I've come to think something is deeply wrong with the assumption that digital participation must mean audience acquisition. Whenever people talk about leaving platforms, the immediate rebuttal is "discoverability" or "reach" as if it's self-evident that pursuing an audience is inherently good. It's rarely defended; it's just presumed.
This is often smuggled in under the language of "network effects," as though the relationship were mutual. But "audience" is fundamentally one-directional. It turns participation into performance.
I think a lot of internet nostalgia is really grief for a time when you could participate without being on stage. Sure, you wanted lots of people to read your blog, but we did have an era when posting didn't implicitly ask: how big is your following, how well did this travel, did it work.
Today, the "successful" participants (the successful audience-builders) are called "creators", while everyone else (who is also creating, just without large-scale traction) is categorized as lesser or invisible. You can write a blog post, a tweet, a Reddit thread; you have undeniably created something. Yet without an audience, you haven't achieved the status that now defines digital legitimacy.
What I miss is a participation model that didn't say: audience or perish.
