Wikis are like the Rush of social media

Listening to “Red Barchetta” by Rush this morning (for the 50,000th time), I started to realize all the ways that wikis are like Rush:

Normal people see/hear them and think:

• I’ve heard of them but don’t really know them
• Too much work
• Too ornate
• Incomprehensible
• Ugly
• Don’t they have something to do with Middle Earth?

Nerds who get them know:

• Finally, a home
• This is the way I think
• I don’t care that no-one else likes it. In fact, that’s part of the appeal.
• I have room to stretch out and think here
• There’s always something to learn
• All the choices are up to me
• I could get a lot more people into it if they didn’t mind me droning on about it
• They reward repeated, sustained attention
• The effort put into the finished product will never be appreciated by most of the world, which is totally fine
• A complete thought can easily take 7½–13 minutes to get across