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[Photo: Flying guy, by Samuel Teer, License Creative Commons]

The best part of being alive in the 21st century is by far is being able to access the world wide web. Sure the lack of world wars plagues and overall quality of life makes the century worth while but the wonderful web provides us a place where we can all see the best and worst of this world and appreciate it from a far.

Whenever I need help writing a story, I simply write “writing tips” in Youtube and find enough content to learn my way up to the best, with channels like Diane Callahan. Whenever I want to experience any story one can just search Netflix or Hulu or Kindle or Audiobook…

If you want to publish a book, the web allows you to publish your stories independently or just start a blog and post your web series and stories and podcast oh my! Anything you want! there is a place in the world all eyes are craving for good stories and entertaining content.

Problem is,  while your content may or may not be good, ANYONE can comment on it. ANYONE can rate your content poorly, criticize it and make a branding of your stories as the prime example of low/high quality. As if anyone could doodle garbage in your resume and there is nothing you can do about it–Good luck finding a job.

You WILL face constructive as well as non constructive criticism and one must not only be good but also strong. If not, it may get in the way of your dreams and your life in general like it happened to Rebecca Black:

Nevertheless, without the web, stories would find themselves back at the mercy of whatever company would publishing it. We would also depend on whatever stories a company would provide us.  Not to mention, telling your stories in a collective medium would require tedious processes and protocols. We all know it’s easier to upload a podcast than to open a radio segment and it’s easier to open a blog than to have own newspaper.

Richard Feynman once said: “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science.” In the case of Rebecca Black, her content did got attacked by many but that exposure made good old Katy Perry notice her bullying and added her to one of her Friday themed music video.

In the end, maybe sharing your stories could make you famous, successful, a joke, a target for bullies or even an example of bad content but nevertheless, it will make you someone–and that’s a story worth telling.