(It's somewhat ironic that I decided to write this up in the Blogspot composer, after just now setting up a Substack account. Old habits are hard to beat I guess, it's possible that I've been fully conditioned at this point to only be able to have a semi-congruent flow of thoughts in this interface).
Anyway, something I've been thinking about over the last few years is the recently popularized concept of a 'personal brand' and especially how to portray and categorize the various facets of one's interests over the internet.
As the footprint of my various 'content' has grown through the years, I haven't been particularly mindful of the various crumbs I've left of my old internet accounts, whether it be digital art, writing, forum posts, and so on, across the web. This is probably something that is beginning to affect a lot of people my age, as the internet has aged and there are a surprising number of 'old school' sites that have proved rather longevous (I say 'my age' because my hypothesis is that people in this group grew up with an internet that was not as mature or curated, and may have been more likely to have been part of a range of various discrete web communities -- as opposed to those who are a bit younger, who perhaps grew up with dominant social networks where almost everyone left some sort of trace or presented some version of a whole 'authentic self' in one account). I know the former to at least be anecdotally true, because I have done my fair share of internet stalking where finding out someone's internet alias and googling it has revealed a slew of other accounts and posts under a huge range of various websites (...I also have a significant cringe feeling associated with the nightmarish thought of some past forgotten account being able to be tied to me in the present if someone were to look hard enough).
I've been thinking about this more as 'content creation' and the concept of the Micro Influencer has turned into an Actually Viable Way To Make Money in the last few years. There is a lot of conventional wisdom in the Industry now that suggests curating content in a way that 'makes sense' to some specific, niche audience: to curate a certain type of Instagram Feed, write a certain form of Twitter thread or, indeed, select topics for a Substack newsletter. What's more is that usually, there is an expectation that the creator present themselves as their true identity; it's not uncommon for niche Influencers to eventually transition into generic lifestyle content or start alternative channels for their other hobbies. It's not always clear how much of this is to lean back into the presentation of a more Authentic Self, versus expanding a business to capture another audience though -- it's probably usually some mixture of both.
I see this as a version of what we saw a few years ago as more established professionals expanded their internet presence for career purposes and were being coached on how to develop a 'personal brand'. This has always felt somewhat contrived to me, as I've seen that Americans especially tend to want to present the same version of the Self in all parts of their lives, and one's Authentic Self is likely too nuanced and complex to be able to be presented in a neat Personal Brand 'package' on some minimalist interface for someone to skim over in 0.3s on some splash page or social media bio, so like... how?
I am neither very organized nor very interested in becoming an Influencer, and certainly not good at drawing such boundaries between different parts of my life. I tend to hop from one interest to he next quite quickly, making my Instagram feed not very aesthetic in its holistic view (shock horror). This would normally not be a problem, except that I've been finding that as people around me consume more micro-influencer content, the more they are used to the pattern, and the more confusing it can be to look at a blog or a feed or, even at a higher level, internet footprint like mine. The impact has been that I've progressively shied away more from the internet as a form of self expression or even just sharing about my life, because I don't feel I'm able to present it in a way that 'makes sense' to the viewer. I even have more than one Instagram account for different content, because I didn't want to spam my 'normal friends' with lots of content around some niche hobby I was getting into.
On the topic of writing, a question that I've struggled with for as long as I've been putting words on the internet, is "do I want someone to read this? If so, whom, and how can I isolate that audience? And if not, why am I even publishing it on the internet?"
As I was writing this out, I realized a couple things about how I think about the answer to this. Firstly, the recognition that there are several distinct types of writing that I've published on the internet over the years: (1) research based articles or knowledge sharing,
(2) creative writing, and
(3) random streams of consciousness and personal thoughts
For (1), since this is the most obvious type of content that I'd want people to read, I will try the most hard to find some audience for these sorts of writing, historically by publishing on a Serious Platform (like Medium) and sharing over something like Twitter. I'll also go through quite a lot of editing, which I don't do for the vast majority of things I post on these blogs like (2) and (3).
For (2), I just write creatively for fun, but sometimes it actually turns out kind of cool and I'm actually pretty happy with it and feel at least lukewarm about sharing (even with people I know), but still feel kind of sheepish about it. I guess sharing creative writing is kind of like sharing art though, which is always kind of nerve wracking. But part of is it that I also feel way less experienced in creative writing than visual art, to the point where I'm mostly not sure if what I wrote and liked is actually Good or not, so I don't feel as comfortable sharing I guess? Also, when juxtaposed with (1), I feel that consumption of creative writing is more up to personal taste and 'leisure' / 'enjoyment', and I feel much worse about taking up someone's leisure time with something they won't enjoy, compared to simply delivering information (although I know that in recent years, presentation of information can also be polarizing... however I feel that seeking the truth through data is a much less controversial positive use of time than consuming potentially bad art, so I suppose I've projected that belief onto how I think others should use their time too).
For (3), if I'm honest, a lot of the time, I do want someone to read it (though honestly I can't really explain why), but I want that someone to be a stranger in my real life. Maybe it's some part of my personal anxieties, like I don't want people close to me to know so much about what goes in my weird head because I'm afraid they'll judge me, or because I want them to find out about that weird part of me through direct personal interactions and a built relationship, so that they don't end up knowing way more about me than I know about them.
I also write and publish online because I know I'll read it sometime in the future, and this was the laziest form of cloud based storage that existed back when I started (I will probably be quite sad if Blogspot ever disappears). Certainly, there have been writings I've posted on self-hosted blogs that have disappeared into the ether that I regret a little (my chocolate croissant reviews -- probably lost forever???).
