Cloud Mice Conundrums
Internet has broken all barriers; leveled the playing field between the haves and have-nots; democratized access; the 6 degree of separation isn’t true anymore — it’s just one-degree. And so on. These are common wisdom. Peddled by the high and mighty. And broadly true.
Except when it isn’t.
No, I am not getting into the digital-divide and any of those Zoomeoisie arguments (as true as they are). That is a different topic altogether. Even for someone who is in the right side of the digital divide; is not a have-not; is in the one-degree of separation from the high and mighty (in social networks), it is all not easy.
Why do I say this?
Let us say there is someone who is truly, really, genuinely, add-other-adjectives-adverbs-etc. good at something. When there is an ultra-objective measure of goodness, they would be right at the top of the list. For simplicity, let us even take a case where the skill they are good-at is in the realm of bits or transferrable to the realm of bits. Or in other words, it is not in the realm of atoms. Examples: movie-making, story-telling, singing, photography, writing, art (as in drawing) etc. For further simplicity, let us assume the person is you.
Let us walk through how you would announce to the world about your work and how you would be discovered by the high and mighty. There is no doubt that it is easy for you to set up a website, use one of the various services (say YouTube, SoundCloud, Medium, Instagram, LinkedIn, Behance, whatever else niche it is) to publish/upload your work. And no doubt it is now easy for you to identify who are the high and mighty whose attention you need to be discovered by the world. You just need to be in a service like Twitter, Instagram, or just google the high and mighty’s personal sites. (Let us assume you want to be discovered and not one who does art for the sake of art, personal satisfaction blah, which I think is mostly BS).
Next step is easy: You have uploaded your work, you now reach out to them and given you are truly, really, genuinely, add-other-adjectives-adverbs-etc. good at your work, it immediately catches their attention, you get discovered and achieve world-fame.
Right? Or do you agree with me it is not that easy?
Why isn’t it easy even with the broken barriers?
Because of the signal-noise ratio. Just as the truly, really, genuinely, add-other-adjectives-adverbs-etc. good person (you) has all the barriers broken, so is the case with all mediocre people (example) and worse even charlatans. The overwhelming amount of noise created by these people makes the high and mighty wary of anyone reaching out to them. They wouldn’t want to spend their time in parsing everything that comes their way to find an occasional signal, unless their success depends on that.
Like everyone else, experts do things when it matters to them. They will intently listen to all noise that comes their way if and only if matters to them. Else, they will only pick it at random. They are humans too. And humans haven’t changed in a million years. Just because you think Internet has broken barriers, why should they change. And also: Internet is not the first one to break barriers. The same would have happened earlier with printing presses, newspapers; and other mass media. Unfortunately, every time, they made it easy for the mediocre and the charlatans too.
So what should one do?
The first thing is: Don’t be a charlatan. Next: It is tricky to decide if you are mediocre or truly, really, genuinely, add-other-adjectives-adverbs-etc. good. Depending on your personality, choose one. If you choose the latter, beyond being good at your skill, learn at least one more skill — To be persuasive and attract the attention of the high and mighty. If you suffer from an imposter syndrome; you think it may annoy the high and mighty by constantly trying to attract their attention; or worse, assume it is the world’s responsibility to come find you, sorry, you are not suited. Your gene pool will be eliminated by natural selection over time. Part of being persuasive is being shameless.
Throughout history, whenever some barriers were broken, the need for these skills would have increased. With Internet breaking all known barriers, the need for this is probably at its highest. And beyond these: You need the core traits like grit/determination. Old-buddy luck will play a role too — Factor him too.
To be an effective cloud mouse, this might be an important thing to teach our kids.
