One thing this does is gives a false view of success. Most of what people share is what they want you to see. Skills are advertised, flaws are hidden. Wins are exaggerated, losses are downplayed. Doubt and anxiety are rarely shared on social media. Defeated soldiers and failed CEOs rarely sit for interviews.

Media sites like Reddit, Twitter, and HackerNews are entropic, optimized for novelty, and “random”: the user is pulled into several different directions that limit their ability to progress at any one thing

We are so focused on evaluating our social networks and broadcast platforms from a distribution perspective that we often forget to analyze the other side of the two-sided content marketplace: creation. But our current internet culture is as much driven by frictionless distribution as it is by frictionless creation.