It’s routine for even relatively unsuccessful posts and comments to get 1000+ views. Imagine that many people huddled around you in the real world hearing your take on the Reddit API changes or looking at the dumb meme you made in 5 minutes. That would be something, wouldn’t it? For some reason we don’t think it is just because it’s happening on the internet.
This is the first era in humanity’s existence where screaming into the vast abyss will get you a few digital screams of reassurance echoed back at you, sometimes hundreds. Historically there is no precedence for this, nor evolutionarily, and people are not developed catered to this modern existence. It is truly wonderful to get to exist in this moment in human history where not only can we shoot satellites into space but we can also instant message poo emojis to someone on the other side of the planet, and get their response poo emojis instantly, without having to wait for it to be carried on boats, on the backs of horseback postmen and on pidgeons.
And now potentially 100s of people will have the thought of poo in their heads. You did that. That’s the power of the internet.
Another thing that nobody could have foreseen is people posting racist/sexist/hateful stuff in general, and then somebody like their employer digging it up later. Bye bye career and reputation. Those people probably deserve it but still.
That’s why I try to be interesting, even at the cost of things like accuracy sometimes. Since I’m not a technical guy, I don’t really benefit from either accuracy or precision. Instead I ply emotion, humor and some basic rationality to entertain and occasionally try to share something useful. And every once in awhile troll someone. We all have our roots.
Human brains are really, really bad at multiplying. This means we can’t really imagine a 1000 of something, so the sheer scale is difficult to perceive intuitively. That might be part of the reason, I think.
