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LM: #377: Your impact depends upon your ability to endure crickets

July 20 2026 – 10:00am

Pleasing the algorithm too quickly is a path to mediocrity.

If your ideas gain immediate support, they probably aren’t new. If they gain resistance, you’re still in familiar territory. But when your work is met with crickets, that can actually be a good sign.

One of the best ways to do impactful work is to be the first to see the world in a particular way. That’s how you catch the attention of the proverbial “innovators” and “early adopters.”

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The algorithm shows work that most people react to. But if most people are reacting to it, it’s already old news. Go ahead and post an Impressionist painting and enjoy the likes, but you’re 150 years too late for it to mean anything.

Obviously, if your work is ignored that very often does mean something is missing, whether it’s craft, legibility, or cultural significance.

But the litmus test is whether it’s still interesting to you. Are the feelings you’re expressing real? Are you still curious about what you could learn by digging deeper?

Comedian Louis CK said, “Always, the best bits I have in a special, the ones that are like, ‘That just kills every time,’ started with silence.”

I know the pieces I’ve felt the most vulnerable to publish are almost always met with crickets at the start. It’s as if you can hear the collective fear of people who say to themselves, “It feels risky to be the first to ‘like’ this.” But when they catch on (if they do) they’re the ones with the widest reach, eliciting the most sincere reactions.

Humans are pack animals. The innovators and early adopters have to lead the pack. But to reach them, you have to endure being ignored, until you have something interesting.

Aphorism: “Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance.” —Ted Kaczynski

Cool: This podcast interview with the guy who wrote Sideways is shockingly candid, and tells the incredible story of how the novel became the movie.