> It's interesting that people read a blog by a someone who visited for 10 days, instead of someone who has lived there their entire lives or otherwise has far more experience.
Because they found the one and not the other. Matt Lakeman is someone whose blog I follow; if he posts something I'm going to read it. A number of other people found this because it was on HN. It's not like I decided "I will learn about Ghana!", searched, looked over the results, found both Lakeman and some Ghanaian writer among them, and decided to go with the former over the latter; I encountered Lakeman's post, and have not encountered any Ghanaian writers writing about Ghana among the places I usually read.
And like, let's be honest -- I'm just not interested enough in Ghana to go searching out writing on the history of Ghana and find the best one. The realistic alternative to me reading Matt Lakeman on the history of Ghana isn't that I read someone else on the history of Ghana, it's that I don't read about the history of Ghana at all, because the topic doesn't even occur to me as something to read about!
Because they found the one and not the other. Matt Lakeman is someone whose blog I follow; if he posts something I'm going to read it. A number of other people found this because it was on HN. It's not like I decided "I will learn about Ghana!", searched, looked over the results, found both Lakeman and some Ghanaian writer among them, and decided to go with the former over the latter; I encountered Lakeman's post, and have not encountered any Ghanaian writers writing about Ghana among the places I usually read.
And like, let's be honest -- I'm just not interested enough in Ghana to go searching out writing on the history of Ghana and find the best one. The realistic alternative to me reading Matt Lakeman on the history of Ghana isn't that I read someone else on the history of Ghana, it's that I don't read about the history of Ghana at all, because the topic doesn't even occur to me as something to read about!