Views are like Likes – they’re much appreciated but it doesn’t really make or break my day these days. I mean I wish I had a million subscribers around the world checking if I threw something together and leaving sweet comments and spam,
but, alas, I’m lucky to get 5 readers in a day, but I appreciate any readers I get. It was a validation thing in college. Professors and students thought I was witty, sophomoric, and a laugh riot. I effortlessly oozed slightly offensive, comedic insight. The reality is I yearned to be liked. Every laugh or compliment was validation that I was a good writer – nay, a great writer. I was a view count whore before there was such a thing, and that never really results in a healthy head space. So yeah, I get the allure of Instagram and whatever social app people live on these days, but that’s not me fam. Well, it’s 95.654% not me.
We are social creatures. There’s no way around it. Even the weirdest people want to meet like-minded individuals to drink weird things like mead (actually pretty good) and do weird things like Dungeons and Dragons (I WISH I got invited to do that stuff, but that wasn’t in my cards, and that’s OK.). This is what separates us from serial killers and people that are mean to old people and kittens. Without some kind of social validation we would be overall miserable. I mean find happiness within yourself and all that, but you cannot convince me a sincere “right on – dude…” doesn’t make you feel warm inside like bourbon on a cold night.
These days I view my view count more like “how many people did I cheer up today?” Maybe I should do something to maximize this metric since it is for the right reasons, but maybe – just maybe – that’s the ugly 4.346% of me that yearns for the days of getting “chocolate-covered midget” printed in a public newspaper and revels in the fact that I authored an entry in Urban Dictionary.
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