spiralofhope

People comment on old content as though its producer still holds a position. Hell, they comment as though its producer still remembers the content.

This is especially true for those who themselves don't create content. There are many differences between content creators and consumers which make them understand and react to things quite differently.

Content, to me, is a message in a bottle. It's thrown out into an ocean and may or may not reach land. If I go looking for it, perhaps I'll know where to find it. Perhaps I'll forget about it. Perhaps I'll never see it again.

What I create falls out of my memory and sometimes my understanding. It falls out so very far that I've written multiple times on the same topic because the topic still matters to me but I don't remember writing on it in the past.

Sometimes that revisiting, be it intentional or not, of a topic will highlight my growth in understanding. Sometimes it will reveal my improved writing skills. Perhaps it will show my state of mind at the point in time of its creation.

In any case, it's always my past self that creates something. Be it a day or a decade-old piece, it's always "someone else" who made that. I change so frequently and quickly that the concepts I care about will shift mid-conversation. I'm a person who can, at any moment, change their mind then and there.

I learn.

Content may itself be immortal in some sense. The archivist in me would like to think this is at least possible. However, we people are not. This is not only because we die, but because we change. We change as we learn, we change as we adapt, and we change as our tastes do. Sometimes this is on purpose, and sometimes this isn't even perceived.

Content consumers who hold a creator's heels to the coals of some past production don't understand that their bonfire is of wet, mossy, decayed wood and the feet are someone else's. They don't intuit that old content not just might not, but cannot be associated with the person from which that old creator has grown.

The only way a person can be held accountable is when it is done then-and-there. Immediately, in conversation. This is a little strange to think about in a recorded medium, but it's easy in conversation. In face-to-face conversation, any misunderstanding can be immediately corrected. Every question can be answered. Nothing has to be assumed.

In a recorded medium, holding the producer accountable in the same way is daft. Understanding it, especially through a consumer's offence, needs to be a pursuit. They need to go from their non-interactive consumption to a conversation with the content producer. That snapshot of the author's past-self needs to be fast-forwarded to the live, actual, person.

The need for real-time discussion becomes more important for anything that elicits confusion or emotion.

Perhaps the solution to encourage this would be to open a new channel every three months, and link to it from each previous one. It would be as though swimming away and throwing messages in bottles from a new desert island.

"You are x because of y thing that that username posted four years ago!"

No. Fuck off.

I have writings from years ago. For what things can I point to and say "but that's written in crayon!" ?

Last updated 2023-03-18 at 22:11:25