Thank you

So Medium’s RSS feeds are weird, and when you subscribe to an author, you inadvertently subscribe to all of their Medium activity… both the articles they write and comments they leave on other articles.

I don’t know why anyone would want to read somebody’s one-off comments, removed from the only context where they make sense.

Of course, I didn’t realize it worked like this, so here I was, subscribed to a bunch of feeds full of random comments. 😑

But, before I got around to unsubscribing to all of them, I noticed something weird about Seth Godin’s feed. It was just comment after comment, of him thanking people for writing things he enjoyed reading.

Wait a minute.

You mean to tell me that the businessman, educator, and New York Times best-selling author of 18 books, who pulls in 6-figure speaking engagements, has the time and energy to comment on the internet posts of randos just to say “thanks”? What does he know that I don’t? (besides, well, a lot of things)

I did some thinking and I asked myself this: how would it make me feel if suddenly he commented on one of my posts? How would that change the story I tell myself, about my ability to impact people?

Every article you read, every Youtube video you watch, every photo you see, and every app you use, was created by a real person, with feelings, ambitions, insecurities, and self-doubt. People with families, bad hair days, and health problems. People who aren’t sure if they can make an impact but they’re out there trying.

And the neat thing about the internet these days is that almost everyone doing creative work is reachable on it.

So whenever you watch something cool, read something moving, or hear a beautiful song, just go online, find the creator, and say “thank you.”

What would the world be like if everyone did that?