My brain feels so scattered that I'm not sure what to write for my first post here. But then, that's part of the reason I decided to start writing, because I think it will be good for me to write things out to clarify thinking and as a kind of exercise in not overly editing myself. In that spirit, for now, I'll probably just write as things come to me without going back to edit them. Not wholly stream-of-consciousness, but enough that when that instinct to stop and considers comes about I try to ignore it. And try not to go back and edit it. Shit, I should edit this.
I like getting meta, so let's start with what pushed me over the edge to start writing. I've been thinking about it for several years -- I think it's useful to the mind write out your ideas and forces you to be specific and not skip over things in a way that just thinking them through doesn't. I also kind of get disgusted with my current media habits of basically pure consumption and no production. Having no plans to produce makes it difficult to distinguish when you are consuming media to detach versus consuming media in a thoughtful way, no matter how high brow it might be. Having a space to write down thoughts about what I've read forces me to at least sometimes be thoughtful about what I've consumed and to form and clarify my own opinions about it.
Making sure I'm forming my own opinions about things has been nagging at me lately. I've had a sense that I go on Substack or read opinion pieces to find the "best" ideas, and I work through the arguments, and if they seem rational and fit in my world view then I adopt them. I don't think that's a bad thing -- you can't be thinking about everything everywhere all at once to develop your own opinions from first principles about everything. But lately, two things have me examining whether I'm adopting ideas with the intentionality and agency that I would like to:
1. I've been reading Substack quite a bit lately. There are more and more writers every day, and you can find a diverse collection of long form pieces on at least investing and current events. In the last couple of weeks -- possibly because I started reading more political pieces, possibly because users started applying different SEO techniques -- I noticed my feed started to get more click-baity.
Many items appear in my feed as essentially QTs, where a quote from a piece is highlighted along with a short commentary from the non-author doing the highlighting. And more and more of them would be comments like "If you read just one thing this year, make it this" and other hyperbolic things that when I see several times in a row makes my BS alarms go off. Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of talented writers on Substack and the way niches work, it's possible that these people genuinely thought that the piece they read had a valuable insight.
But for me, I try to be allergic to a hyperbolic vibe. Some part of me revolts at the idea of being emotionally manipulated, so when I see multiple comments recommending writing like that and put that together with the different strategies we know social media companies use to optimize for engagement, it's just a turn-off. And it makes me start to question, how many of my opinions would be genuinely held in a vacuum? Was I manipulated into being more agreeable to take up any of these opinions? Maybe I should write about my beliefs to test them out and provide myself some defense that they aren't purely mimetic.
Shoot, I've run out of time, but in keeping with my objectives, I'm going to put a pin in things here and hit publish and then come back to them later.
I like getting meta, so let's start with what pushed me over the edge to start writing. I've been thinking about it for several years -- I think it's useful to the mind write out your ideas and forces you to be specific and not skip over things in a way that just thinking them through doesn't. I also kind of get disgusted with my current media habits of basically pure consumption and no production. Having no plans to produce makes it difficult to distinguish when you are consuming media to detach versus consuming media in a thoughtful way, no matter how high brow it might be. Having a space to write down thoughts about what I've read forces me to at least sometimes be thoughtful about what I've consumed and to form and clarify my own opinions about it.
Making sure I'm forming my own opinions about things has been nagging at me lately. I've had a sense that I go on Substack or read opinion pieces to find the "best" ideas, and I work through the arguments, and if they seem rational and fit in my world view then I adopt them. I don't think that's a bad thing -- you can't be thinking about everything everywhere all at once to develop your own opinions from first principles about everything. But lately, two things have me examining whether I'm adopting ideas with the intentionality and agency that I would like to:
1. I've been reading Substack quite a bit lately. There are more and more writers every day, and you can find a diverse collection of long form pieces on at least investing and current events. In the last couple of weeks -- possibly because I started reading more political pieces, possibly because users started applying different SEO techniques -- I noticed my feed started to get more click-baity.
Many items appear in my feed as essentially QTs, where a quote from a piece is highlighted along with a short commentary from the non-author doing the highlighting. And more and more of them would be comments like "If you read just one thing this year, make it this" and other hyperbolic things that when I see several times in a row makes my BS alarms go off. Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of talented writers on Substack and the way niches work, it's possible that these people genuinely thought that the piece they read had a valuable insight.
But for me, I try to be allergic to a hyperbolic vibe. Some part of me revolts at the idea of being emotionally manipulated, so when I see multiple comments recommending writing like that and put that together with the different strategies we know social media companies use to optimize for engagement, it's just a turn-off. And it makes me start to question, how many of my opinions would be genuinely held in a vacuum? Was I manipulated into being more agreeable to take up any of these opinions? Maybe I should write about my beliefs to test them out and provide myself some defense that they aren't purely mimetic.
Shoot, I've run out of time, but in keeping with my objectives, I'm going to put a pin in things here and hit publish and then come back to them later.