Thoughts
Statistics depress me. I can handle failure. But quantifying my failure gets to me.
I don’t make things for other people, I make things for myself, for me to enjoy. And if I don’t think about other people’s reaction, then I’m fine. But if you tell me, ‘that thing you made, 2 people like it,’ that hurts. I just want people to like the things that I like and appreciate the things that I do. In my life I’ve probably made 10 things that have made more than 100 people happy, and they are all Khan Academy programs. I just don’t exist. I live in this bubble and I can make the bubble better for myself indefinitely, but I need validation from the outside world to confirm that what I’m doing matters.
I once said, everything that you want in this life you have to fight for. And that applies to other people liking your content. You can’t just make cool things and expect other people to spontaneously like them. You have to force them upon people until they have to like them. You can’t expect people to subscribe to content they enjoy, you have to ask them to subscribe at the start of every video. You can’t expect people to come searching for content, you have to advertise it. And I don’t mean advertise so that they know about it, I mean market it as the greatest thing ever. You can’t just make something that people want to use.
OurJSEditor has 13 stars on GitHub. I spent 4 years of my life for a dozen people to look at OJSE and go, ‘that’s neat’ and then never use the website again.
I’ve considered adding a views counter to this website, but I’m sure it would only depress me. I add a little bit of friction by not using Twitter, and suddenly no one cares.
In my mind I’m special, and people should care about the things that I make merely because I made them. I don’t like everything. I like few things. So in my mind, me liking something makes it special and other people appreciate it as well. ‘Oh this is the thing Matthias likes’ or ‘Oh I’m going to go play the game Matthias made.’ I put a lot of work into it. I think my game is fun. That doesn’t matter. People aren’t going to play it if they don’t like it.
For a lot of my life I do not share things that I like, as a general rule. Conversations just go better that way, 90% of the time. But there’s a point where that wears on me. Where it hurts to not be able to relate to others.
And then even if someone expresses some interest, it’s not uncommon for me to jump at them and go off. The reply is usually ‘oh I’m not that much of a fan, IDK’
This is all very informative. I’m learning. Hopefully at some points in the future I can make something that people like.
The stuff I’m saying here will not be true forever. I will eventually learn how to be happy about things other people like. But it hasn’t happened yet.