Newsletters are not supposed to make you feel dumb.
My mother unsubscribed from this newsletter after a MERE five days.
Mom: So Dad told me not to tell you, but I guess you will probably find out eventually. I unsubscribed to your TinyLetter. Me: ... why?! Mom: I didn’t get it! Me: What’s not to get! Mom: I didn’t know what you were talking about! It made me feel dumb, Cait. Newsletters are not supposed to make you feel dumb.
[Long, sad, generational pause]
Mom: Well Dad told me you were trying to get your numbers up, so I’m sorry I, you know ... brought them down.
Well. The bad news is that not even my mother loves me. The good news is I still have my Dad to inflate readership. Hi Dad. In happier news:
1. Y’all can have your unplugging and your digital detoxes and your trendly offline retreats -- the whole industry is pointless and totally misconceived. “It suggests that the selves we are online aren’t authentic, and that the relationships that we forge in digital spaces aren’t meaningful. This is odd, because some of our closest friends and most significant professional connections are people we’ve only ever met on the Internet ... It’s odder still because we not only love and socialize online but live and work there, too.”
2. The U.S. no longer controls the Internet. “What!” you say. “I thought the Internet was a magical place beyond government control!” In fact, certain critical aspects of the web are regulated by governments and other agencies, and someone’s written a very lucid explanation of all that over here. (Related: Stories like this are probs why my mother unsubscribed.)
3. “What I learned hanging out with Nigerian email scammers.” That scamming life ain’t what it used to be.
Rob Ford, how are you still around?
Postscripts: Does being drunk make you funny? Does bisexuality exist? Starbucks wants to make real drinks and I want to make the next cronut. Wikipedia’s war for Crimea. Internet quiz of the day/month/year. What political websites looked like in 1996. Who invented the chocolate chip cookie. Unfortunate truth bombs of the afternoon: Wheel of Fortune is not that hard and Spotify “hacking” is not that radical. “That [Ellen selfie] was a pretty cheap stunt” -- Barack Obama, sore loser.
Until tomorrow!@caitlindewey
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