Planet Scale

Taylor Swift had 26.6 billion streams on Spotify in 2024. Twenty-six billion, with a B. That’s about 40 streams per monthly active user according to Spotify’s latest financial statements. Even if the streams were evenly divided across all of humanity, that would still equate to around 3 streams per person. Over three billion people use a meta product on a daily basis. Google handles almost 6 million searches per minute. We live in an age of planet scale. Ignoring the ethics and moral quandaries of having companies this big, I want to address how this mentality of planet scale has seeped down into us as individuals. We think we need to reach that audience to be relevant. We’re convinced that any business venture that we start has to explode to be a success. We dream of traveling to all seven continents to feel like our life’s adventure is complete. All around us we see and hear famous people every day, because, well, that’s the definition of famous. That almost certainly will not be you or me (unless Taylor you are reading this, in which case… hello I guess?). Those who we treasure most are likely only known by a handful of people, and it is this interconnected network of relationships that makes a globalized society truly beautiful.

Before algorithmic feeds became common, we mostly found sites or people on the internet through someone else. If something did go viral, it would be through word of mouth. Blogrolls linked one person to those that they found interesting, but there was no coordination between those links. The web truly was a web, with offshoots and quarks on every strand. Using it felt like exploring an endless expanse. As a kid, many of my friends would rush home to hop on MSN, to continue talking to friends from school late into the night. Nobody wanted to go viral because the concept didn’t exist.

The earliest memories I have of virality were YouTube videos like Rebecca Black’s Friday or the The Duck Song. It seemed like everyone was talking about them on the playground for a week, before moving on to the next big thing. There were no viral shows, just whatever was featured at the video store.

As the years passed “YouTuber” began to enter the lexicon of children when asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. I don’t know what the percentage was at that time, but now 57% of Gen Z want to be influencers. It is hard to disentangle whether it is the fame, fortune, or the perceived lifestyle that motivates this desire, though it is undeniable how it has permeated our culture. We don’t want one hundred followers—who we may actually be able to know and communicate with—we want millions. We also want a network that can facilitate that, which may explain the ebbs and flows between sites like X, Bluesky, and Threads. People want to be where other people are.

Some of this pressure may come from the economics of a digital marketplace. Fixed costs are high and marginal costs are low, but so is marginal revenue. It takes a lot of users to breakeven for a digital business such as a newsletter or video channel. Once you hit critical mass however, it can feel like a rocket ship (speaking from experience; the journey from 5 daily readers to 10 was wild let me tell you). We see the product of that reaction, not the reagents. There is some skill, sure, but also a helpful dose of luck or privilege for some, factors that are difficult to replicate through effort alone.

I don’t have anything against those that have made it, there have been some great examples of people using that influence and wealth for the betterment of humanity. However, we have gone too far in placing planet scale as the desired state. It isn’t natural by any measure. We weren’t built to live in a world dominated by 100 wealthy famous people, while we burn our eyes staring into their radiance. Throughout history there may have been emperors, kings, and queens that sought for their empire to stretch from sea to sea, but those outside the court didn’t spend their days daydreaming to do the same. They never had the chance. Their joy would have been found through those in their immediate surroundings. It is the fact that it is possible, if ever so unlikely (probably one in a million?) that makes it such a hard dream to give up.

The internet allows us to connect with people from all around the world, broadening our horizons and enabling us to learn about cultures and lands disparate from our own. Instead of anonymous likes, we can trade in thoughtful discussion with just a few people that engaged with what we put forward on a meaningful level. Maybe you are the only llama enthusiast in your town, but you certainly aren’t the only one in the world. Through broadcasting your joys, you can discover and share ideas with like-minded individuals across the globe. The current zeitgeist is that a large following is the penultimate goal, but pure scale is not correlated with belonging; we can feel lonely in New York City, yet have all we need around a dining room table. The greatest connections are made when we don’t exchange social handles, but phone numbers or email addresses.

For those that do know us beyond an anonymous like, we can have far more influence than we realize. Forgive my stretching of the metaphor, but to a select few we may mean the world. That which we treasure most is measured at the smallest scale, a single irreplaceable unique person. There is nobody else like my best friend, my parents, my partner, my brother. Outside of the orbit of love, we may have contributed significantly to one or two peoples’ lives without even realizing it. In our professions we may be crucial to the five others on our team. They don’t need us to be planet scale, they need us to show up for that specific job at that specific time.

Showing up for a smaller network doesn’t take the weight off, rather it shifts it. We don’t need to show up for thousands, we have to show up a thousand times for those in our immediate vicinity. In turn, they will show up for others, and together we can build a strong and resilient web. When a connection or node breaks, there is ample support around it to repair the damage.

I’ll conclude with a thank you to all the individuals on the web that I have had the pleasure of interacting with. Those that do their thing, often in a thankless and unknown way, for the benefit of others. You may not have achieved planet scale, but you are appreciated. Keep doing your thing.