Personality & Self-Expression • March '24

we need more people creating just for the sake of self-expression. i love it when i discover some hidden gem of a song or artwork that two other people even know exists.

— gopher (@chadgopher) March 25, 2024

Yesterday I received a follow from a random Twitter user (feels odd to call it X within prose). What struck me about this user, at least enough to write about it, was the raw and direct presentation of their thoughts — both in writing, and in artistic expression. Their website is partially what inspired my tweet. Even though it is primarily text, it has an overwhelming sense of personality to it. More personality, I'd argue, than the majority of sites I come across nowadays. I imagine this sentiment is what led Paul Graham to write the following in his recent essay concerning Reddit:

As with all the really great startups, there's an uncannily close match between the company and the founders. Steve in particular. Reddit has a certain personality — curious, skeptical, ready to be amused — and that personality is Steve's.

Sure it's a little rough around the edges. But it stands tall amongst a sea of mundanity. Personality is not just a set of personal traits unique to the individual, but also takes shape to anything it touches if you allow yourself to be temporarily unbound by the perception of what is "normal". Normal isn't interesting. Normal is like everything else. By being a conduit of free, unadulterated self-expression, you create things that people find more interesting. At varying levels of fidelity, personality is the differentiating factor.

So go out there and make something uniquely your own. :)

P.S. Here are some other creations I recently stumbled upon which I think are also worth surfacing.