Image par Monsterkoi de Pixabay

I don’t have any facts for this one, and no links to any source information. This article is straight from the hip, spewed from the gut, dropped like something that just came out of the oven, but we forgot to use an oven mitt.

Why are all writers on the digital platforms today so happy? Didn’t writers used to be extremely angst-ridden and full of despair? Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I remember writers being people who were disturbed by life, by the horrors that people committed against each other?

Has the internet fixed this depression, or is it just forcing it into hiding?

Yeats, Huxley, Orwell, Hemingway, Baldwin, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Poe… just to name a few. Were any of these people content with the way things were? Were any of them writing about how to survive and live a life of leisure off of their content generation?

Of the great literary minds of the 19th and 20th centuries, how many of them were regurgitating the same mindless self-help dribble over and over in the hopes that they could create a snappy Instagram post about it, and subsequently generate some more customer leads?

Why aren’t more of these supposed “transparency-ideologue” successful writers actually talking about the real way that they make money, which is writing papers for rich college students?

I do think that it’s a wonderful thing that the digital space has allowed for so many writers to make very healthy incomes off of their fancy typing and wordsmithing, but my concern is; what are the truly brilliant minds actually doing?

If the people who are actually really excellent writers are, in fact, just turning out stimulating content in order to pay their bills and go on vacation, aren’t we missing out on the real life-altering literature?

If Fitzgerald had the internet, would he have written the Great Gatsby, or would he have been too consumed by LinkedIn? Would he have been too focused on how many followers he had to think about the dark aspects of the American Dream?

Writers used to be troubled people who took to writing because they were too disturbed to participate in what they saw to be a deeply flawed society. The result of their vision was enlightened thinking that led to progressive social advancements.

What will happen to society now that so many of these great minds are too busy turning out daily content, and thus are just another name lost in the blogosphere? How will we suffer now that they are no longer considered relevant?