These days following a person means something else then what it used to mean. In the past following a person would be like walking behind a person. You would go where that person would go.
But now following a person is more like asking that he would send a holiday card when he goes on a holy day. You actually don’t follow that person. You ask that the person would share things with you. It’s more like a subscription. The person keeps you up to date. He/she needed to do something so that you could get the information.
People on the internet see ‘following’ as an act of expressing that you want to be updated. Yet, I found it weird when I wanted to say “I’m going to follow you from now on” to a person. It felt like I was going to stalk him.
There are two types of following:
You do the act of searching what the other person does.
The platform, where you follow the other person, does the act of sharing the information with you. (or also includes you in the distribution of information)
In normal proportions, the first is not bad. It’s like you are doing research or gossiping. In extreme proportions, it’s more like stalking or doing some weird kind of research. The targeted person is unaffected or even unaware of your actions. Unless you go to far and then you are in trouble. (depending on how far you went)
The second never feels weird. Even if the person doesn’t do anything, it isn’t weird that someone is following them. How many Medium accounts that post nothing have followers?
It is also not possible to go too far in following someone if you read every post and reply to every comment. Then you are a very active user with too much time on your hands. It’s also not weird to be followed by a 1000 people. On Medium you are actually doing pretty well if you are being followed by so many people.
Can you imagine that you are being followed by 1000 people in real life? When you go to the supermarket, 1000 people want to know what you are doing there. It’s such a weird concept to follow someone because they might post something of interest. Yet, everyone thinks nothing of it. Medium does it, Twitter does it, Instagram does it. No problem.
Until you have to explain it to someone that doesn’t use the internet. What are you going to tell that person? It’s like following the library when a new book is added, I get a copy from it. The first thing that person will ask you why you want something to be delivered to you if you don’t know yet, that it will be something that you want. You would then say, that it probably will be something good, as that library has a lot of books that you like — So it would be normal that the next books would also be something that you want. (Replace the ‘library’ with ‘person’ and ‘book’ with ‘Medium’ post to get where I’m going with it).
Why not just go to the library if you want some books? Why wait until new books are added? It’s simple. It’s all about the update loop. The latest information is better than the old information. Why? No reason.
I wonder why Medium has a front page. Wouldn’t google be enough to give you what you want? Why does Medium need to show you some random post that may or may not interest you, based on your reading history? Does the library do that? (Shops do that, but they make money when you buy something. So what do you think Medium is selling you?)
People these days are just putting information into their brains for the sake of putting information into their brains. They feel it will help them somehow. But tell me, what was the title of the post that you read 3 articles ago? What was it about? Do you remember? It mustn’t be all that important if you forgot that easily. Do you remember how many articles you have read in the past week?
Why do you read all those articles? Do you do something with that information? Or is it just for entertainment with some chance of education? I think that reading a good book about the subject would have given you much more lasting information.
These following things and the internet update loop is just a weird way of gossiping. But this time you are not talking to each other. One person does the talking and the other does the sharing. It’s like every person became a personalized newscaster. You get defined by the news you share or make.
Like I just did. Wasn’t this a nice conversation? I talked for 5 minutes and you could only listen to me, or leave this post. No possibility of giving me feedback until the end.
The funny thing is. If you agree with me, then I just wasted 5 minutes of your time. This post is exactly the kind of posts I’m bashing on. If you don’t agree with me, then I still wasted 5 minutes of your time. Because this post hasn’t got anything of substance in it as I actually didn’t prove anything. This is just gossip that I delivered to you with a bow.
This article is just for entertainment with some chance of education
Sorry for wasting your time. But everyone seems to do it, so I tried it to.
