Things I wish I could have told myself when I was a note beginner
Don't chase numbers, chase people.
This is the phrase I saw when I decided to start sharing information in the online world. It's easy to get hung up on numbers like followers and page views, but the obvious truth is that the quality of the people watching is more important than the numbers.
Hmm, people, not numbers, right.
Drawn to these words, I decided to start posting online in the hope of meeting interesting people.
I'm going to look for interesting people with heart, not numbers!
The baptism a beginner receives
However, the online world was far too harsh for a defenseless beginner.
My first follower was like a bot posting articles mass-produced by AI. A three-line bio and two articles that looked like they were just copy-pasted from generative AI output. The second was a get-rich-quick scheme targeting beginners. From the third to the tenth or so were groups expecting mutual follows and mutual likes.
To them, I was just a number.
Naive as I was, I didn't know about likes for business purposes or follows for follow-backs. So, every time I got a notification for a like or a follow, I was happy and went to meet that 'person.' Even though there was no 'person' there when I went to meet them.
It's quite empty to see firsthand that you are being treated as just a number. After that, the disappointments continued, and I stopped expecting there to be a human on the other side of the screen. If you don't expect anything, you won't be betrayed.
When I gathered the courage, I saw the people
However, I recently learned that there really were 'people' on the other side of the screen. I timidly joined a Space on X, which I had thought was a terrifying place. Then I realized that inside those mere icons and symbols were 'people' with worries and things they wanted to achieve.
Words that I had passed by without any emotion when I thought I didn't know if they were 'people' or not, suddenly started to look brilliant.
Did they write these words with this kind of feeling?
Did they write these words with this kind of intention?
There were real people on social media too. People who had things they wanted to achieve and people who had worries. I finally realized that the purpose for which I started social media—meeting interesting people—was already beginning to happen.
Things a beginner should know.
In the online world, there are things that will give you likes, follows, and add you to magazines for business purposes
Even so, there are people who will see you as a human being
Gracefully ignore the spam that treats you like a number, and keep looking for interesting people, okay?
The end
<Reference>
Here is the free article for beginners by Rental Unemployed Slacker, who hosted the space where I gained these insights that show just how much of a beginner I was. The title sounds like an elementary school boy's, but the content is useful. It's about how to get read.
I think it's quite a loss of opportunity that many people who decide to give social media a try end up thinking, 'It's not going well,' 'It's exhausting,' or 'I guess I'm just no good at this.'
I'm hoping to reduce, even just a little, the frustration rate of people who might write interesting articles someday.
So, please let me read an interesting article of yours someday.
This is a paid article, but the continuation of the article above is here. It's still a blank page, but I'm sure it will be very useful.
Here is the article I wrote fueled by the anger that my momentous first follower was an 'AI mass-produced, heartless bot'.
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こんなところまでお読みいただきありがとうございます！
なにか心が動きましたら、チップでお知らせいただけるととってもうれしいです。