The Joy of Unpopular Writing

I had a strange realization the other day: most of my best writing has been read by almost nobody.

Not as a failure. As a relief.

There's something deeply liberating about hitting publish knowing the algorithm won't reward you. That your post won't trend. That you're writing into a void, and that void is exactly where you want to be.

The Tyranny of Metrics

We've been trained to think impact is proportional to reach. Bigger audience equals better writing. A thousand views means you've done something right. Go viral or go home.

So we write with an eye on the metrics. We choose topics we think will land. We optimize our headlines. We imagine the comment section before we've even finished writing. We write for an invisible jury.

The problem is that jury never actually reads your work. You're performing for a phantom audience that doesn't exist.

Think about it statistically. Even the most successful online writers reach 0.001% of the internet's population. A viral post? Still obscure compared to the total noise. If you're going to be overlooked anyway—and statistically, you probably will be—why not be overlooked on your own terms? Why not write the thing that's true instead of the thing designed to spread?

I launched Jottings because I was tired of this. Tired of watching people craft posts designed to game the algorithm rather than exploring what they actually wanted to say. Tired of watching brilliant writers measure their worth in engagement metrics. Tired of the implication that writing only matters if it gets popular.

What if the opposite were true? What if obscurity was the point?

Writing for One Instead of One Million

Here's what changed for me: I stopped checking my analytics.

Not completely—vanity metrics have their place. But I stopped using them as a compass. I stopped refreshing the page to see if that post gained traction in the last hour. I stopped optimizing based on what went "viral" yesterday.

Instead, I started writing as if the only person who would read it was me. Not as an audience of one—as a writer speaking to my own future self. What did I want to remember? What ideas did I need to work through? What made me curious enough to spend an hour thinking about something with no guaranteed payoff?

The quality of thinking didn't drop. It improved.

When you're not writing for the algorithm, you can follow rabbit holes. You can change your mind mid-essay. You can be wrong, explore, contradict yourself. You can write something deeply personal that would mortify you if it went viral, but feels honest when it's just sitting on your small corner of the internet.

I have posts on my personal site that maybe thirty people have read, ever. They're some of my best writing. No headlines engineered for clicks. No strategic pauses for shareability. Just me thinking.

The irony? This approach sometimes resonates more with the people who do find it. Because you're not trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal deeply to the people who are actually looking for what you're offering. You find your people. Your real people. The ones who get it.

And here's the beautiful part: those people stick around. They read every word. They come back. They engage in real conversation instead of drive-by comments. A thousand followers who skim your headlines is noise. A hundred readers who actually care is a community.

The Freedom in Niche

There's a reason small communities feel more alive than mass platforms. When you're writing for a niche audience, you can afford to be specific. You can assume a baseline of understanding. You can have inside jokes. You can explore ideas that would be considered "too niche" for mainstream platforms.

I've seen this happen on Jottings. People stop performing and start thinking. They write about incredibly specific interests—obsessive deep dives into niche topics—and find that three hundred other people in the world share that obsession. The audience might be small, but it's real. It's engaged. It reads every word.

Compare that to posting the same thought on a major platform and watching it disappear into an infinite feed within hours, seen by thousands but understood by none.

Size doesn't equal quality. Reach doesn't equal resonance.

The Unpopular Post That Changed Everything

The best piece of feedback I ever received came from someone who found a blog post I'd written years ago. Deep in the Google results. Not promoted, not shared, not optimized. Just there.

She said: "I've read this five times. Every time I come back, I find something new. I didn't see it because it was popular. I found it because I was searching for exactly this, and you were the only one who wrote about it."

That's the goal. Not to be the loudest voice. To be the exact voice someone needed to find.

Embracing Obscurity

Here's what obscurity gives you that popularity never will:

Freedom to experiment. No one's watching, so you can try new forms, new ideas, new voices.

Permission to be wrong. Your small audience is forgiving because they're there for genuine engagement, not dunks or drama.

Space to think. Without the constant pressure of metrics, you can sit with an idea for as long as it needs. You don't have to publish when it's hot—you can publish when it's ready.

Real feedback. The people who engage with your small audience actually care. The comments are thoughtful. The conversations are real.

Authentic voice. When no one's watching, you stop performing. That's when the good stuff happens.

Measuring What Actually Matters

Stop obsessing over analytics. Seriously.

Check them occasionally—basic feedback about what resonates has value. But if you're refreshing multiple times a day? If you're letting yesterday's engagement numbers shape today's ideas? That's not feedback. That's the algorithm possessing you.

Instead, measure the things that actually matter:

Did I clarify my thinking? Did I say something true? Am I proud of this work? Did it help the one person I wrote it for? Did I grow as a writer? Do I want to write more, or do I feel drained?

Those questions don't show up in dashboards. But they're the only ones that sustain a real writing practice.

What This Means for Jottings

When I built Jottings, I deliberately removed metrics from view. No like counts. No shares. No trending algorithms. Not because I'm anti-measurement, but because I wanted to free people from the tyranny of real-time feedback.

Write what matters to you. Publish into the void. Find your small, real audience. Let that be enough.

Because here's the truth: it is enough. More than enough. It's everything.

Most writing will never go viral. Accept that. Embrace it. And discover the radical freedom that comes with writing for the right reasons—not for reach, but for clarity. Not for validation, but for understanding. Not for everyone, but for the people who actually show up to listen.

The unpopular post you publish today might be discovered years from now by someone who needed it. It might change their thinking. It might start a conversation that ripples out in ways you'll never see. Or it might just sit there, unread, and that's okay too. You wrote it. That was the point.

Stop waiting for permission. Stop chasing metrics. Stop performing for an imaginary audience.

Write the thing that's true. Hit publish. And discover the joy of writing that nobody's watching.

That's enough. That's more than enough. That's everything.