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The Price of An Anecdote
Or What It Means To Put ‘Personal’ In Your Essay
“Please, make it personal”
It’s been a while since I wrote for Medium. Diving back wasn’t easy. But almost as soon as I began looking for publications, I was struck by an interesting deja vu.
Almost every publication that inspired me to submit had one simple but common requirement.
Make it personal.
And that brought up a familiar dilemma. The dilemma about the value inherent in my personal stories, and the lengths I’d be willing to go to share them.
But more importantly, it was a dilemma about the lengths I would not be willing to go. The boundaries I want as a writer. And the price of breaching them.
Hasan Minhaj’s ‘emotional truths’ may be far behind us. But their revelation and the willingness of Minhaj to separate factual truths from emotional ones raised significant questions about the nature of art and the price one is willing to pay for it.
AI is taking over the world, and ultimately the only thing that saves human writers and creators may be their distinct and personal humanity. But neither AI nor the vagaries of the changing ‘content landscape’ explain our mass obsession with personal stories and anecdotes.
