A philosophical discussion of internal vs external validation — Regardless of whether you are new to this site, have a massive following, or have written bestsellers, all of us struggle at times to find meaning through our writing.* QUESTION: if people don’t read my writing what is the point? One of my favorite writers, Tom Mitchell (who had 5 K followers at the time), once wrote a comment to Hilal Isler, (now over 12 K followers):