I figure I should write a little thing about this service I'm using, because good things are rare and this is a rare good thing.
HEY is an email service, the second product of a company that's existed for 20+ years now. They have a reputation for being a bit stubborn, and for making things that are almost unsettlingly simple. HEY is no exception. I open it sometimes and feel a little bewildered. Because it feels like there should be something there that just isn't. What's missing? Oh, wait: that general sense that my computer is using me, rather than the other way around. The persistent hum of Response Requested, the all-prevailing dread that, should you look away, something absolutely terrible's about to happen to you.
The idea behind HEY, roughly, is that you should very rarely see emails in your inbox, and that you should be notified that you have emails even less frequently than that. It's one of the quietest apps I've ever used. It takes the exhaustingness of email and makes it so inordinately manageable that sometimes I slink back to it a little lonely, like... "Are you sure there's nothing for me? Well, okay, then."
A couple of weeks ago, HEY's founders announced that they'd be allowing HEY users to publish things to the web. Again, a part of the appeal is this service's aggressive lack of whistles and bells. If you subscribe to this publication, I won't have a clue about it. If you have something you want to say in response, you'll have to email me. The only thing this offers is a space online where words appear, and two options for you to get those words somewhere else. That's it.
If this gets any more complex than this, I'll probably back away from it, and delete whatever's here. But I trust the people who made this not to do that. They have that most miraculous quality of all: they are irritated by all the right things.
It's one of the two purely good things on the entirety of the Internet these days, along with Defector. Which is two more good things than have existed across the whole of the Internet in a great many years.
(Also: you may be able to reply directly to me by replying to this email? I don't really know how this works.)
HEY is an email service, the second product of a company that's existed for 20+ years now. They have a reputation for being a bit stubborn, and for making things that are almost unsettlingly simple. HEY is no exception. I open it sometimes and feel a little bewildered. Because it feels like there should be something there that just isn't. What's missing? Oh, wait: that general sense that my computer is using me, rather than the other way around. The persistent hum of Response Requested, the all-prevailing dread that, should you look away, something absolutely terrible's about to happen to you.
The idea behind HEY, roughly, is that you should very rarely see emails in your inbox, and that you should be notified that you have emails even less frequently than that. It's one of the quietest apps I've ever used. It takes the exhaustingness of email and makes it so inordinately manageable that sometimes I slink back to it a little lonely, like... "Are you sure there's nothing for me? Well, okay, then."
A couple of weeks ago, HEY's founders announced that they'd be allowing HEY users to publish things to the web. Again, a part of the appeal is this service's aggressive lack of whistles and bells. If you subscribe to this publication, I won't have a clue about it. If you have something you want to say in response, you'll have to email me. The only thing this offers is a space online where words appear, and two options for you to get those words somewhere else. That's it.
If this gets any more complex than this, I'll probably back away from it, and delete whatever's here. But I trust the people who made this not to do that. They have that most miraculous quality of all: they are irritated by all the right things.
It's one of the two purely good things on the entirety of the Internet these days, along with Defector. Which is two more good things than have existed across the whole of the Internet in a great many years.
(Also: you may be able to reply directly to me by replying to this email? I don't really know how this works.)