You know, you go online, you hear all sorts of things, see all sorts of terms flying around. Sometimes you idly look something up, or see something trending, and it just makes you scratch your head. Most of the time, it's just a load of nothing, or not what you were expecting at all. Just a bunch of noise, really.
Anyway, stumbling around the web like that, seeing the kind of stuff people search for or talk about, it got me on a whole different track. Not about any one specific thing, but just about the whole mess of information and, well, misinformation out there. How quick people are to jump on stuff, especially if it sounds a bit wild.
So, this got me thinking about my own little corner of the internet, if you can even call it that.
I decided to try a little experiment, a "practice" if you will. Just to see what would happen, or how it would feel.
My big "practice" was this: I decided I’d try to create one piece of online content. Just one. And the rule was it had to be totally, completely, 100% positive and just stick to the facts. No drama, no opinions, no clickbait. Sounds easy, right? Well, let me tell you.
- First, I had to pick a topic. I went for something super neutral, like, I dunno, the history of a local public park. Something nobody could possibly get riled up about. Or so I thought.
- Then, I actually spent a good couple of hours trying to find solid, verifiable sources. You'd be surprised how much junk you gotta wade through even for something simple.
- I wrote up a short piece. Kept it dry. Facts, figures, dates. Almost put myself to sleep writing it.
- The idea was to make it the opposite of all the loud, shouty stuff you usually see. Just calm and informative.
- Then I just, sort of, put it out there. Didn't blast it everywhere, just stuck it on an old blog I barely use.
And the grand result? Well, it was way harder than I thought to just be purely factual without sounding like a robot or incredibly boring. It's like we're all wired for a bit of spice, you know? And, no surprise, practically no one saw it or cared. Crickets. Because let's be honest, boring doesn't sell. Drama does. Outrage does.
It was a weirdly interesting thing to do, though. Kinda confirmed what I already suspected. So much of what we bump into online is just there to get a rise out of you, not really to tell you anything useful. It’s all a bit of a circus. People will say or search for the craziest things. You really gotta develop a good filter, or just learn to step away from it. Most of the time, if you go chasing after every weird thing you hear about, you're just gonna end up wasting your breath or clicking on stuff you wish you hadn't. Probably better to just focus on your own stuff, or find the little bits of good, quiet content out there if you can. Even if it's not setting the world on fire.
