In Praise of Mediocrity
I had a little epiphany: Before the internet, and before people lived in large cities, the circle of people we came into contact might be only a couple hundred people.<p>Out of two or three hundred people, it&#x27;s not hard to be in the top tenth percentile at <i>something</i>.<p>When your circle of acquaintances is the whole internet, being in the top tenth percentile of <i>anything</i> takes years of determined effort.<p>Our brains still have expectations rooted in these smaller communities: That we should be able to create something exceptional and praiseworthy for our efforts.<p>Today, it&#x27;s hard to get praise for anything we do, unless it&#x27;s from our families, or unless we do something truly world class. (Case in point: The other week someone shared some generative artwork here, and it got promptly criticized for not being &quot;gallery worthy&quot;.) In the face of that, we instinctively give up.