2019-08-27 - Message in a bottle 
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Pff, today another hot day, very late in summer. I like it when 
it's colder obviously. Now i'm even sweating when sitting down only 
in some underpants... So far for describing a picture on how i'm 
sitting here writing this.

Ah well, it doesn't matter, as hardly anyone will read this anyway 
i think. And that's quite alright with me. In the end these little 
postings are just some silly ideas by some anonymous dude on the 
internet.

In a way i like to think of these posts as messages in a bottle, 
thrown into the grand noisy ocean of the internet. They might end 
up not even being read, but i suppose i just enjoy the process of 
tossing these bottles in the ocean.

I'm not exactly sure why i do this though, as i could just as well 
have stored these text files only on my own computer and lived 
happily ever after... Somehow some part of me perhaps wants to say 
"Hey there world, i existed somewhere at some time, and i silly 
thoughts about things". And somehow places like these (gopherspace) 
feel much more suitable to do that, rather than on social media or 
some fancy wordpress blog or so.

Now as i'm wondering why this works better for me than social 
media, i think the difference is in the expectation. Over here i do 
not have any expectations about anything happening. This is just a 
small textfile drifting around in a subfolder on some server, and 
somebody might find it and read it... And that's cool. Or it might 
never be found, and it ends up just drifting nowhere. And that's 
fine too.

Also i don't think readers of these gopherholes have any 
expectations. They just like to stumble upon random bottles 
drifting around, and are happy to read the little messages inside. 
If the content is good, it is an extra bonus. But if the content is 
poorly done (hi there!) all would be fine too. So the absence of 
expectations is mutual. 

Unlike social media of course, where people expect instantaneous 
feedback from peers; "Look at me, i made a sandwich, here's a 
picture" -> LIKE, LIKE, LIKE.

I've once spent half a day on twitter, and found very quickly that 
i was starting to "try" being funny and witty by making clever 
comments in order to get likes or other feedback.

That was also the moment for me to delete that whole thing (and 
swear to myself not to do that again :P ever...)

So instead, i prefer to hide in obscurity and write things in this 
way. And knowing that there might be a very small chance somebody 
some day might find my message in a bottle is a nice motivation to 
keep writing messages and keep throwing them in the sea.

             
      ___     /''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' \ 
    [    \   |       If you liked this message,      |
   c  o  o|  |    SUBSCRIBE to my bottled messages   |
    | __p|   |  write your name onto the empty bottle|
    | \_//  /|     and throw it back into the sea*   |
 __ |`-/.__   \______________________________________/ 
/          \   

               * Use a permanent marker :)