Why do we share?

Why do we share? Why do any of us put the thing out, the post, the half-formed thought, the work we’re not sure is good yet, when nobody asked and most of the world will scroll right past it?

I didn’t have the answer. So I started writing, hoping the answer would turn up somewhere along the way.

This week it did. I was watching a documentary by Tommy Geoco, following Colin and Samir around their '25 Press Publish event. Near the end, Colin says he read a book called Tribes fifteen years ago, and that one line had stayed with him the whole time.

“People like us do things like this.”

He said his hope was always that the work would just quietly attract people like him.

I heard that and felt something settle.

Because that is the answer. That is why I share.

For a long time I never really questioned it. Sharing was just a thing people did, like having a coffee or taking a shower. You post, you scroll, you move on. I didn’t ask what it was for, the same way you don’t ask why you reach for your phone in the morning. It was just there.

I’m only just realising it might be something else. That when I put something out, I’m doing this small, slightly nervous thing of saying here is what I think, here is what I’m working on, here is what I made and what broke while I made it. And the people who read it and feel something, the ones who think yes, that, me too; those are my people. The sharing is how I find them. The signal that goes out so the right ones can recognize it and come closer.

I think about who that is for me. The people who reply to a newsletter with one line that tells me they got it. The ones who send a half-finished idea at midnight because they thought of me. The friends who treat what I’m building like it’s already real, before there’s any proof that it is.

I used to watch people like Colin and Samir from the outside, the way you watch anyone whose work makes you feel a little less alone in your own head. Some years later I get to sit across from people like that and make things with them. I’m still not entirely sure how that happened. But I know none of it would have if I’d kept the work to myself.

So if you’re sitting on something right now, wondering whether it’s worth putting out, I’d say start by asking the honest question: does this need to exist? Does it deserve to be made? If the answer is yes, then the rest is mostly courage. You don’t really know who’s out there until you share. The thing you make is how they find you. And the people who lean in were probably always going to be your people. You just hadn’t met them yet.

Why do we share?

Maybe to find out who else is here.