The unspoken secret to connecting to the "Global Idea Sharing" space (or maybe I’m just making excuses…)

Lightly frustrated rant from a “writer-first” & “speaker-second” Dutchman.

Hey friends, this post started out with the title, “I need to improve my English speech (as a non-native speaker).” But it turned into something else. I think it’s relevant to know with what title this draft started because it shows where I’m coming from. I.e., wanting to connect more with the people that feel like my intellectual peers. But as you’ll see through reading this piece, I am coming to some insights live, while writing. Hence going forward, this piece is pretty unedited stream-of-consciousness writing.

Strap in, cause I won’t be the most nuanced today.

Ready?

Ok, let’s go!

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I have ideas.

Ideas that I feel are worth sharing with more than just my fellow Dutchies. So I write in English, which is fine, but I have noticed the “secret” way to gain reach (although maybe it’s not really a secret, maybe I’m just too much of a chicken to lean into it) is to have face-to-face or live contact with other “idea” people. Mainly people in the US. People that are in the “ingroup” of, eh, let’s erhm, call it the… “Global Idea Sharing” (GIS) space.

Not being in real face-to-face contact with GIS people, I feel I have to put more effort into “selling” my ideas. But I refuse to be “salesy” about my ideas. (I hate it when people sell me stuff, though that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms to open.)

A sidenote I added just before publishing: maybe there’s an actual cultural difference here? That of US folks being much more comfortable with selling or being salesy? (Safest in the eyes of us Dutch folk, that is.) Hence folks from the US gaining more reach because that’s their natural form of communicating. But me, being Dutch—which is like the least salesy culture there is—have a problem with that. Anyway, just a hypothesis so far, let’s continue with the rant…

So to actually hard sell would be to go against what feels right to me, and it’d kill part of my soul. Thus to “sell” my ideas, to get them out there—in a fashion that is authentic for me—I have to make meaningful connections. “Duh!” you say, right? But as global culture is mainly being made in the US, I have to share my ideas with people there. And herein lies the problem for me. Two problems, really:

• First, my “live” English vocabulary during speech is pretty shitty. I often feel I come across as stupid (that’s my own opinion, though, and a rational part of me would say, “that’s imposter syndrome”) when uttering English in conversation. Resulting in me sometimes getting anxious and acting all weird, pushing away the very folks I’d like to connect with.

• Second, I am a father of two young kids, and my wife works 60 hours a week, so I can’t easily go off and leave for the US (for a few days/weeks) to connect & vibe like lots of the digital nomad types do.

Digging deeper into what I perceive as that unspoken secret: it seems that folks and my online friends from the US—or at least native English speakers who also visit the US—constitute a distinct group compared to the rest of us who primarily interact online. And everyone looks at this distinct group for the direction taken in the GIS space. Or at least that’s my perspective… maybe. (As you see, I’m kinda unsure about it all.)

I mean, there are folks here in the Netherlands sharing stuff on similar topics that I talk/write about as well. But they are not making culture. They are copying what they see at the edge of novelty globally/in the US, and then translating it (badly, imo) into Dutch, with all the crappy mistranslated words, misconstrued meanings, etc.

It all feels a bit amateurish, you know? As if you’d ask high schoolers to come up with a new invention for flying vehicles. A fun project, and they learn something from it—so it is valuable in its own way—but they won’t actually create a new invention there.

I’m probably doing a disservice here, cause people do help one another—in some ways even more so than in the global online space—but it’s not the creation of “new” ideas.

Another side note: Ok, writing here to create a bit of nuance, cause rereading it does come across as a bit too harsh/arrogant… So I’ll point out here that my ideas may very well not be novel for other folks: my writing/ideas are probably boring and “mistranslated” for some people out there as well. I.e., I may be the high schooler figuring stuff out for myself here. And that’s fine. It’s just that I would like to gain those new insights, and share them, but I’m getting most of those insights when interacting with the global/US-centered group of people.

I know this can sound kinda grandiose or arrogant, right? But the ideas that pop up here in the Netherlands on the topics I’m interested in are not so novel to me. Usually a few years behind what I saw in English-speaking work (except in the te h space, that’s pretty much on par with global stuff). So I don’t feel connected to that Dutch scene at all on the intellectual and exploratory level.

Of course, I do connect way more on an emotional level here, especially with people close by. The top 50 to 100 or so folks that I love and care deeply for in my life are nearly all here in the Netherlands or grew up here. And maybe that’s what at the root of this disconnect? That I just want to feel more emotionally connected to the folks with whom I share the intellectual passions.

Funny, now that I’m writing this, I see there’s actually a gap in the Dutch “idea market” that I could fill. As in, I am connected to that GIS-space, on an idea level at least, and can translate it for my fellow Dutchies in a way that I think isn’t being done much now. Though is it possible to be in both worlds? (Seeing I wrote 500+ words above about there being a possibly unspoken US “ingroup” that I’m not in…)

Should I maybe practice here what I always preach about individual life? Namely, “Play Your Own Game.” As in, playing our own Dutch/European game? Change the culture here in such a way that folks from the US want to go here instead? Making it so that the global culture is being made here? How’s that for a grandiose idea?! (Then I can finally do my work from the leisurely place of my own home/country/continent without feeling the pull outward… or so I think.)

Still, maybe (read: highly likely) this whole rant could just be me whining and making excuses—an even worse excuse than “I need to improve my English speech,” lol—for not just emailing folks from the US to go on a curiosity call and connect…

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Alright, that’s it. Thanks for indulging me in this rant. But puuhlease don’t be too hard on me, cause I’m not even 100% sure I agree with myself in all of the above. That’s why it’s a rant, you know…

Still, if you have thoughts about this, please do share, cause I’m definitely curious about the perspective of other “online” folks, from both the US and other places.

Cheers!

Jibran

PS. Next week I’ll wrap up my thoughts on the 100-Day Creator Challenge!