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You’re Not Allowed To Read This.

An exercise in screaming into the void.

By Conor MatthewsPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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You’re Not Allowed To Read This.
Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash

Hey! You better not be reading this. If you’re reading this, you better stop. This isn’t for you. It’s a piece expressing the feeling of existential futility people feel when making anything, too consumed by the self-awareness that statistically voicing anything is ultimately meaningless. So if you’re reading this, stop it! You’re giving it meaning and that’s just rude.

Okay, if you’re reading this part then you basically didn’t listen to what I just said. I’m serious; stop reading. The point of this article is that it’s intentionally not for anyone. It’s to highlight one of the most common issues that stunts creativity and expression; apathy.

We’re thought vicariously that things are not worth doing unless there is an obvious and immediate reward. Don’t bother trying to get into a job unless it pays well. Don’t learn a skill unless you can master it quickly and monetise it. Your time is so valuable that you need to constantly be gaining a return on the investment.

In other words, don’t scream into the void.

By James Lee on Unsplash

You’ve heard of the expression; the feeling that an action is so pointless and goes unnoticed that you might as well be screaming into the nothingness of space. The only reason this feeling occurs is because of the intention we’ve placed on the action; for this to be worth something to me, it must be worth something to others. Setting intention and expectations upon our actions can make all the difference between just accepting failure and trying again later and ruminating over the proverbial crickets.

That’s what this experiment is; purposefully writing an article that no one will read to get over the stifling fear that no one cares. But in order for that to happen, I need no one to read this. So if you’re reading this I just want you to know that you’re being very rude right now, so stop it!

Alright… I’m assuming no one is reading this.

Hello?

…Okay, so far so good.

In a way, this is kind of funny isn’t it (no one better have just agreed with me there). It’s funny because we’re more like to hear about the opposite; the fear of being seen, of speaking in public, of being the laughingstock. In a way the two are opposite sides of the same coin. Where fear of attention comes from believing we have done something to lower our standing with others, fear of apathy comes from believing we have wasted our time. Both cases have the same result; I have done something to disadvantage me. Either way, we believe we’ve done something wrong, something avoidable, and if only we decided to avoid it, we could be in a better position.

I’ve noticed this idea a lot lately in life. You’ve most likely heard it in the context of businesses, expressed as “loss”. You may have heard online movie piracy discussed in terms of X amount of dollars loss. The problem with this fallacy is it assumes, with no evidence, that had the option of piracy not existed that this would translate into sales, ignoring the other possible actions that could be taken (simply never watching a movie, borrowing a friend’s copy, watching the movie through streaming or broadcast). Essentially, it’s “the grass is greener on the other side” personified. No matter how much I’ve tried looking online, I can’t find a name for this fallacy (and unfortunately I can’t ask you, nonexistent person, for suggestions), so screw it, it’s my honour to give this fallacy a name; The Losses Fallacy.

By Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

The age of the internet seems like the perfect breathing ground for the Losses Fallacy. Coupled with FOMO (fear of missing out), it’s easy to feel like we are all self-sabotaging maniacs, bumbling through life, miraculously beating the odds to make every wrong choice after another. It’s amazing to think that so many people are now online that people can build their entire careers off a dedicated following and still be completely unknown.

There are people half your age with thousands more followers than your favourite singer or actor. We hear all the time about people who, through talent, marketing, drive, and/or dumb luck, become the latest viral star. It’s easy to confuse the number of success stories as being indicative over percentage of the internet that are successful. Humans still have brains that can only really process around 150 meaningful connections; the size of the tribes and villages we lived in for most of our existence. If I asked you to name 150 people, even if you didn’t know them personally, most of those names would be people of note. Even though you don’t know them, the fact you know of them and you know the value they command tricks your brain into thinking that you have to be somewhat on their level lest you’re of lower value. So when you see online swamped with people getting reactions, likes, views, mentions, and so on, but you don’t, you can feel like you’ve done something wrong, like the silence is proof not only that what you did wasn’t of value but that it also wasted your time.

Ironically, the truth is the opposite. The internet isn’t a void. The internet is jam packed with muffling and overlapping everythings and anythings. You’re not screaming into a void. You’re screaming into a very fluffy attention seeking pillow. The Losses Fallacy tricks you into thinking that had you only done something slightly different, or just not done it at all, you’d be in a better place by now. Chances are no. You are seeing what you don’t have, seeing what you did, and assuming that they are somehow connected. You’re not seeing the millions of different ways you’d still not get what you want, not the people who are doing all the things you didn’t and still didn’t get what they wanted either.

So, what do you do?

By James Lee on Unsplash

Well, since nobody is supposed to be reading this (I swear to God, I will be so mad if I find out people read this), I guess no one will mind if I give a slightly cop out answer.

If you’re going to scream into the void, then at least roar.

Accept that no one cares. Accept that no one will know. Accept that you are alone and do it anyway. Acting without intention is the purest form of living, as it’s the one time you are doing what you want to do, when you want to, how you want to. That is not to say that intention is a corrupting force of authenticity. It’s important to be able to turn on and off actions, both for life but also our survival at times. What is the issue, however, is when the intention becomes the action.

If you’re a singer, sure you can sing a song and hope you go viral. Maybe you can even help a little by sharing the video or editing it in a pleasing way. But what you can’t do is sing through intention, through second guessing, or through catering. You can try, you may even get lucky, but now you’re not singing. In the pursuit of covering all bases you’ve failed to even have a base yourself.

So to get over this, I’ve written this; my first article where the aim is to get 0 reads and 0 comments. I’m not trying to be ironic or self-deprecating. If you’ve read this far, you’re a dick and I did ask you to stop. Nevertheless, this is an article for no one but myself. I hoped nobody enjoyed.

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About the Creator

Conor Matthews

Writer. Opinions are my own. https://ko-fi.com/conormatthews

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