We grow up looking up at our heroes. Whether it's Greek myths, Japanese animes or American superheroes, our heroes take us on a journey. They first resist the call to adventure but then take risks, face temporary failure, and eventually succeed.
This mirrors something in our psychology and is a lesson and inspiration in facing the inevitable challenges of a well-lived life. They are our heroes “with a Thousand Faces”.
Some Internet personalities serve a similar function in today's world, at least for me: they've paved the way and provide inspiration to thousands if not millions of people. Here are mine:
- Pieter Levels. On top of being the poster child for one-file PHP projects worth millions, Pieter has fun building his one-man startups in public, on Twitter. The OG of indie hackers.
- Adam Wathan. Manages to rock both code and design. Creator of Tailwind CSS (the only piece of tech I don't curse at 😅), Tailwind UI, and co-author of the excellent Refactoring UI.
- Eben Pagan. Pick-up guru turned Internet marketer and productivity expert – there's a pattern here.
- Joel Spolsky. Co-founder of both StackOverflow and Trello!
- Naval Ravikant. I'm now on my 8th listen of How to Get Rich. Practical advice, ethical, no fluff.
People to look into:
- Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft. I need to look into the story of how big he grew Minecraft on his own, before hiring, and before selling it for $2.5B.
EDIT: this extends beyond real-life characters.
- Will Hunting and his desire to live life his own way. “Yeah, but at least I won't be unoriginal.”
- Jason Bourne's multiple passports, identities, languages
The beauty of it is we can choose our influences.