> As in, you, the journalist railing against this [Nazi moron with 15 followers], are the person pushing it to national consciousness. Which really means that you have done far more for their cause than they have.
In my MBA program, there are students who are around my age, and there are exchange students who are much younger, in their early 20s let's say. I have been stunned at how much trouble some of these younger students have with unassisted thinking. Their first temptation, when faced with any sort of conversational prompt related to the course's material, is to turn to ChatGPT.
I didn't need any more convincing to spend as little time as possible online, but if I did need it, this phenomenon would have provided it.
Thank you, as always, for being one of the good reasons to spend (a little) time online.
I am an autistic person, and one of the major attributes autistic people have is that they are capable of developing nearly unbreakable loyalty to people and things. Unfortunately, it appears that this is exactly the kind of people most online organizations want to gain and retain...
Anyway, on the subject of "what do I want from WOLF?" - I love and appreciate the glimpses into your soul, much more than the posts about Tim Walz or whatever. I assume all your serious readers do, tbh. But there also is an extent to which I'm not sure I *deserve* glimpses into your soul - especially not relative to, e.g., your kids. (Your THREE kids, incidentally! Holy shit, congrats! Not sure how I missed this!) The algorithm, even on a low-key social media platform like this, can flatten you out - turn you into a gollumized monomaniac obsessed with roving transexual death gangs or whatever. But it can also wring you out and turn your life into fodder for public consumption. From my subscriber perspective, but also from my perspective as someone who would like you to have a good existence, the question isn't so much "how much should Eddy write?" but "is Eddy's writing a positive force in his life?" ... which only you can answer! But it is plausible to me that the deeply personal posts here, much as I enjoy them, could be bad for you in a way less obvious than that of pure numbers-go-up-posting.
And also a good sign for me, since slowing down and digging deeper is part of the reason for potentially slowing down. It also might be a good idea, three years into this endeavor, to give the newsletter more of an identity, rather than just being "whatever I feel like writing about right now."
I found that I could lose a full half of my audience by labeling a piece Part I, and even more by labeling it
Part II.
Back in January I wrote an essay lamenting the loss of gatekeepers. We use to complain about their ability to perfectly judge quality but at least they were trying. The algos favor things that are anti-quality. We’re probably destroying an entire generation of quality “content creators” by burying their work.
There is an audience out there of people who love long, thoughtful, beautifully-written pieces like yours—I am one of them, and I am grateful for posts like this, which remind us that we have power over ourselves and, especially, over our attention.
Your closing paragraph reminded me of a wonderful book called The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian. Christian was a journalist for Harper’s (I think), and back in the early days of AI, he participated in a huge Turing Test, in which various AIs and several human volunteers chatted online with testers, who tried to figure out who was human and what was AI.
As his title reflects, Christian was deemed by the organizers to be the most human human—everyone could tell quicker for him than for anyone else that he was a human being. The book is a reflection on what it means to be human in the computer age. It’s just wonderful. I’ve put a link below in case you or your readers are interested.
> As in, you, the journalist railing against this [Nazi moron with 15 followers], are the person pushing it to national consciousness. Which really means that you have done far more for their cause than they have.
Ha ha ha... so true... so anyway you were wondering why Ryan Broderick left Substack at the end of 2023? This is a decent explainer: https://samkahn.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-hatchet-job
Ah, yeah, this is what it was.
What a dumb time!
In my MBA program, there are students who are around my age, and there are exchange students who are much younger, in their early 20s let's say. I have been stunned at how much trouble some of these younger students have with unassisted thinking. Their first temptation, when faced with any sort of conversational prompt related to the course's material, is to turn to ChatGPT.
I didn't need any more convincing to spend as little time as possible online, but if I did need it, this phenomenon would have provided it.
Thank you, as always, for being one of the good reasons to spend (a little) time online.
Man, that is bleak! Everything I hear from universities now seems pretty distressing, which is a true shame.
And thank you for the kind words, man!
I am an autistic person, and one of the major attributes autistic people have is that they are capable of developing nearly unbreakable loyalty to people and things. Unfortunately, it appears that this is exactly the kind of people most online organizations want to gain and retain...
Yes, definitely
Less social media, more sunshine and stories! Hah.
Exactly!
Anyway, on the subject of "what do I want from WOLF?" - I love and appreciate the glimpses into your soul, much more than the posts about Tim Walz or whatever. I assume all your serious readers do, tbh. But there also is an extent to which I'm not sure I *deserve* glimpses into your soul - especially not relative to, e.g., your kids. (Your THREE kids, incidentally! Holy shit, congrats! Not sure how I missed this!) The algorithm, even on a low-key social media platform like this, can flatten you out - turn you into a gollumized monomaniac obsessed with roving transexual death gangs or whatever. But it can also wring you out and turn your life into fodder for public consumption. From my subscriber perspective, but also from my perspective as someone who would like you to have a good existence, the question isn't so much "how much should Eddy write?" but "is Eddy's writing a positive force in his life?" ... which only you can answer! But it is plausible to me that the deeply personal posts here, much as I enjoy them, could be bad for you in a way less obvious than that of pure numbers-go-up-posting.
All good questions!
And also a good sign for me, since slowing down and digging deeper is part of the reason for potentially slowing down. It also might be a good idea, three years into this endeavor, to give the newsletter more of an identity, rather than just being "whatever I feel like writing about right now."
I found that I could lose a full half of my audience by labeling a piece Part I, and even more by labeling it
Part II.
Back in January I wrote an essay lamenting the loss of gatekeepers. We use to complain about their ability to perfectly judge quality but at least they were trying. The algos favor things that are anti-quality. We’re probably destroying an entire generation of quality “content creators” by burying their work.
Definitely agree with this. Gatekeepers are annoying and cam be terrible but it might be worse without them.
There is an audience out there of people who love long, thoughtful, beautifully-written pieces like yours—I am one of them, and I am grateful for posts like this, which remind us that we have power over ourselves and, especially, over our attention.
Your closing paragraph reminded me of a wonderful book called The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian. Christian was a journalist for Harper’s (I think), and back in the early days of AI, he participated in a huge Turing Test, in which various AIs and several human volunteers chatted online with testers, who tried to figure out who was human and what was AI.
As his title reflects, Christian was deemed by the organizers to be the most human human—everyone could tell quicker for him than for anyone else that he was a human being. The book is a reflection on what it means to be human in the computer age. It’s just wonderful. I’ve put a link below in case you or your readers are interested.
https://brianchristian.org/the-most-human-human/
Thanks, Mari!
This is my take on Twitter and it's influence on social media based social movements.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cyberwanderlust/p/why-feminists-should-abandon-social