Hiveminds
2025-12-29
A fear that I have with writing these entries, especially at this frequency, is that I circle the same few topics over and over again and that I lack the ability to say anything unique with each entry. To me, this fear stems from much of the writing that I see online. Many writers today seem able to maintain uniqueness with each piece, which I first attributed to an overflowing stream of ideas. However, I thought about it further and realized that it's something even more bland and sinister.
The hivemind.
I remember the earlier days of the fabled website Reddit dot com, particularly around 2012-2014. One concept that got brought up across multiple subreddits was that of the Redditor hivemind. Around 2014, I realized that this hivemind was only going to get worse, and so I stopped browsing Reddit and social media completely. It was a great decision, despite the fact that I reversed it in 2016 once I made a new Facebook profile after starting college. Thankfully, however, I made the decision again to get off of social media in 2023. My mind has been much clearer ever since.
Still, I can find it a bit difficult to come up with something new and original to write about, especially since I try to publish something every day. With other writers, I realized that they felt more novel because they ripped from someone else. Is it the Volksgeist ebbing and flowing through the proverbial vibe-o-sphere? No, it's just people ripping each other off ad nauseam until the Sun explodes, apparently.
Of course, it makes sense to be inspired by certain works and pull certain pieces of them for inspiration. Unfortunately what we see instead is full-blown unadulterated and culturally revered plagiarism. People not only read the same stories and hear the same few opinions over and over again, but enjoy this process and actively participate in it every single day. When I realized this, I understood that my practice here is even more important.
Even when I do circulate certain ideas or repeat certain things, that is actually a good thing.
I don't think I've seen a publication that really sits with a certain idea. They don't chew on it or view it from other angles. They don't try to see what's wrong with it or how it could be made better. Instead, a single shot fires, sparks fly, and the idea fades away into obscurity so that the next shots can be fired. People would rather dart to and from different interests and extremes instead of sit with one and watch it grow.
Regarding ideas, we have let the flower take precedence over the gardener.
A major part of this has to do with a greater sense of immediacy. Information gets zapped into our heads repeatedly in nice little packages. We think about it only as we absorb it, and seldom a second after. People today feel that if they are not engrossed in information, they are falling behind. My contention, however, is that we need to spend more time thinking on our own. It's one thing to absorb information, but it's a whole other thing to synthesize it.
I hope that with this style of writing practice, people can come to see the importance of this kind of work. My intention isn't to have a large audience sitting at the tap ready to soak in my words every single day (that would be a big ego boost if I'm being honest, though), but to empower others to do the same thing, privately or publicly. I've seen other mediums that encourage this kind of thinking. I can harp on tools like Obsidian or Notion, but the intentions behind them are good. Still though, it would probably be better if more people used physical journals or text editors like Vim or Emacs.
Fuck discourse.
Fuck the hivemind.
Think alone. Think out loud. Think for yourself.