Passion & blog plans

There is 1 thing I will always make time for; passion. People talking about their passion, making something that comes from a place of passion or otherwise trying to follow whatever they're passionate about.

I (and I'm sure many others) do almost everything based on passion, to a fault. I've talked about this before and how this can get out of hand, but it's been the thing that got me where I am today. Times are changing, though. I want to use this blog to talk about my passions and why I think it's important that we keep sharing and talking about our passions as much as possible.

This is going to be a quite long-winded post as I just need to get this off my chest, but it sets up what I hope I to use this blog for.

My passions

I've always been someone who tries to surround themself with passionate people. Whether that be hanging out in IRC channels, Forums, Discords or any other type of place that has a community around a certain something. It doesn't matter what the subject is, obviously World of Warcraft has been a central one for me throughout most of my life, but I've also been, and am, a part of many other communities, some of which I talk about, some of which I don't.

People who do stuff/make content they're passionate about will always capture my interest/fascination/attention, even if I have absolutely no clue what they're talking about but even more so if it's something I'm passionate about as well. I'd say that's pretty common and engrained human behavior.

Granted, my passions have changed over the years, but some things have always been pretty central:

• Programming (still shit at it)
• Science Fiction and space (Star Trek, Stargate have been particularly big)
• Art (3D stuff in particular)
• Behind the scenes stuff (be it theatre, movies or games)
• Games (WoW obviously, but also Valve games and Minecraft)
• Supporting people's passions (especially when close to mine)

Encountering any overlap of these passions will automatically get me to pretty much drop everything else or at the very least distract me from what I was supposed to be doing. I'm not done finding or "refining" what I'm passionate about (is anyone ever?), especially when it comes to having a creative outlet, but alas, that is for another blog post.

Almost all of the things on the list I discovered while growing up on the internet and hanging around with various people I admire. The only exception being Science Fiction, which I most definitely got from my parents. The last thing in the above list has been the driving force behind most of the things I spent my time over the years on (SteamDB, WoW Export Tools, wow.export, WoW.tools etc).

Passion obfuscated

However, over the years it's been harder to find and keep track of these kind of communities and people, or at least the genuine ones. Twitter and other social media used to be great for this, but they've become increasingly shit (thanks Elon), granted I've trained my Twitter feed pretty well, but it's a constant struggle to keep it that quality, especially with the algorithms particular like of hate tweets (recently suspiciously focused against LGBTQIA+ people, but I digress).

YouTube used to be great at recommending cool videos, it's how I found Corridor Digital/Adam Savage's Tested etc which are great examples of passionate people talking about/following their passion, but it also has gotten terrible over the years as people figured out the 'formulas' to be succesful with the algorithms, preferably with as little as passion and effort as possible to get to a profitable result.

The same goes for Reddit, Instagram, forums, etc. Hobby sites got bought out by companies that just want to stick ads all over it, garry (of Garry's Mod/Facepunch) has a good post on this on his blog that in part inspired this post. I've seen many scummy companies attempt this with WoW.tools and even moreso with SteamDB.

It's increasingly difficult to find/pick out the gems that come from actual passion on these platforms. Discord is still pretty good for this in small enough communities but has been on a trajectory that seems mildly worrisome as well.

ArtStation was my latest discovery over the past year that has (so far) held up against the AI slop that's been infecting everything, but it doesn't have the same sense of community (but does have a lot of talented people).

Twitch, somehow, has had a pretty good "people who watch this streamer also watch" recommendation system for a good while through which I've found several people who stream whatever they are passionate about, listing streamers with both high and low viewer counts.

I can still get my positive energy/motivation from existing communities I'm in and the rare hidden gems I find on the above platforms, but I can't imagine as a young someone new on the internet that it's easy to find these kind of people you vibe with and that help you develop whatever you're passionate about. Maybe they're using other platforms/ways, I'm on TikTok but I can't imagine it being good for well, anything personal development-related, really.

Looking forward

That said, I hope to do semi-regular blog posts here that dive into what I'm passionate about at the time, whether it be from the above list, some combination of it or something entirely different. For all of those I will add links to communities with other people who share that passion (where possible), whether it be Discord or wherever else they're at.

And yes, many of them will be WoW related, but there might be some non-WoW related ones too.

Stay tuned!