No one knows who you are.
You've never spoken at a conference, published a book, or been quoted in a news story.
And, look, over there: a bunch of intelligent people you admire deeply are discussing something you're interested in. People you've seen at conferences. People who wrote the books you read. People whose careers you follow and choices you respect.
Clever, funny, caring people. And the only barrier to you becoming part of the conversation they're having, is the quality of what you have to say (and really, you can just listen if you want, that's fine too).
This is one of the things that first drew me to the internet in the 90s, and still draws me to it today.
The internet has been around for a good while now. Sometimes it's easy to take it for granted. Sometimes it's easy to get deflated by unpleasant people making it their tool for unpleasant activities. Sometimes it's easy to pine for simpler times, when you had a blog but no one had come up with a term for that yet, and the internet still felt like a secret garden where people like you would gather and be dorks together.
But it's still there, underneath all that other stuff. That wonderful power that lets you step back from being an age group, a gender, an ethnicity, a job, an income bracket, a location, a nationality, a height, a weight, a wardrobe. Where you can be, first and foremost, a human, shaping the core of your online interactions to align precisely with who you are. And you can be judged by the quality of your words and ideas, before all those other things (sometimes).
It's why I remember initially being quietly dismissive of people who used real photos of themselves for their Livejournal icons, back in the day. Because, why just take a photo of yourself, when you can choose from anything in the entire world to represent what you are?
Hey, I get it, now - and I use a photo of myself on my professional/web-talk Twitter account - just as I use a photo of a goofy smiling puffer fish for my personal/comedy Twitter account, and a cranky snail character for my game dev account, and... so on. Different channels, different focus, different conversations. But combined, they all amount to me.
The internet continues to evolve. It's not the place it was, but, the place it was isn't gone. And here, we can still have meaningful conversations with, and learn from, brilliant, wonderful people. I can (I hope) pay it forward, help other people the way they've helped me. There's more people going about their business online now, but, the good conversations are still here. The playful experimentation with new technologies and ideas is still here. Maybe you have to wade through more You'll Never Believe What Happens Nexts to get to them, but they are.
I want to see more access to quality education for all, more opportunity for everyone to learn and explore and joke and find out what your humanity looks like when you can choose your own face. And we can still do it. We still have the technology.