There are certain phrases/sayings I've heard on my journey through life... that have always stuck with me.
One that has stuck with me — even though it was never quite clear to me what it meant — goes like this: "You can either be INTERESTING or POPULAR."
I suppose the thing that felt a bit baffling was this notion that "interesting" and "popular" were somehow mutually exclusive.
In the not too distant future, I will have been a blogger for 25 years.
In the course of all that time, perhaps few things are more evident than the reality that the vast majority of blogs are ultimately made up of little more than a few highlights from largely mundane and ordinary lives.
Of course, that was part of the appeal. I have really never been into the blogs of "famous people," because I just don't find what they have to offer very relateable.
The mundane of ordinary folks just feels a lot more familiar, in some way... even if their lives are very different from my own.
And I definitely recognize that most of my own words are little more than reflections on what is actually a very ordinary life.
Why do we find certain things appealing... and others, not so much? Are we just looking for a hall of echo chambers into which we can pour our ordinary problems, and maybe the sound comes back to us from the depths, in a format we feel familiar with?
Have you experienced anything fascinating, recently? Does anyone actually care, other than yourself?
One of the interesting "side effects" of Hardfork 26 was that all auto voting (as in, curation trails) temporarily stopped, so the only votes cast were manually given.
Against my better judgment, I posted something last night, regardless. In some ways in was rather gratifying to discover that there still are people manually looking at the Hive sites and engaging with people's content.
But we live in an automated world.
Reminds me of how people would have DVRs to record their favorite TV programs, so they wouldn't be slaves to a TV schedule, yet they were creating a situation that would give them less time, because now they felt obligated to watch what they had recorded.
A day has 24 hours, no matter how you turn it.
What's more, most of those hours in most lives are pretty ordinary and boring. Well, I can only speak for myself...
The thing about the greater part of social media is precisely that it is a "highlight reel," but not a true reflection of anyone's life. Maybe with a few exceptions.
I suppose what we're all working towards is filling the very simple desire to be seen, in some way. Not as an "attention getting" device, but just to be seen. Seen, in our own small and ordinary way.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!
How about you? Do you think more of the world is ultimately very ORDINARY? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20221011 22:43 PDT
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