I've spent way too much time with RP. I'm one of those guys who loves to get in-depth on a subject. Of all the subjects out there, this is one of the few that pays dividends to my life in so many ways. Sexlife got better, career got better, life got easier to manage ... I was maybe 50% of the way before, but now it's 80% and climbing. I think I owe a lot of it to some of the early guys, Roissy especially. The thing I liked about old Roissy is he wasn't writing to the audience, he was writing to himself.

Every one of his posts read like Dear Diary: whamen frustrate the fuck out of me so I gave less fucks and now they aren't so bad. He laughed at idiots and enjoyed himself. He also hated mudsharking and Democrats, but hey, everyones gotta move onto bigger and better ideals at some point! I like that; not the mudsharking hate but the other thing. It's almost a disdain for the audience, as if they are interrupting his personal quest for greatness.

Everyone who does any amount of blogging, field reporting, or otherwise adds a penny to this worldwide "take a penny leave a penny" jar eventually finds themselves in front of an audience. out of every 100% of people in that audience, 1% of them will share, like, upvote or whatever. Of those, 1% will actually comment on something, and of those 90% of them are angry and hateful and possibly stupid but definitely holding a chip on their shoulder about something that has nothing to do with the author. There was even an old reddit post a few years back where someone did a research paper on this phenomenon. If anyone can remember where to find it and link it that would be great.

Back to the point.

Most of an audience you will never see, barely cares, and may or may not take value from anything here, and that's cool. Not everyone can be a producer all the time for all things. the ones who do contribute are mostly angry people with stupid ideas and a bone to pick or just so bored that pissing people off is the only pastime they have at work. It's also possible your article or field report was garbage. You'll never know because people will lose their mind on shit and Shinola equally.

I don't write for them.

I don't like them and they won't contribute anything of value. I spent a lifetime to get away from shit-tier people and the internet opened up the back door and let them all back in. They shit up everywhere they go and everything they touch turns to autism and it's impossible to kick them all out. There's too many and desperging a space is a full time job which Reddit does not pay well enough to do. Facebook does, but people are in therapy from desperging that place and it takes a huge mental toll.

I figure I'm not perfect at the invisible audience. I often engage people that waste time more than I should. Every day I do it less, and eventually I'll say 'never.' Doing it less is good. It clears up a lot of time for me to write and contribute to a space that I used to be that passive listener to, that 99% guy. When I do dip a toe into the tism, I make efforts to use it as a chance to articulate a thought or experience I've had or learned, not as a real dialogue with some kid or bitter ex wife.

It's taking the lemons of autism and female outrage and making them into lemonade.

I guess if I had to sum this up with a singular, pithy point I would say this: I'm here for me, not them. I'm lucky in that there's other guys who are also here for themselves and not me. And by sharing the same headspace with these guys it makes me more buoyant in the sea of tism; like flotsam. Floating around fixing whatever thing needs fixing. I wonder how it feels if some dudes come to the realization that they exist in a space because of a +1 on a social media page looks cooler. I suppose they don't think about it, which explains the tism.