don’t meet your e-heroes

In June 2024, while scrolling through X (rip Twitter), I stumbled across a tweet;

At the time, I was in a job I hated, surrounded by people I didn’t like, had just experienced the high of making my first online dollar and had convinced myself that indie hacking was my path to happiness.

buildspace was the answer to my prayers for becoming the person I always wanted to be: a person who does loads of cool stuff, and above all else, creates stuff that provides value to the world.

So I signed up a day late – and I got in, alongside 17,000 other eager builders.

During the 6 weeks, I tried and mostly failed to build something cool, but that’s not not really why I’m writing this.

Over the course of the 6 weeks, I watched dozens of people put themselves out there and build amazing stuff.

Some made music.

Some made tea brands.

Some just helped others.

Some made burger-flipping robots.

It was cool as fuck, and extremely inspiring and motivating to staying on the journey.

Inevitably, the self-comparison crept in at times.

The class of creators I felt myself comparing myself to the most, were content creators.

Something about the confidence, boldness and creativity of people who really, really put themselves out their online makes the insecurity in me feel really really apparent and naked.

There was one in particular, based in San Francisco (where buildspace was also based), that captured my imagination.

He documented his journey to San Francisco, trying to make it as a creator, artist and musician who was starting from scratch. His content was beautiful and cinematic, and it seems like his artistic talents were boundless. He seemed to be extremely authentic about his struggles, his shortcomings and his talents. It was inspiring.

Fast forward 4 months, and I’m going to SF with my new job for the Github Universe conference, which is the best job I’ve ever had and is truly a season of my life taking a turn for the better.

During buildspace, I had written into my goals that I would go to SF for the finale of the program – I didn’t manage that, but I had managed it in a completely different, unexpected, and better way that I had imagined. Life has been feeling like a composition lately, but that’s for another day.

Aside from work stuff, I wanted to meet the type of hard-working, creative and genuine people that I had got to know during buildspace, but I didn’t have an obvious way to do this.

I discovered an event called the intersection of art & technology to be held at the internet archive, on my final day in SF, and decided to go.

The event turned out to be exactly what I had went out on a limb to expect, and definitely attracted a lot of people that would have been interested in buildspace.

As I sat down in the pews (internet archive is based in an repurposed chapel), I noticed someone that looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. I puzzled over it for a while, and coincidentally, they came and sat down next to me. We exchanged a few hellos, and the presentation began.

A girl came on stage to present a mask she had made that would create music by scanning her brain and changing the sounds and pitch according to how she would think. The music was abstract, ephemeral and she sang while sitting on the ground.

Midway through the performance, I noticed the guy sat next to me started whispering to his friends, and started audibly and exaggeratedly laughing while she was performing. It was clear to me that he was laughing at her, and didn’t really give a fuck that her herself (the stage was not too far away) and everyone in the audience could see him making fun of her.

I regret not saying anything, because at this point it was clear this guy was a bit of an asshole. The night went on.

After I went home, it dawned on me – this guy was the same guy I had watched go after his dreams during buildspace.

The same guy I had deeply admired and looked up to for putting themselves out there so authentically, was the same guy that was cold and insecure enough to ridicule someone on stage, putting themselves out here. I don’t know the depths of this guy still today, but even the surface broke some beliefs in me about what confidence really means. I value honesty and kindness towards others over a lot, and sometimes this actually comes off as a lack of confidence.

Don’t meet your e-heroes because they’re a high chance they won’t be as cool as they think you are, and and equally high chance they’re an asshole.

Fast forward to November, and buildspace is gone – its creator unexpectedly fell out of love with the project, and so it ended.

The lesson I’ve learned most deeply is that nothing is really what it seems, and life will show you that over and over again.

The only way to find peace is to persist in yourself and cherish each moment you are in for what it is. Understand who you are, and be comfortable in it and how it appears to others both when you put no effort in, and when you give it your all.