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Sampling bias. You're reading articles good enough to come through to you, from millions of people actively trying to get theirs read. There will be millions of great articles that most of us will never even discover. I think you should spend at bit of time thinking on the scale of the world, the scale of combined human effort, and try to consider the statistical chance that something any individual does will "make it" to the top, even of hacker news.. Now, also consider whether you want to be spending your time becoming someone who contributes in that way instead of the way you currently do. Consider the amount of brilliant people doing work that nobody will ever see. There's nothing wrong in being a "nobody" in the grand scheme of things, your primary motivation in life has probably not been to have the world know your name, if so, you'd likely have pursued a different career.
But the feeling is familiar, I think, to most of us. My personal fix to this is to think on it, and maybe sometimes make a little side-project, that's guaranteed to not be brilliant or even good, and post it somewhere online, and enjoy the little bit of attention it got. I also struggle to accept my place in the world, to be honest, I've gotten further in my life than I thought I would, and still, feel disappointed in myself because I've not done anything great, or contributed to or furthered any field in any meaningful way. But I try to keep in mind that, most people aren't and of those who do, orders of magnitude more are trying hard and still fail, and honestly, I don't want it _THAT_ bad, I can conclude that, because when I look at my own efforts to "become somebody", they are fairly low, and so it's no surprise that I'm a nobody, just coding away and generally being content with what I do. |
More on this: you don't need to be "somebody" to everyone. Maybe just try being "somebody" to a smaller group that is important to you.
99.9999999% of people will never know I was in a leadership role for a collegiate rocket league esports org. It's a niche (collegiate), of a niche (esports org), of a niche (rocket league), of a niche (video games) thing, but that doesn't matter. The people I worked with knew me and what the org does is important to the players who participated, even if they didn't know me.