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đđŒ Hello!
How goes it? This week I almost, and I mean almost, switched from self-hosting my newsletters with MailPoet to Revue. I was an OG user of the latter, and it's recently been acquired by Twitter so has some nice integrations. However, it's still flaky, and I realised the error of my ways while experimenting during a time when the whole service went down.
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Anyway, this month has been as they say a month and I'll let you peruse the links below to find out why. The biggest clues, as ever, are in the weeknotes, but if you're only here for the link goodness you're of course welcome to skip those. I've separated out my three favourite links from the 31 others for those who might self-identify as 'time poor'.
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It's always nice to hear from readers of this newsletter, especially at this time of the year. So hit reply or just...
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Did someone forward this to you? Sign up for yourself here đ
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đ„ Best of Thought Shrapnel
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Of the 34 posts I published this month on Thought Shrapnel, these were my three favourites.
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Earlier this week, in a soon-to-be released episode of the Tao of WAO podcast, we were talking about the benefits and pitfalls of NGOs like Greenpeace partnering with influencers. The upside? Engaging with communities that would otherwise be hard-to-reach. The downside? Influencers can be unpredictable.
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It's somewhat inevitable, therefore, that "brand-safe" fictional influencers would emerge. As detailed in this article, not only are teams of writers creating metaverses in which several characters exist, but they're using machine learning to allow fans/followers to "interact".
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The boundary between the real and fictional is only going to get more blurred.
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FourFront is part of a larger wave of tech startups devoted to, as aspiring Zuckerbergs like to say, building the metaverse, which can loosely be defined as âthe internetâ but is more specifically the interconnected, augmented reality virtual space that real people share. Itâs an undoubtedly intriguing concept for people with a stake in the future of technology and entertainment, which is to say, the entirety of culture. Itâs also a bit of an ethical minefield: Isnât the internet already full of enough real-seeming content that is a) not real and b) ultimately an effort to make money? Are the characters exploiting the sympathies of well-meaning or media illiterate audiences? Maybe!
On the other hand, thereâs something sort of darkly refreshing about an influencer âopenlyâ being created by a room of professional writers whose job is to create the most likable and interesting social media users possible. Influencers already have to walk the delicate line between aspirational and inauthentic, to attract new followers without alienating existing fans, to use their voice for change while remaining âbrand-safe.â The job has always been a performance; itâs just that now that performance can be convincingly replicated by a team of writers and a willing actor.
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I've only just discovered the writing of Anne Helen Petersen, via one of the many newsletters and feeds to which I subscribe. I featured her work last week about remote working.
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Petersen's newsletter is called Culture Study and the issue that went out yesterday was incredible. She talks about this time of year â â â a time I struggle with in particular â and gets right to the heart of the issue.
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I've learned to take Vitamin D, turn on my SAD light, and to go easy on myself. But there's always a little voice suggesting that this is how it's going to be from here on out. So it's good to hear what other people advise. For Petersen, it's community involvement.
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A teacher recently told me that thereâs a rule in her department: no major life decisions in October. The same holds true, she said, for March. But March is well-known for its cruelty. I didnât realize it was the same for October, even though it makes perfect sense: the charge of September, those first golden days of Fall, the thrill of wearing sweaters for the first time, those are gone. Soon itâll be Daylight Savings, which always feels like having the wind knocked out of the day. People in high elevations are already showing off their first blasts of snow. We have months, months, to go.
As distractions fade, youâre forced to sit with your own story of how things are going. Maybe youâd been bullshitting yourself for weeks, for months. It was easy to ignore my bad lunch habits when I was spending most of the day outside. Now itâs just me and my angry stomach and scraping the tub of the hummus container yet again. Or, more seriously: now itâs just me swimming against the familiar tide of burnout, not realizing how far it had already pulled me from shore.
Is this the part of the pandemic when weâre happy? When weâre angry? When weâre hanging out or pulling back, when weâre hopeful or dismayed, when weâre making plans or canceling them? The calendar moves forward but weâre stuck. In old patterns, in old understandings of how work and our families and the world should be. Thatâs the feeling of regression, I think. Itâs not that weâre losing ground. Itâs that we were too hopeful about having gained it.
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Austin Kleon summarises Bill O'Hanlon's idea around there being 'four energies' that writers can dig into. They may need translating for a British audience ('pissed' means something different over here...) but I like it as an organising idea.
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Related: Buster Benson's 'Seven Modes (for seven heads)' from his seminal post Live like a hydra.
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The energies are split between âwhat you love and what upsets youâ:
OâHanlon goes on to say many of his early books were âwritten from a combination of pissed and blissed.â
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âïž The rest of Thought Shrapnel
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Everything's subjective, right? Here's the other 31 posts I published:
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đ
Weeknotes
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- Weeknote 43/2021 â "Weâve been on holiday this week, spending a few nights away in Dumfries & Galloway. In a quirk of geography, this is a part of Scotland thatâs actually no further north than..."
- Weeknote 42/2021 â "Iâm composing this from bed, a privilege afforded to me by both being on holiday and it being âblackout weekendâ for youth football. In a surprising breakout of common sense, the FA have..."
- Weeknote 41/2021 â "Those who read my last weeknote will not be surprised to learn that I havenât slept that well this week. Sleep is the most foundational of what I usually refer to as..."
- Weeknote 40/2021 â "This week started off with a migraine. My wife, Hannah, was away on a combined work trip to visit the NHS Digital offices in Exeter and to see family in Devon. I got the kids into bed early on Sunday night so that I could..."
- Weeknote 39/2021 â "Iâm only managing to put time aside to sit down and write this late on Sunday afternoon, which is unusual. With one less adult around Chez Belshaw, this weekend has been a whirlwind of..."
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Some say he's sluggish. Others think he's thuggish. No-one thinks he's puggish.
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Many thanks to Bryan Mathers of Visual Thinkery for the Thought Shrapnel logo.
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All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners and are used in this newsletter are for identification purposes only.
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