I'm sort of more interested in the effect this has mentally on people. Not from a FOMO point of view but from a "what is my place in the world" point of view.
If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are?
I'm 50 and sufficiently old / mature to be able to cope with this but even so, when I do a search for "linocut" (one of my hobbies) and see 82,000 results (just on Etsy) - and they're all really good and incredibly cheap... this dents something in me.
As I say, I'm realistic enough to know I'm not the world's best artist and I'm not trying to make a living out of it - it's also great, and useful, to see other people's work...but it's also somehow galling as well, in a way that's quite hard to define.
It's a bit like Douglas Adams' infinity - it isn't infinity but it feels sufficiently big to make one teeter a bit and wonder at one's place in the universe...
If you're an artist or a musician or a developer or, well anything really, what does it mean to be able to go online and are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are far better at a thing than you are?
I'm 50 and sufficiently old / mature to be able to cope with this but even so, when I do a search for "linocut" (one of my hobbies) and see 82,000 results (just on Etsy) - and they're all really good and incredibly cheap... this dents something in me.
As I say, I'm realistic enough to know I'm not the world's best artist and I'm not trying to make a living out of it - it's also great, and useful, to see other people's work...but it's also somehow galling as well, in a way that's quite hard to define.
It's a bit like Douglas Adams' infinity - it isn't infinity but it feels sufficiently big to make one teeter a bit and wonder at one's place in the universe...