I have something to say, would you be interested?
People have been writing and generating ideas for more than a millennium. The number of words that are written available every year, thanks to the internet, has gone through something beyond an exponential growth. It is hard to imagine that words that are now written every month, particularly in blogs, are all original ideas. Most of the writing could be recycling older concepts being said in a different way or put in a different perspective, more so than original thoughts.
The content matter of blog posts and assessing their originality, however, can be looked at through glasses with different hues.
Even if every blog post does not contain an entirely new idea, what matters more in the age of the internet is that it flashes in the sky as a new star and has potential for being noticed by a segment of users. Like the sudden emergence of a supernova — there are billions of stars in the galaxy and there are trillions of galaxies but the light from an exploding star gets noticed in the night sky by astronomers.
Billions of users on the internet are also looking at the content through their own lenses. Among the vast universe of the internet, content we keep up with is only a narrow section and are only aware of what appears and disappears within that. A day, after all, has a limited number of hours, and we do not live forever.
What part of the sky we look at depends on our interest, hobbies, the evolution of our internet habits, and sometimes, our desire to learn something new. If a blog flashes in the part of the sky we look at, it is likely to be noticed by a small fraction of the billions of users, which by itself, is not a small number, by any means.
The contemporary nature of any writing, even rehashing of an old idea, just does that, and it matters. The blog post may also contain subject matter we do not know much about, and as far as it matters to them, it is a new idea to the reader.
And even if rehashing an old idea makes up the content of a blog post, and is somewhat familiar, it is likely to be said in a different way. It might have a different perspective or may bring in new connections.
Blog posts may not have something entirely new to say but the freshness of words, like on the day when a flower blooms, has a fragrance to it and can get noticed by a small segment of people passing by.
After all, most of us do not go around reading Spinoza ourselves. We read about his ideas through someone else’s lens.
And so, though each blog post may not have something profoundly original to say, it could still be of interest to us. The combination of vast a number of users and a small burst of ephemeral light that a new post creates has potential to be noticed, and at times, go viral.
Yes, if it flashes in the right part of the internet sky, I am interested in what you have to say.
Of course, once your blog gets famous and you have a million followers, it is an entirely different matter.
