Some people produce a lot of writing, but not because they have anything they urgently need to say. It feels more like they are completing an assignment. Publish something today to prove they have not disappeared. Post again tomorrow to show they are still active. Whether there is actually a thought behind it stops mattering. That is the absurd part.
When someone genuinely has something on their mind, the first feeling usually is not, “I should write and publish an article.” It is something more primitive than that. Something that happened yesterday still annoys them. Something from last week keeps puzzling them. An argument from a month ago still feels unresolved. A strange moment from a trip last year suddenly seems worth recording. Writing comes afterward, pushed into existence by emotion, friction, memory, or obsession.
Now that order often gets reversed.
People decide first that they need to write a post. Only after that do they start hunting for a topic that can barely sustain a few paragraphs. The result carries the heavy smell of obligation, like a school essay written to satisfy a prompt. And there is something even worse than a prompted essay: the kind of fill-in-the-blank writing that comes from ready-made questionnaires and self-reflection templates.
The biggest problem with this kind of text is not that it is shallow. It is that it is fake.
On the surface, everything seems to be there: a tidy structure, decent phrasing, the proper attitude, maybe even a calculated little flourish meant to look clever. Yet after reading it, something feels off. What feels off is simple: the author did not want to say something; the author wanted to post something. The first comes from the urge to express. The second comes from the urge to perform. Those are not remotely the same.
When a person writes because they need to say something, not writing it feels like a bone stuck in the throat. It has to come out. You may disagree with the argument, but you can still feel that the piece is alive. It carries the limits and prejudices of an actual human being.
When a person writes because they need to publish, the pressure usually comes from elsewhere. If they do not post, they worry they will seem absent, out of step, forgettable. It may be hard to point to anything specifically wrong in such writing. Sometimes there is not even a real opinion there to argue with. But it is just as hard to explain why it needed to exist at all. Of course, some people write mainly for themselves, and outsiders do not need to judge that too harshly.
Writing is a journey of self-contradiction. I write my life, and I write my own obituary. My words are not here to obey your preferences, but to remind you that we are flesh-and-blood human beings.
— Mobius
I like that slogan a lot. It helps explain why some blog writing feels so false. People are afraid to write truthfully, because truthful writing exposes them. It means admitting weakness, admitting emotion, admitting bias, accepting the possibility of being wrong. That is risky. So they choose the safer route. Their words become harmless, and in the process they also become dull.
Harmlessness is boring in itself.
That does not mean every piece of writing has to be combative or grand. A travel note can be real. A memory can be real. A meal, a dream, a passing thought can be real. The issue is not the subject. It is the attitude behind it, and the reason it is being written at all. Even a short piece about a cat sunning itself by the roadside can feel more like an actual article than some polished but hollow prompted essay, if in that moment the writer truly saw something and truly felt something.
In the end, writing should first sound like something a person would say.
Not like “content.” Not like a “work.” Not like an “update.” It should feel like a living person could not help but leave something behind, the way that slogan speaks of writing one’s own obituary.
You do not have to be profound. You do not have to be grand. You do not even have to be correct. But it is better not to pretend you have thoughts just because you need to stay visible. Once expression becomes a task to turn in, there is barely any expression left.