Mastodon

If Fact They Just Don't Care, and That's Kinda Comforting

Posted by Matt Birchler
— 1 min read

Greg Morris, who I may as well make a co-author of my site, I link to him all the time:

Our brains are made for < 150 person groups of gatherers, not thousands of people online so it's important to remember that there is no need to worry about what others think, because in actual fact they don't care.

The realization that most people don't think about you or care about what you do nearly as much as you think they do, is an oddly calming realization for me. I think like most young people, I thought everyone was thinking about what I did and noticed when I did things both good and bad. As I got older of course, I came to realization that most people do, that outside of a small number of people I'm very close with, no one is spending much time thinking about the details of how I live my life.

Of course there are exceptions. My wife, for example, cares a lot about even the smallest things I do. Sometimes those are great things, most are neutral and some drive her crazy. But even my wife doesn't read this blog or watch my YouTube videos. Frankly, I wouldn't expect her to either!

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who have never seen  me before, they find one of my posts/videos/tweets/whatever and say something really mean about it or me; this is the opposite of my relationship with my wife. My instinct is to obsess over these negative comments, but in actual fact, the person who left that comment probably stopped thinking about me a few seconds after they left it.

There are of course people in the world where people do think about them…a lot. State leaders, company executives, religious leaders, celebrities…but they are a tiny minority who don't conform to this rule (or many other rules for that matter).

What I do know is that in general you should do what makes you happy, especially when it comes to creative endeavors. There are lines, of course, but in general I think it's good advice to do what makes you happy because most people don't really care. That may depress you, but it liberated me.