The biggest challenge is getting people to read what you wrote, and care enough to respond.
I started a blog recently where I want to write notes for my writing practice and explore different subjects I'm interested in. Of course it'd be nice if someone had actually read it, for my personal vanity, and all those conversations and opportunities people claim blogging leads to.
But it's not the kind of project it would make sense to drive ads to, or even to niche down and grow an audience around a specific topic, since the whole point is to write whatever "gratifies my intellectual curiosity". But you can't really submit this kind of thing to reddit or to forums, they ban "blogspam" for very good reasons. There's no obvious way to promote it and put it in front of people.
Instead of blogging I could try engaging in conversations here and on reddit (and maybe on discord or twitter), and that, at least HN and reddit, works amazingly well for having good discussions (if not for making personal connections).
But the biggest problem with engaging in social media is that it quickly becomes extremely unhealthy and addictive (in the way that blogging doesn't). I want to write, and I want to talk to people, but I don't want to get addicted to refreshing my profile page to look for upvotes and comment notifications (I do have a big problem with the internet addiction).
I'm not sure what the right solution to that would be. Does anyone have good ideas? How do you make actual human connection over the internet and engage in intelligent conversations, without getting your dopamine hijacked and skinnerboxed by the social media algorithms?
Maybe there's a space for a platform that would encourage thoughtful discussion somehow, and limit the immediate rewards that make social media so addictive. But then nobody would use that platform, right?
I change my opinions way too frequently for it. Reading stuff that I wrote as recently as a year ago is mildly painful and annoying.
It is. It's also more than that.
Writing is a communication medium.
For some of the reasons we want to communicate, it's the perfect tool for the job. For some of the reasons we want to communicate it's a bit rubbish.
Writing is extremely abstract. It has less of a connection to our subconscious, it's a long, long way from the real world. Humans are creatures driven by human shaped, in person interaction.
Quieter cats love writing for exactly that reason, the emotional ups and downs are much more mellow.
I find though, many people use writing and other tools as a band-aid for how they deal with their emotions. Instead of exploring them.
Instead of seeking, enjoying, laughing, crying, being curious about at all the joys of life, they use multiple abstractions to control their emotions.
Rather than throwing themselves into an emotional whirlwind and growing as a person, they throw up safety barriers. They never figure out how they, themselves actually work.
They'll happily devote years of their lives towards optimizing language compilers, without even thinking to learn what makes the Mountain Dew compiler tick.
I wonder how people recognize you from your writing since your face isn’t attached to it.
I do see the micro-celebrity in action with my adult son, who is a YouTuber. People recognize him pretty often, so his small following must be relatively local and has this effect. But that’s video where he can easily be recognized.
On a related note, I often wonder how people are so sure it’s him. If I see a video of someone, I’m not likely to recognize them in public. Perhaps I have a bit of this condition of an inability to recognize faces mentioned in the article.
I used to run a services business, and thought that attending conferences and meet-ups would give me business. Networking (in real life) is not something I enjoyed - but had to do to get more business.
Some of the best business and personal relationships I've had IRL, have been a byproduct of writing something online.
Some the advantages that I can think of 1. Putting yourself out there has a lot more scale when you broadcast your thoughts by writing online. Even reaching 10s of people takes more time in real life. 2. Cumulative and compounding - someone can find out a lot more about you by just reading more of the things that you've written about in the past. 3. Pull vs Push - It lets the best connections come to you - instead of putting the impetus on you finding the best connection.
I see writing slightly differently: it's a way to present your ideas without any performance-related anxiety getting in the way.
To prepare a good conference talk generally takes a long time, and an otherwise solid talk can be made less engaging by poor delivery.
Writing a comparable article can take the same amount of time, but it's much easier to get feedback on it, and it's far easier to track updates. There's no single moment where you can really screw it up.
You know what really enhances your networking via writing endeavor? Not using medium.
This can be better said as 'Writing as communication to an anonymous audience is an introverted activity', which is almost a tautology.
Don't know if it's networking for introverts, but it is asynchronous, can be anonymized, is much easier to distribute, has a wider audience, can be used as a playground, supports the thought process, reduces social pressure in and gives more control over face to face situations, pleases the ego and so on.
You can use it as a shell.
You might use it as a sting.
I would argue, that the basic discussion about introverts and extroverts is to easy. I think it is way more complex than just two groups. And when we use these two categories, than please JUST to distinguish the basics. But you can not argue with it it this case.
I personaly do not know any "classic" intro- or extrovert...
That's a nice way to put it.
I guess it is.
I also feel much more appreciated when someone reaches out to me because of something I wrote and it's easier to make a connection - it acts as a great filter, straight to the point and can be a jumping point to more conversation.
I am interested in how to improve one's writing, especially in creative nonfiction. Unlike programming where you can get feedback immediately from the computer if you make a mistake, it's usually not easy to find a mentor to give feedback if one's writing is improving or regressing.
Apart from natural inclinations one needs to account the time it takes. Networking is boring and slow process , and nerds are impatient. It seems like there is a problem to solve there, rather than considering it an unfixable natural handicap. Writing (becoming famous) may be one way but it still too indirect, hard if you re not good writer, and probably hit-or-miss way to succeed in.
The problem with the global and centralizing nature of our current social instruments is that markets in every niche are global, which means that all buyers and all sellers are in the same spot trying to network. This is monolithic. It is good for finding global optima, but it misses all the value that exists in local optima.
How do you get your writing seen though? It’s largely by being promoted by your friends and acquaintances when you post something, which requires... networking.
More like, networking is writing for extroverts
As an introvert, I think introversion is a legitimate disorder.
Anyway, so where besides medium and f*cebook are good places to write?
no
komi can't communicate is a good demonstration in anime
but what if i’m good at both?
I don't see how it would be - most of what's written is never read.
This sounds more like "socially awkward but want to talk to lots of people" than strictly introverted (which itself generally gets used to mean many things). I have some "introvert" traits: talking to people tires me out, I have no interest in low quality conversations - I dont like chit-chatting with strangers. If this is what's going to happen at an event I'd rather avoid it altogether than have a pretext for people to come talk to me.
But I'm not socially awkward really (imo) more just conserving my energy because I do find talking tiring.
So all that to say I'd rather focus on high quality interaction - smaller groups with mutual interests, vs make bulk unsolicited networking easier for me. I can see the article makes sense for the author and would work for people who for some reason want to have idle banter with others.