The World Gone Mad

Something is deeply broken. For years we were told that the internet would democratise opportunity — that anyone with insight, creativity, or determination could build an audience and find their people. Publish a book. Start a blog. Share your ideas. The world would listen.

I believed this. So I did the work.

I wrote the books — four of them. I published over a dozen eBooks. I built more than six websites. I wrote over 200 blog posts exploring mental health, lived experience, human evolution, and the future of our civilisation. These were not half-hearted attempts, but years of disciplined creation. And yet… Almost no one comes.

No meaningful following. Barely a comment. At times, not even a single book sale.

Meanwhile, I discovered something else. Publishing my latest book cost $900 — my entire savings at the time. To promote it properly would require another $3,000 to $4,000. Visibility, it seems, is increasingly reserved for those who can afford to buy it. So I am left asking a question that more creators are quietly beginning to confront: Has the world gone mad?

The Promise vs The Reality

The internet was meant to remove gatekeepers and open the world to ideas.

Instead, it replaced limitation with saturation. We were promised reach — but encountered endless noise. Promised connection — but often found ourselves speaking into a digital void. Every minute, thousands of new voices enter the arena. Brilliant voices. Commercial voices. Manufactured voices. Desperate voices. All competing for the same finite human attention. The result is not quite the open marketplace of ideas we imagined. It is something else entirely.

The Internet Did Not Become a Meritocracy

For a long time, many of us believed the internet would reward merit. The assumption felt reasonable: create something thoughtful, original, and meaningful, and the world would eventually find its way to you. Without traditional gatekeepers, quality would naturally rise to the surface. But that is not the system that emerged.

The internet did not become a meritocracy. It became an attention marketplace.

In this marketplace, the most valuable currency is not depth, insight, or originality — it is visibility. What gets seen gets remembered. What gets remembered gets shared. And what gets shared expands — often regardless of its substance. Meanwhile, extraordinary work can remain almost completely invisible. Not because it lacks value, but because it lacks amplification. We were told the internet would level the playing field. Instead, it built the largest arena in human history — and asked everyone to fight for attention.

From Gatekeepers to Algorithms

We often comfort ourselves with the idea that the digital age removed the gatekeepers of the past — publishers, media institutions, cultural authorities. In truth, they were not removed. They were replaced. Today, algorithms decide what surfaces and what disappears.

These systems are not designed to recognise wisdom or intellectual contribution. They are engineered to maximise engagement — clicks, reactions, watch time, emotional intensity.

They reward what captures attention quickly, not necessarily what endures. A subtle but profound shift has occurred: creators are no longer simply competing on quality. They are competing on momentum. And momentum, more often than not, is engineered.

When Visibility Becomes Pay-to-Play

Many creators eventually encounter an uncomfortable realisation: discovery is frequently tied to financial capacity. Promotion, advertising, search optimisation, professional marketing — these have quietly become the infrastructure of visibility. Without them, even exceptional work can drift endlessly in digital obscurity. Opportunity still exists, but access to attention is uneven. The dream of open reach begins to feel conditional — available primarily to those who can afford to elevate their signal above the noise.

The Silent Psychological Toll

What few people speak about is what this environment does to the creator. You begin with hope. Then determination. Then confusion. And eventually, a quieter question emerges:

“If no one is responding… does my work matter?”

It is a strange form of modern isolation — to speak constantly and hear almost nothing back. To build tirelessly while the crowd walks past. To know you have something to contribute, yet remain largely undiscovered. Many creators do not stop because they lack talent. They stop because the emotional weight becomes too heavy to carry. Yet invisibility is not the same as insignificance. It is often structural, not personal.

So Has the World Gone Mad?

Some days it certainly feels that way. But perhaps what looks like madness is actually transition. We are living through the most competitive attention environment in human history. The old pathways to recognition have dissolved, and the new ones are still poorly understood. This leaves many serious creators stranded between effort and discovery — producing meaningful work while struggling to locate the people it was meant for.

But this is not a surrender. It is a recognition. Because beneath the noise lies a quieter truth:

You do not need millions of people. You need resonance. A thousand true readers can change a life. A hundred engaged ones can create a movement. Even ten aligned minds can begin something extraordinary.

History has rarely been shaped by crowds at the beginning. It starts with small circles of recognition — people who see what others have not yet learned to notice. So no, I am not finished creating. Silence would be the real defeat. Somewhere out there are the people these ideas are meant for. Finding them — and allowing them to find me — has become the real work. The world may feel deaf at times. But resonance is rarely immediate. And history reminds us of something important: Work that matters often travels slowly… Until suddenly, it doesn’t.