What does it mean to exist online

So, what is this first blog from me about? I do not know, I am writing this sentence only with a rough outline of what it will be, but during writing it might change. Everything here might get deleted once I reach the end of this blog, wherever that may be you will know more about this blog reading it, than I do right now, writing it. Should I have used an em-dash there? Not sure, I did not know what it was until AIs started using it, despite reading a lot. I will learn about the correct use of em-dashes if I keep this blog up. No promises though, I am not known for keeping up when I try new stuff.

As you might have noticed by now, this blog is quite chaotic. That is because as of right now this is very much a stream of consciousness. What you are reading now is exactly what is popping up in my head while I am writing. Just making slight changes here and there because reading my thought show just how incoherent they are and grammatically all over the place. I really hope this will be somewhat of an enjoyable read I am sure I will get to the point I am making soon. This is what you get for not planning something. I tend to not plan things. I do have to say I find it very difficult to not just delete everything and start over after making a clear draft about the topic I wanted to write about, because reading what I have written so far makes me think this is basically the same thing some teenage angst movies have in their intro's. You know the ones, where the inner monologue of the main character is used to narrate what you see happening on the screen.

Oh well, My intention was to see what happens when you step over your fear of putting yourself out there on the internet so all the internet people can see and say something about you. Which feels very weird to me. Having people I will likely never meet walking around with a opinion about me based on a thing I published to the internet. Those are the kind of thoughts that kept me from posting anything, even tweets always felt like too much. When I was a teenager I never really thought much about my Facebook posts and even tweets during the early days of Twitter.

One evening during dinner, one of my housemates found my Twitter account and started reading some of my Tweets. As one would expect the Tweets of an 11 year old are not that profound and my complains about teachers and other schools stuff provided good comedy during dinner. By then I had honestly completely forgotten that I even ever posted anything on Twitter, I think little me just saw it as a place to vent without consequences. I believe I did end up deleting the account soon after that evening, but also fairly quickly made a new one. I figured that now that I am older I might have something interesting to say every now and then. Looking back now, that did not happen often. The account is also deleted now, so I can not go back to check and also I have no desire to go to that website anymore, but I am pretty sure that in the 8 years I had that account my amount of posts were quite low with most just being reactions to certain events but never an opinion about something. Always figured that no one would be interested, so why would I share. I did react to people who shared opinions I agreed or disagreed with. A big part of me thought that I never had anything to share that was worthwhile for others to read. Most the subjects I know more than the average person about already have enough people posting information about, so I never thought that adding my perspective to it made sense or was needed.

Which is sad because if anyone came to me to ask if they should start posting about a topic they know things about or are interested in I would encourage that and if they are reluctant, I would tell them that a new perspective and voice is always something that is needed. Your unique voice and perspective might just be the way to get a new group of people to get interested in that topic because they like the way you talk about things.

Sadly that argument was never enough for me to start doing it myself. I have always been a very active consumer on the internet and quite active in a number of online communities. From popular and less popular creators. Being active in those communities I often wondered about what would happen if I would just start putting myself out there in one way or another. I did enjoy participating in discussions. Some discussions made me think that sometimes I do have something to say that might at least be interesting.

Finding the 'right' medium has taken a lot of time too. Making videos sounds appealing but I dislike YouTube for reasons I might write about. Streaming on Twitch is something I have done for a little while and I had fun doing it. I mostly streamed game development. The reason I started doing that was because I was quite active in the game development Twitch community for a few years. Being part of that community includes some of my favorite moments and memories I have being online. I can see myself going back to streaming some point in the future but not on Twitch, a platform I dislike for similar reasons I dislike YouTube.

So, that brings me here, writing a blog on a ATProtocol website. I have decided to give blogging a try in combination with building a personal website. There are many reasons behind this decision, a big one being that I am intrigued by the ATProtocol that connects so many interesting websites and platforms like this one. I have my own ideas for websites I want to develop that use ATProto. If I end up not deleting this blog and continue writing I might just write about one or more of my ideas, I have started developing one of them. Only thing about that one that I will say for now is that it is a game.

This might be the best moment to mention what you can expect to see from me if I get the blogging bug. Ideas for blogs bouncing around in my head include EU Technology - Tech independence, Game Development, Gaming, Books, EU politics and random thoughts I want to share for some reason. I have a lot of thoughts about AI that at some point I want to make a coherent blog about so expect that one to appear hopefully sometime this year.

As a kid I did enjoy being on stage, so I think there is a part of me that likes getting attention. So I hope that will help me learn to enjoy this. But maybe it will make to compare the attention I get to the attention others get in which case it will make me not enjoy it. We will see. if you are still reading, I am impressed, this blog feels very random to me so I can not imagine what a complete stranger would think of it. But in any case, thank you for reading.

I managed to finally put some of my thoughts on a webpage instead of only in one of my many many notebooks. I have to say regardless of what happens once I press that green button, it does feel good to finally have done this.

HELLO, HERE I AM, now I will press the publish button. Crazy.

Enjoy what is left of your day!