I wrote this in March 2020. Five years later it hits completely different.
Being invisible online makes people think you're hiding something.
But sometimes the idea matters more than who wrote it. Getting it out there is half the battle.
In the AI era this hits different — everyone's generating content now, but very few are putting their own thinking on the line. Writing an idea down, iterating on it, returning to it months later... that's still rare. That's still human.
The courage to publish a half-formed thought and let it evolve publicly is more valuable than ever.
Looking back
When I wrote this, I was talking about the basic act of showing up online. Publishing a blog post, sharing a thought, being visible. Most people don't do it because they're afraid of being wrong.
In 2025, the landscape has flipped. Now everyone's publishing — but almost none of it is theirs. The people generating ten LinkedIn posts a day with AI aren't putting their thinking on the line. They're hiding behind the average. The bar for "showing up" has moved from "did you post?" to "did you actually think about what you posted?"
The trickle is still the right strategy. One real thought beats a hundred generated ones.