That day, the platform sent me a message.
The original read something like this:
I’ve noticed you’ve been sharing a lot of deep thinking around existence, authenticity, and self-awareness. The idea you touched on — the fixation on being seen — really resonates with many quality creators. We might be able to help you reach more people who think the way you do, instead of just growing quietly inside the algorithm.
I stopped when I finished reading.
Because the piece that triggered this message was the one I’d written about exactly that — about not being fixated on being seen.
The packaging was exquisite.
It had read what I wrote, spoken back to me in my own language, and then used that as the opening to sell me a product called “reach.”
The logic went: you have good content, good content deserves to be seen by more people, therefore you need to buy traffic.
It manufactured a need and sold me a solution. And that need — the hunger to be seen — was the exact thing my essay was arguing against.
I thought of something I’d written before:
You ask: why does shallow content spread so loudly while deep content grows in silence?
But you forgot to ask: who told you that spread is the point?
A tree grows in a deep forest, unseen. Does that mean it isn’t growing?
That passage was written on a different platform. But I thought of it that day, at the same moment.
But I thought it through, and this wasn’t a calculation aimed at me.
No one sat down, read my essay, and designed that message with a knowing smile.
A machine was running. Its logic has only one directive: growth. So it converts everything into fuel for growth — including an essay that questions the logic of growth, including a reflection on why you shouldn’t be fixated on being seen.
The machine doesn’t understand contradiction. It only understands conversion.
This isn’t irony. It’s just the machine doing the only thing it knows how to do.
That same day, I received two other responses.
The first came from a Chinese reader.
I’d written a piece earlier about the habit of saving things — how many people treat saving as the finish line, how once something is saved it feels resolved, how the actual digesting can always wait until later.
She left a comment under that piece telling me: she had saved that article about saving things. But today she came back and actually read it.
There was something formally similar between her response and the platform’s message — content and reply meeting in a kind of mirror. But they felt completely different.
The platform had used my content against me. She had been genuinely changed by it, and came back to tell me through action.
The second came from a reader overseas.
I’d written a piece on MBTI — arguing that you shouldn’t let a four-letter type become the reason you limit your own complexity, that a person’s resolution is higher than any category can hold.
He left one line in the comments: Gonna take a stab in the dark. INFP?
I didn’t think much of it at first — until I clicked on his profile and found he wasn’t just a reader, but a writer who specialized in MBTI content himself.
He knew perfectly well that my essay was questioning the over-reliance on MBTI. But he didn’t get defensive. He didn’t push back. He responded with a kind of lightness — even a touch of playfulness. I’m guessing you’re this type.
He was saying, in his own way: I see you. I’m here too.
Three things happened on the same day.
A machine, and two people, each read what I had written and responded in their own way.
The machine’s response was louder. More elegantly packaged. More logically airtight. But there was no one inside it.
The two readers’ responses were small — one a comment, one a message. But something real had happened inside them. One person had been changed. One person had made contact.
Both of these things exist on the internet at the same time.
A machine that never stops, converting everything into fuel — including the voices that question it. The machine is large. It is loud. It will not stop.
And some real people, inside that machine, reading in their own way, thinking, and then responding honestly.
The machine is louder. But the people are more real.
And when I write, I’m writing for the second kind.
Uncle Yi? Heyy. That excerpt of yours is beautiful and it hits deep: about the tree growing unseen in a deep forest tells me that true development happens in the quiet. I often find that the busiest content is usually easier to digest and is more surface-level transactional. Some people are actually more afraid of depth than you think. Also, your interaction with that MBTI writer is a telling moment. If it happened on here...i might have a clue of who you were referring to 😆 so much of the modern typology space has devolved into mindless label-slapping / surface level 4-letter coding w/ close to 0 awareness of the cognitive mechanics behind the real theory itself. Your conclusion lands so heavily. We don't need the hollow traffic the algorithm tries to sell us. As you can see, it just takes that one real person whose touched by your transformational content , making all the quiet growth completely worth it. Keep writing for the second kind.