking and take on their language so I can get what I want. Even here on Medium, where the goal is claps instead of conversions.
Now I’m fighting to write for myself. Fighting to be myself.
That’s why all my drafts are unfinished, my narratives unraveling as soon as they begin.
I don’t know who they’re for.
You’ll notice I have way below 100 followers and none of my posts are locked. I’m not here to take the world by storm or establish myself as a freelance writer. I’m here to write, plain and simple, because I love my craft. It brings me joy and makes me who I am. If that’s true for you too, if your Google Docs are riddled with “meh,” then here’s an affirmation:
Your words are wild and wonderful, even if nobody ever reads them. They are your thoughts, these abstract, philosophical things in your brain, put on paper and staring back at you like your own reflection. Your words show you who you are, who you want to be, and you can weave entire worlds out of them. Some of us have literally changed the world with them.
That’s because writers are free thinkers. It’s our legacy, our responsibility.
So dare to be different, to stand still while the rest of the herd rushes past. It will be quiet without the stampede, but that’s when you get to be alone with yourself. That’s when you really start writing.
And for the love of God, write to collect your thoughts, not claps.
I’m glad that some of us can make a living by writing for the internet. This art form will live on and evolve as it has done for centuries. But, for most of its lifetime, writing never happened in front of other people like this. It didn’t get churned out in a matter of minutes and there weren’t any likes or claps to measure its success. It was hard, private work that some authors never got to see rewarded before they died.
What about you? If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, claps unseen, would you still click “publish” today?
