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Comment by 8bitsrule | Hacker News Reader

Lots of people throughout history - with names that are well-known today - have written at length about topics for which, in their day, the audience was very small. Herodotus, for one early example. Same is true for scores of important discoveries.

The audience for complex math proofs is very small. At first. Same applies to a lot of creative works ... paintings, photos, poetry. van Gogh sold almost nothing.

A composer once asked me 'what do you care more about - how many are listening, or who is listening?"

Amazing how many blogs have shut off their feedback.

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I don't think comparing the writings of probably the most prominent figure of history writing to the platitudes (which is the 99% of 'blogs' being promoted here) generated by the average techbro grifter is the way to go with this...

2000 years ago Herodotus was talking and writing and nobody cared and his buddy was probably like, hey man remember that one guy from 300 years ago nobody knew who he was but look at him now! Everyone knows his name! And then some snarky roman was like, "I don't think comparing the great works of that guy from 300 years ago and the platitudes of this Herodotus guy is the way to go with this... " and he used the ellipsis even to indicate how little he respected this opinion to imply that he would say more but really what's the point with fools like these...

The difference being that I don't believe the digital archives of today will survive the test of time, as well as the Herodotus manuscripts.

Assuming we don't kill ourselves out of the planet, good luck to whoever will be digging hard drives 3000 years from now, and trying to understand what is stored in them, assuming the magnetic field is still readable.

https://xkcd.com/1683/

Nit: In Herodotus's times Rome was small and humble city state. The snarky Roman would need to travel far far away from where people spoke Latin to be able to talk to Herodotus (in Greek!) although they both lived on Iberian peninsula.

I think it was a snarky Spartan.

Most blogs will die in the abyss when server storage payments are no longer paid due to death.

Physical publications have a chance at existence though

Physical publications are routinely burned on schedule even by libraries. You can be sure of one thing is that almost nothing will remain from what we have 100 years from now

There's the Internet Archive.

I've put my trust in the British Library Web Archive bl.uk/collection-guides/uk-web-archive

I feel like it's a weird question that really wants you to say who but the situations where it's actually better is vanishingly small. If you want to be a professional musician you're way better off having a large fanbase making music snobs turn their noses up to then be a brilliant composer with 1000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Van Gogh realized none of the spoils of his work. I couldn't care less if I'm famous or influential after I'm dead, I only get these 80 years or so. Being the influential underground artist that inspired the people who got famous is an empty victory.

Even for something as simple as a blog having a large following is exposure. You have a better chance of finding quality discussion given more eyeballs.

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