What Does It Mean to Write for Numbers?

I will know exactly how many people read this post and I wonder why that is. While it makes sense that a piece of writing done on a platform will influence people, it does not make sense that being a writer should be the same as being an influencer. Not that there’s anything wrong with influencing people toward a thing, per se. Influencing is, of course, a natural and beautiful part of how we connect with one another, build community, share ideas, and build on our collective visions. The problem is not even that influencing has become an art, but that it has become a business.

As a business it is necessary that influencing must lack subtlety, creativity, humanity, deep listening, patience, or earned ambivalence. It is necessary because business is a practice of numbers. “I have influenced this many people, what might I be able to say in order to influence this many more?”

This approach seems relatively harmless when selling, let’s say, apples. But then again the only reason it seems harmless with the apples is because I’ve been taught my whole life that it is harmless. Even with apples problems arise. Where do all these apples come from? What land and resources are used to grow them? What labor is used to process them and get them to the point of sale? What or who must I sacrifice in order to increase my profit? Similarly, to turn the selling of ideas into primarily a numbers game — no matter how positive someone somewhere might have thought their original intention to be — can only lead to a preponderance of…