Part of the reason I am inspired to post online (in general) is because of the late Mark Baumer.
Mark posted non-stop, utilizing every medium and platform that you could think of. To him, injecting the seemingly mundane with something poetic was the point of life. In his final years, he worked at the intersection of art and activism, fusing the two in a way which is difficult to comprehend. The phrase “one of a kind” gets thrown around a lot, but it applied to Mark
I might have started to contribute to Google Maps (and other outlets) on a kind of artistic whim. But now I see the true reason is that it allows people (strangers) to experience art unintentionally. In a sense, this kind of connection is perhaps the truest form. Someone who just wanted to know if tacos tasted good, has instead read, in essence, a poem. This is not to muddle or subjugate the search results. If anything, when I am personally compelled to contribute/post it’s born of a true passion for the thing or the place.
I am constantly finding more content written by Mark Baumer in the strangest of places, like the comments section of a basketball blog. Mark used typical modes in atypical ways, and we’re all the better for it. If you stumbled on something Mark wrote by accident, well, that was kind of the point. In an endless sea of content and data, these “blips” provide a little bit of humanity in the algorithm’s many waves.