Before the internet, a single, unremarkable person with something to say would struggle their entire life to find a way to express themselves – to find an outlet for the voice, the ideas and feelings swelling up inside of them.

Now, with the internet, practically anyone can express and communicate to the entire world at whim. Truly a miracle, right?

Except no one is listening.

It’s true, the potential now is that the world, for whatever reason, could turn your obscure and rambling blog into the highlight,  read and considered by hundreds of  millions of people around the globe… but it won’t. What we have given the everyman is a Void into which he can shout to his heart’s content. Is this really an improvement from the silence he had to endure while searching for an outlet?

Right now, if I feel inspired and want to write something, I have the following avenues to publish it: Mass email from two accounts and my newsletter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Buzz, Twitter, this Blog, the other Blog I write for, the website I write/wrote articles for, my hand-written second book, my personal journal, An Idea from the Edge forum, two YouTube Channels, the forums of all the webcomics and manga I follow, and the comment sections for all the blogs I follow.

If I was any good at internet promotion, I’d belong to a dozen or more social media networking sites and forums for authors, writers, etc.

I may like to write, and I may have a lot of good… well, a lot of ideas, but there’s no possible way for me to consistently generate original content for the sheer number of outlets available to me – nor would it matter if I did, given the tiny amount of people potentially exposed to it. It is with a fair amount of shame that I acknowledge a response or new post on a popular webcomic’s forum will see many, many more views and responses than this blog post will – that, by casting my voice in with the crowd I’m actually more likely to be heard  that making my voice stand here by itself.

I’m not complaining – if I desired, I could spend my days promoting my word, getting in with more groups, driving up the number of visitors… I could work hard to make myself heard, to really stand apart and have my personal voice heard… but I do enjoy the irony of it. The work to be noticed now is the same amount of work to get noticed before the internet existed. The actions have changed – I sit here and do webstuff instead of legwork – but the work itself is the same.