I cleaned out my wallet a short time ago. I don't keep much outside of the essentials in it, but tucked inside a folded dollar bill (without serial numbers, but that is another story) was the following scrap of paper:
This was a snippet of text from my college newspaper that I must have been carrying around for the last 20 years. I remember cutting this out, but don't remember much else about the article it came from. When I was in college, the internet was still in diapers and I'm pretty sure the college newspaper was only printed in hard copy. Distributed around campus, it was always interesting to see what was printed and the group of us read it pretty religiously.
Likely, the rest of the article is forever lost to the ether. I did a few searches online with increasing specificity without any luck. Hopefully the author might clairvoyantly feel a little pride that I've carried this around and found it, but it is possible, even likely that he or she doesn't even remember writing and publishing this. The author could possibly be happily married.
My views on the subject of the snippet may or may not have changed over the years, but that is not the intent. I expect that much like that article, most of what is written is read and forgotten or never read, much like this blog.
Most writing is some form of literary masturbation. Done by the author and for the author. Even if read, is likely mentally and physically discarded.
I will occasionally browse blogs. There are a lot of talented people out there with something to say. There are also a lot of apparently abandoned blogs out there. The Library of Congress recently took everything in Twitter and archived it, possibly in perpetuity. That is a lot of chaff to hold the wheat. There are a lot of people out there who say something because they can.
"Just when you think you've graduated from the school of experience, someone thinks up a new course." -Mary Waldrip
There was an article posted recently summarizing some research that basically said we think history ends now. That we've reached a point where we realize we've changed in the past, but will not change in the future. This is borderline terrifying and probably a good reason to never write anything down, or save anything.
“I gave up writing when I was ten, too dangerous.” “Only if someone reads what you write and so far we haven’t had that problem.” Bill/Hank from the movie Naked Lunch
Maybe some day someone will be searching for a specific article in their college newspaper and now that text will be found by an increasingly specific internet search.
Unfortunately, all that will be found will be the wrong literary masturbation.
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