These tools are technologically great, but they are not 10x better than notepad.exe
The marketing and hype around these tools are self perpetuating. Some twitter guru will post about these tools and get kickback or an increase in followers. People who pay for tools post about their experience online so they can signal to other people who have paid for this tool that yes, they now belong to the cool kids club too.
And there are content creators who's income depends on these tools. They will 'review' these tools, post a review online and unknown to most people, they will be getting some money for this review under the table.
I've also seen that this is all mostly limited to tech folks who consume too much of their info from Twitter and Youtube. None of my offline friends know about Obsidian, Roam, or the zillion productivity tools that are being produced.
That's cap. Obsidian is many, many times more powerful and useful than notepad.exe. It's a completely different class of product. It's virtually an operating system unto itself.
- blanket admonishment of others' efforts towards creativity and developing insights
which you already have and that can come only from inside your great mind.
Please fluoresce and share your brilliant illuminating light of self-made intelligence and inspiration upon us, the sheep-like, turf-sprawled, vibrating masses.
A similar app, Roam Research, is the same story as Obsidian, only a few chapters ahead. Roam's marketing campaign actually referred to itself and its users as a literal cult.
Ultimately, like self help, it's all just more of the same - cashgrabs that make people feel like they're improving or achieving, with every self help quip they consoom, with every "second brain" note they take.
Ultimately, they're just games for wasting time - "tool games" [1].
[1] https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=33135227