an audience seems cool but the connections that really matter is that guy who sends a comment 7 years later informing you that they've made progress on the project you had to abandon, but wrote about so others could learn about it at least.

document cool stuff! share cool links! share reading that made you think or made you feel something (just be careful with the angry)

but audiences don't tend to grow with you. eventually you'll outgrow them, because they replace the ones who grew with you, with new people finding your posts, without realizing.

and you'll be glad you didn't write for them. because new people who care keep finding your old posts. and it's the people who care who end up making an impact on the larger scale, but also tend to be more reliable connections even if you don't talk much.

write (or video, or whatever) for people who will care. you won't need to get on the rat race of camera gear¹

I get that some people have to do this for survival or to keep housed etc or even just it's your Career and all you know, and this post isn't about that. But I'd also say audiences there are just as fickle, and some compromise position here that boils down to "just make sure you aren't letting them guide you too much, and cast a net that at least pushes their boundaries"² will probably serve best.

otherwise you're not even realizing you're going against what you want until you can't really leave without disentangling yourself from a lot of streams.

¹: audio is a different story but fortunately hits diminishing returns at the 200$ mark, not 2000$) ²: a lot of how we've gotten to where we are is people shifting to the center of their audience, which shifts their audience, which is always rightward because the rest also outgrow the audience.