Write like nobody's watching

05 Aug, 2025

So, a couple of days ago I finally finished a blogpost I had been working on for a good while.¹

When I published it, it got a total of two views.
And, honestly?
I'm fine with that.
Two months ago, I might not have been.

Bearblog is the first time I've actually been able to share what I write with an audience larger than just my immediate family.
That's cool! And exciting!

At first, I did actually care a lot about metrics.
At its core, I was still writing for myself, I was making the stuff I wanted to read...

But I can't say I wasn't disappointed when a post got less toasts or did worse than my previous ones had.
In some sense, that tainted my perception of what I had written.

I think a lot of social media encourages this, in a sense. Likes, shares, views... They all give you that sweet, sweet dopamine, yknow? Humans love watching numbers go up. I should know, I finished cookie clicker.

But, you also feel a bit of diminished self-worth when your new stuff isn't doing as good. That's inevitable, to some extent. At least I don't think most people are immune to that. If you had a couple really good posts, and then suddenly everyone seemingly stops reading, you do kind of start to blame yourself. Like what you make isn't "good enough" anymore.

And I think that's the problem really. Art isn't a popularity contest. I mean, most people know that, i think. It's just that we're kind of wired to seek approval from others, to want that connection. To want to impress the people around us and have the perception that we're good at what we do. I think that's natural, to an extent.

But these numbers don't represent the actual impact the art that we make has. On ourselves and on others. I've got a good three or four blogposts sitting in my notes that I have not and will never publish. Because they're too personal. Because I talk about things I'm not really comfortable sharing publicly.

Except me, noone has seen those posts. After I wrote them, I never even re-read any of them. But I'm still glad I wrote them. Because it helped me sort out my feelings about those things. It made me reflect, and it helped to give me an outlet for those emotions. So, I think they're worth it, even if noone has read them except me. I think they're good art. Because they're good communication.

I think those posts are meaningful even though they will never be seen by anyone else. This still holds true when it comes to sharing things publicly. Maybe only one or two people have read your stuff, but those one or two aren't "less valuable" than 10,000. As long as what you made comes from a genuine place, a desire to express yourself, then I think that doesn't matter.

Sadly, with the way our social systems are built on the web, that's not really an easy message to internalize.

On pretty much all social media platforms, numbers are front and center. It's a game of who can get the most attention. I mean, that's still kind of true here on bearblog, with the trending tab being a thing. Which, honestly, I'm not too sure how to feel about.

I don't really browse trending all that much. It's not uniquely suited to promoting good posts. It's fine at that, but most of the things I like I find just by looking at whatever is most recent.

...But I can't deny that it is still kind of valuable to have a sort of shared culture, to have "the thing" everyone is talking about on a particular day. Trending helps with that. Sometimes something controversial or particularly interesting ends up getting up there, and then, for the next few days we've sort of got a shared discussion going on with a bunch of people making response posts, a sort of impromptu community event. I think that's neat.

Again, I've also never experienced what bear would be like without trending. Maybe we would still have that? I don't know.