# The Inner Ring of The Internet

![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png)

## Metadata
- Author: [[every.to]]
- Full Title: The Inner Ring of The Internet
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://every.to/divinations/the-inner-ring-of-the-internet

## Highlights
- Building in public means thinking in public, and thinking in public means exposing all of your quirks and questions to the smoothing waves of likes and clicks.
    - Tags: [[favorite]] 
- The upside, the hopeful promise of the new creative era, is one of meritocracy: It doesn’t matter where you went to school. It doesn’t matter who your dad was, or wasn’t. It only matters if you’re good.
- “From my experience, here’s what happens to movies when [commercial] concerns start invading the creative process: Everything gets watered down to the most anodyne and easily consumable version of itself. The movie becomes an inoffensive shadow of a thing, not the thing itself. There are no more rough edges or flights of cinematic madness. The fire and passion are gradually drained away as original ideas and voices are subsumed by commercial concerns, corporate oversight and polling data.”
    - Tags: [[capitalism]] [[counterproductive]] [[favorite]] 
- The incentives driving creative work matter. It’s just as important why you create something as it is what you create. A story written only for profit, attention, or fame won’t be much of a story at all.
- “The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it,” he explained. “But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it.”
- Just work. That’s it. Focus on what stirs you up inside, what is beautiful and true. Work on making something good—not something that is liked. Take responsibility. The work will lead you home.