As I was finishing off my newsletter the other day I heard that Om died. It didn’t fit at all with the themes in that edition but I had to say something regardless, he played a role in my life at different times and in different ways, and I felt like I had to mark that. I was also still a bit in shock from the terrible news I’d just gotten about Rob, which wasn’t public at that point but two people who had genuinely impacted me gone in so many days was a lot. Rob was sudden and unexpected, seems like Om knew something and was able to spend his last days with those closest to him. We should all be so lucky. (I don’t mean to be morbid but I think we can all agree that fast and unexpected, or with a little bit of heads up and surrounded by friends are two of the best ways to punch out.)
I won’t try to eulogize him, but to say Om touched a lot of people is the understatement of the century. Just take a second to see what M.G. Siegler, Stacy Higgenbotham, Brian Sirgutz, Amit Gupta, Dave Winer, John Gruber, Dean Takahashi, Matt Mullenweg, Mathew Ingram, the True Team, Kurtal Desai, Pradeep, Michael Driscoll, and Naveen Selvadurai had to say about him. And trust me, that’s a tiny fraction of what came across my feed on X this week. I’ve literally never seen anything like it, just an endless flood of posts about one guy and single moments people shared with him. And if you read them there’s a common thread through them all: Om cared about people, he saw them, he tried to help when he could. This photo archive Christopher Michel (who took the photo below) pulled together illustrates that well.
Om wrote about technology from a position of hopeful optimism. That doesn’t mean he was a yes man fan boy, he most certainly was not and his feedback and criticism could be sharp – but it was always with the hope that things could be better. He imagined the future that could be, and challenged us all to go there. In the flood of recounts of things he wrote that stood out to people, his interview with Brunello Cucinelli came up repeatedly. It stands out because it’s not about technology, it’s about passion caring about the thing. It’s worth rereading. Om started blogging again in earnest a few years back and I looked forward to his regular thoughts. I never had the opportunity to tell him this but I used his “On My Om” newsletter as my test when I was making Quicky, so I’d actually been thinking about him quite a bit in recent months. As I type that I realize how stupid it is, of course I had the opportunity, I could have just emailed him. I didn’t.
Rob was a different kind of legend in a different kind of world. That being the underground punk scene in Florida. By nature of it, most of the online outpouring is in personal and private social media accounts, but there are a few public mentions and it’s obvious that he was loved. Beyond just being loved, which is no small thing on it’s own, Rob made a difference. He mattered. He was a notorious curmudgeon but like Om that’s because he imagined what could be, and was going to do whatever he could to facilitate that, and fuck anyone else who threw up roadblocks along the way. He was there for his friends, he was there for his scene, he was there for his community. And now he’s gone, and the hole he leaves will be felt for a long time.
I could tell stories all day, but all that I really need to say is that at different times in my life, when I was weird and awkward (lets be honest, I’ve never not been weird and awkward, but alas) both of these guys were kind to me when they had no reason to be. They were both way more important and famous than me at those points, and that didn’t matter at all. They took time from their day, shared what they knew, and offered encouragement. They didn’t know I needed it, but I did. Neither gained anything from it, it’s just who they were.
Tara asked me the other day if I ever think about “my legacy.” I think she saw something someone else was saying and realized it wasn’t something she really puts much thought into. I know it’s something some people care about deeply, and others not at all. I don’t know if Om or Rob thought about their legacies, but I kind of doubt it. They just did the thing that was who they were, and that made an impact that will be felt long after they are gone. I don’t think either of them did that intentionally, I mean, they did it with intention, but that was their nature. It wasn’t forced, or an act, or an intentional persona. They cared about people around them, and the people around them felt that.
Some people build companies or empires that will outlive them just so that they are remembered. What just happened with Om shows who you are and how you treat people around you matters just as much, if not more. I’m positive if Elon Musk died today there wouldn’t be a fraction of the heartfelt memories on the timeline. In the end, the money doesn’t matter.
I don’t think much about what people will say about me when I’m gone, but I imagine I’ll also fall short of the flood Om received, because like I said I’ve never seen anything like that and he was absolutely one of a kind. But do I hope some people have nice things to say. I do think that’s part of the drive to create art, for me and certainly many others. Be it writing, photos, or whatever I’m making to put out in the world. For better or worse (more often worse) I’ve never been good at putting things out there as a business, but I try to put things out there that evoke some kind of feeling that lasts. I like to think long after I’m gone someone will look at a photo I took, or read something I wrote and think it was worth their time to do that. And maybe inspire them to do something too. That’s a pretty good legacy I think.
I was inspired by Om’s return to blogging. We fought the early 2000’s blog wars together, not on the same team but certainly on the same side, and had both stepped away from it for a while because life. But he dove back in deeper than I did, and wrote almost every day, almost up to the last day. I looked forward to it and appreciated it. Even though we weren’t in touch, his voice was always there in my head. I also realize I hadn’t talked to Rob in forever, and seeing his actual friends write about the comfort and reliability of knowing he was always there to talk to, and that he’d have something salient to offer… I missed out on that.
When I look at a lot of what I’ve been writing for the last few years it’s infrequent and too often about things and not enough of what I think about things, or more importantly what I hope about things. There’s been some in there, but not enough. And I should try a bit harder, because ultimately that’s the whole point.