I grow up reading random people on the internet. Most times they were absolutely random, I knew none of them personally. Most times they were quite popular, so I found them.
Up to these days, I was reading many different people, and not many of them are actually popular. Sometimes, they could be just a random internet dude.
E.g. recently I’ve read an article on web development from some apparently cool guy. Or he just tried to impress and pretend he’s cool. He has one issue on impressing me, being Russian.
I am absolutely biased to them, and they have to take one extra step to actually impress me.
I treat them with ‘fuck you, I know you’re lying, so prove it’s wrong first.’
If you came here and you have some humanistic shit in your head, in the middle of the ongoing genocide, oh just fuck you then, get the fuck out of here.
But I’ve been thinking over what he was saying. I’ve read his comments. I don’t like him. But what’s interesting is that he has this over-confident appearance, and as a web-developer, I’m super weak. After all these years of me poking html, I know mostly nothing. I understand mostly nothing.
Yet, I have enough knowledge to understand that his claims are false.
He’s a web developer, and I cannot take it from him, nor I will to. He certainly has much more knowledge than I am. After all, I’m not a web developer.
Yet, he’s overconfident, I can see it clearly.
The guy triggered me thinking of this (bad) habit of reading random people over the internet, especially late of night. Or being tired. Or being vulnerable. Distracted. Sleepy. Occupied with other thoughts, tasks, anything.
What’s the point?
I’ve been reading hacker news for a couple of years, yet I came to this realisation that the general mass are those wannabes. They are geeks indeed, yet they have some very stupid ideas in their heads. The cult of pg, YC, apparently. The cult of venture capitals. San-Francisco. God knows what else.
They have every right at that. I mean, why not, let them.
Just. Why would I want to read all that? Yep, sometimes I’m bored, or I want to distract. Still, the question stays. Why?
Does it gives me something?
Hacker news. I never knew about them, but I’ve been interested in Pavel Durov, the Telegram founder, and I’ve read somewhere that he was deeply influenced by the essays of Paul Graham.
I’ve read some. Nothing special. They left no impression on me, except with the understanding they’re not worth reading.
I’ve explored what that person is. Well, I won’t call names, or call him stupid, it’s just weird these folks made a cult out of him. He’s just a random quite average guy, who happened to have a fortune at some point in his life.
There’s a reason wealth is also called ‘fortune.’ Because it’s more about luck than anything else.
I mean, no negative things about him personally. I don’t know him, and he must grow smarter than he was writing these essays of him.
My persception is only negative towards the folks who create cult-like status for someone. Anyone, actually.
I wonder, often these days. Is this activity as stupid as actually watching scrolling Tik-Tok? Mindlessly watching TV? I don’t read all these people attentively. I just scroll past them. More likely, if we were in personal contact, I’d disregard all of them as ‘oh fuck, why would I even listen to such a guy?’
No offence towards someone particular. But in the real world, we just have so much more things to notice and the little details to understand a person. Reading letters from someone is actually quite questionable way of getting to know the person. It’s not a bad way of transferring ideas, that’s right. But not all ideas are actually safe. I’m swayed by some ideas, sometimes.
You can manipulate a person easily, if you know what they’re about.
Just create a reddit account, and start exploring the topics you like. Meet me in a month or two and tell me you have no addiction towards mindlessly scrolling reddit. I’d be surprised. I will fall into it, and that’s why I don’t use reddit.
You can manipulate masses easily too, if you learn how.
So, what I’m saying is, what if it’s a dangerous territory actually? And if there’s some remedy, still it would be quite difficult to remedy this habit. I tried many times, it’s possible only with the external tools, I’d say.
And if I’d talk about me personally, I did quite an effort to actually jump off the strongest drugs there are, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram. Tik-Tok, never had one. Still, I see, it’s difficult to stop being a regular on the internet. I both despise and deeply envy the people who are not interent citizens. When I was young, I just discarded these people.
The older I am, the more I understand, what if they just have some wisdom built-in?