The Brilliant Blue Society on My Phone, of Which I Am Not A Part

I tap on the corner of my phone’s screen where there’s a little 96x96 pixel square (okay it’s probably more like a 128-sided polygon with 4 equilateral main faces at 90 degree angles to each neighboring face and corners that only appear to be smooth) and instantly I see a list of posts perfectly optimized for my brain specifically, as determined by the computer chips and their programs over at LinkedIn (the feed-building program itself likely on some cluster of nodes in an AWS data center nearby NYC, where I live). The posts I see generally fall into four categories: (1) announcement of a new job or listing for a position (wow congrats good for you, man, fuck off), (2) soulless retellings of events or conversations that absolutely did not happen in the worst, most broken prose you can possibly cook up, (3) snippet or description of a personal project or blog post that may or may not be interesting, where the author is mostly just posting it to juice their LinkedIn presence, and (4) my favorite, the jokes about software development and how the latest trend is exactly like something 20 years ago. Almost all of the people posting these things would be considered more successful than I. Do their posts give them some power that I can’t understand? As a member of the permanent underclass of lurkers, I feel like this world isn’t meant for me. We’re the silent majority that balances the books of the social media cabal via the evil of advertising, and every time I open any social media app I feel the crushing weight of comparison. Yet I still come back for more, hoping one day I can overcome some invisible barrier in myself to one day thrust myself into the class of the Creator. I could make a post. I could share my little personal project. Someone might notice me and think I’m smart. I think all of this to myself, whether consciously or not, and then I quite saliently notice that I am not interesting enough to share any of my dumb thoughts or tinkerings online. But are these people any different? What I’m trying to say, in too many words and not enough clarity, is that this world - whether this is a recent phenomenon or not I can’t say, I’ve only been around a short while - rewards visibility of mediocrity better than silence of mediocrity (that’s me) and I can’t really understand why. Does mediocrity not deserve to be shushed in favor of the transcendent, or at the very least the slightly impressive? I guess I have a different gauge for what should be on the internet and I’m only willing to share what I think should really be there. Others, not so much. There are reputations to be built simply by being visible and nothing else. I don’t get it but I can’t deny the effectiveness.