Tiny Little Tectonic Shifts

Well friends, here we are, almost at the end of an extremely long year. I don't know about you, but I'm pooped. My brain is tired, my body is tired, my soul is tired. So what I'm thinking is that we should start easing in to a period of much-needed rest. We'll take today easy-ish, and then we'll give ourselves a break for the next two weeks: You from reading, me from writing. I'll send something out each of the Wednesdays, but since those Wednesdays are December 24th and December 31st—no one wants to read new stuff on those days—what I send will probably be links to fun stuff, or maybe just photos. Like old photos from Flickr, or everyone's favorite, photos of Lumpy. Any requests?

Now, if I may, I'd like to congratulate myself for sending something out every Wednesday this year. Good job, me! No, not everything I sent was a newsletter, and certainly not everything I sent was great. Some of it I already look back on and ask, "I sent that out into the world, to actual living people?" It's not like I'm accountable to a boss besides myself these days or (as we discussed the other week) publishing to a massive, demanding audience. But I stayed consistent and didn't miss a week, which is much harder than you might think. There are a lot of Wednesdays! They come around much more quickly than you'd imagine! Sometimes it feels like there are more Wednesdays than any other days!

One of my original intentions with this newsletter was to pull back the curtain on the tech industry to show people how small the man behind it actually is. I wanted to help more people understand what actually happens in these companies, how decisions get made, why products end up the way they do. Specifically, I wanted to reach people who don't read tech news, who aren't on Bluesky, who frankly don't give that much of a shit about technology in and of itself but who have heard about new platforms and tools and who are interested in how those tools might help them do more of the stuff they do give a shit about. Stuff like writing, connecting with likeminded people, sharing art, finding an audience, facilitating a community, keeping on top of news and in touch with people without also crashing out and losing their minds.

Have I done this? You're a better judge of that than I am, but my sense is yes and no. I've written some pieces about it, but fewer than I might have liked. Sometimes writing about that stuff felt disconnected from everything that was going on in a given week. Or I wanted to write about the context in which all that nuts-and-bolts work happens. I was frequently reminded that even the smallest things I assume are obvious or that everyone knows are, in fact, still pretty new and mind-blowing to the vast majority of people out there. And sometimes I stupidly convinced myself I didn't have anything useful to say or that I actually had no expertise. (Pro tip: Don't do this to yourself. It's really dumb, and is a waste of time and energy.)

I do wonder if this newsletter should have a format, should be more structured, offer a specific X or a regular Y, and maybe it should. And maybe in 2026 it should! If you have thoughts on that, let me know.

But at least for 2025, I'm glad I let myself kind of... y'know, dick around. Writing this newsletter helped me figure out a lot of necessary things. It's been a workshop of sorts, helping me home in on what I'm doing here—in this newsletter but also, like, here on the planet. This has been a lovely thing to realize, because in classic American overachiever fashion I've been pelting myself with thoughts like, "Man, I did so much work this year, but what do I have to show for it? What can I point to as a finished product or as a success?" BACK OFF, BRAIN. I can point to a complete transformation in my understanding of what I'm writing, why I'm writing, and who I'm writing for.

So thank you for hanging out and letting me workshop my ideas and think out loud. Thanks for commenting, emailing, and responding on Bluesky, whether to cheer me on, to offer a differing opinion, or even to critique and criticize. I had some great discussions and some spicy debates, and every single interaction was illuminating in some way. It's like building a little piece of the internet I want to see in the world.

I'm reminded of a curious experience I had the other day on Instagram. As I was scrolling my feed, one of the recommended posts was a meme roundup/slideshow from an influencer of sorts, a Gen X woman who is a "positive psychology midlife coach" for other similarly-aged women. I don't follow her but I've come across her posts on occasion.

When her post came up on my feed, I swiped for a bit to see a few of the memes and then ducked into the comments. One of them (posted below) caught my eye, and I read it before getting to the video in question. When I got to that video and listened to it, I thought, oh wow! That person is absolutely right. I wouldn't have known how to articulate that, but yeah, it doesn't work for me. So I responded, as you see.

As you can see, the author of the post—the influencer slash meme gatherer—had a fun little interaction with the commenter, 12 hours before I chimed in with what I thought was an extremely low-key comment of my own: "I must be terrible at parties too because I agree with you." Perhaps you can imagine my surprise when she responded to me with this.

I didn't go back to the post for a while after my second response, because I didn't see a reply from her in my notifications. But when I tapped on it about 45 minutes later, the comment thread was gone. Instead, she had posted a longer version of her response above, and pinned it to the top of the comments.

During all this, the original commenter followed me, so I followed them back and shot them a DM laughing about this weird interaction. Apparently after my second, longer response—which we both felt was extremely mild, or vanilla if you will—this commenter had said something else both complimentary and (again) mildly critical about the sax player. They'd also pointed out the fact that he was a hot young Gen Z guy playing romantic-sounding sax solos over music that Gen X now sees as "golden oldies," songs like "Linger" by The Cranberries (please kill me, I feel so old). And that's when she deleted our thread without responding to me again, and pinned her comment.

Look, a person absolutely has the right to manage and moderate (even police, if you want to call it that) the comments on their account or their newsletter or whatever. If this woman felt I was being negative or tearing people down, then what can I do? That's her prerogative. She doesn't have to let me comment, I don't have to follow her, there are plenty more memes in the sea.

What I found useful about this whole silly, seemingly meaningless experience was this: The commenter and I, both in finding common ground about the sax solo and in talking about being chided for this "infraction," enjoyed what felt like an old-school internet connection. We had an actual conversation, a good laugh, felt a kinship—far more so than interactions I've seen or had in a comment thread. Isn't that also a positive experience? And is an observation, one with a critical edge, maybe even a criticism, inherently negative? Tearing someone down? When I was on Flickr, trying to get better at photography, I would get so pissy at the critical comments until I realized a lot of them were helpful and allowed me to learn and get better. Isn't that a positive experience?

(Plus, are videos of a hot young Gen Z guy playing sax solos over music loved by Gen X women a true example of someone sharing their art? Maybe! Maybe not.)

These may not be the positive experiences that content creator slash influencer slash life coach wants to build. That's fine. But I do. Call me crazy but lately I've had a little spidey sense, just the smallest tickle of a feeling about something that's still a ways off but I think is there. A microscopic set of cracks, like the ones in David's ankles (still one of my favorite articles!) that aren't visible yet, and won't be for a while: People are getting tired of hollow bullshit, not just on the big scale but in the everyday moments of their lives. We think we want hopecore and posi-vibes meme posts, but really we are dying for human connections that allow us to learn, grow, share, and make our world better in some way. We're tired of watching hot influencers spend their lives having gorgeous sponsored vacations while wearing expensive sponsored clothing. How many more affiliate link roundups can we endure? People need third spaces and technology that facilitates communication, not technology that keeps us home and does our communication for us. I think even Gen Z and Gen Alpha want this, despite the rampant use of ChatGPT for writing and connecting. If anything, I think they want it most of all, we're just not reaching them. You can say I'm full of shit, but every Gen Z person I've ever talked to, anecdotally or in research, says they're worried about everyone their own age.

In 2026 I want to wedge myself into those cracks. I want to figure out how to convince more people: The loneliness and dissatisfaction we feel because of all the Big Tech products we use? They're not a bug. They're a feature. Maybe in 2026 we start planning what we can build next.

See you in January!

Lx