Neil Gaiman's Radical Vision for the Future of the Internet

Cal Newport responding to a neat interview Neil Gaiman did:

This vision is not without its issues. The number one concern I hear about a post-social media online world is the difficulty of attracting large audiences. For content creators, by far the biggest draw to a service like Twitter or Instagram is that their algorithms could, if you played things just right, grant you viral audience growth.

I have told everyone who'll listen about why I'm so excited to embrace old-school blogging after a twenty year hiatus, but one thing I haven't talked about is how it feels to go from over 20,000 followers to several hundred subscribers. Before Twitter died, I could count on one or two tweets to reach a million accounts every month.

Did all those followers represent valuable relationships? Of course not. Were my viral tweets deep and meaningful? No, usually shitposts. When I tried to leverage that reach to find new clients, did I ever make a sale? Not a one.

But my dopamine pathways didn't care. I became hopelessly addicted to the notifications tab of my timeline. Severing myself from that psychological slot machine and building this small-ball, slow-cooked, self-hosted site has been… an adjustment.

That's why I don't have any analytics set up for any of the justin.searls.co family of brands. I don't write this for you, I write it for me. If the things I share here do attract an audience, that's a bonus. If you e-mail me or link back to one of my posts then maybe we'll become acquaintances or friends.

But if I were trying to grow an audience as quickly as possible, I'm honestly not sure what I'd do. The answer probably has something to do with hair transplants and TikTok.