miso

As I was drinking coffee this morning I headed to read.write.as to read and get inspired. I opened one post from inquiry and got very surprised to see that I've been quoted there. It's great to see people actually ready and comment on what happens.

But simple attention arithmetic suggests everyone constantly writing means they have proportionally less time for reading.

I'd tend to agree with you. However I think a lot of people simply read and never write. And that's probably for a reason: in order to engage with something it takes effort. Someone needs to formulate their thoughts, put it down, send it. It's not easy. I guess that's why there are a lot of one-click like systems (such as claps on medium). It shows engagement, but i'm not sure how meaningful it is.

So anyway, as I saw I was mentioned I realized that 1) it's very cool and 2) there's 99% chances I could've missed that if I didn't happen to read that particular post at that particular time. Now, I'm very new to even the concept of blog federation (fediverse, mastodon?), but do these systems allow you to know you've been mentioned so that you can keep an engaging discussion going?

And maybe I don't need to know that information. Perhaps it's part of the beauty of it: if you happen to read something you are interested in you can comment on it by writing a post. If the stars align the original author can see it too, but otherwise that's fine.