Science & Tech Quote by Walter Jon Williams

Walter Jon Williams nails the Internet’s sly bargain: it promises belonging, then quietly invoices you in attention. The line works because it refuses the old separation between “real” community and “commercial” space. Online, participation isn’t just social; it’s performative. Every post is both contribution and résumé, every joke a tiny brand asset, every opinion a bid for visibility.

Williams is writing as a genre author who’s watched media systems evolve from broadcast to networked micro-celebrity. His phrasing, especially “interesting combination,” carries a cool, almost clinical irony: the mix isn’t accidental, it’s structural. Advertising doesn’t merely interrupt community; it colonizes it. The subtext is that the Internet didn’t invent vanity, but it industrialized self-promotion by making identity legible, searchable, and sortable. “Become an advertisement for yourself” lands because it’s both empowerment and indictment: you can bypass gatekeepers, but you also become the product manager of your own personality.

Context matters here: long before “influencer” became a job title, early web culture sold itself as authentic connection. Williams punctures that romance. Community is still real, but it’s also the machinery that trains you to optimize: to track engagement, to anticipate algorithms, to shape a self that travels well. The line’s sting is its implication that even sincerity gets repackaged as strategy. On the Internet, the quickest route to being seen is to be useful, likable, or provocative on command - and that’s advertising logic wearing a friendly avatar.