Thanksgiving Dinner

what if I am the crazy uncle?

Everyone can have a crazy uncle 365 days a year courtesy of their social media newsfeed. Even when you politely walk away, they might follow you in a desperate attempt to finish their "thought"

What does free speech mean? Is ranting, mindless liking, and triggering your ancient lizard brain speech? I love Substack and am grateful for ALL THAT IT PROVIDES. Substack is placed in the IMPOSSIBLE position to make policy decisions that are rightly made by nation-states.

I left Facebook (Meta) nearly twelve years ago. My writing adventure started about four to five months ago. For some difficult-to-explain reasons, the act of writing is calming for me. There will always be things that can make us anxious. Finding something that does the opposite is a wonderful thing.

I am an optimist and embrace the world gets better and there is always hope. Substack is a great example. Never in human history has the answer to a question (Google), the buildout of a Data Center (the Cloud), or the creation of content (Substack) been easier.

I equate it to “there is less and less friction to do as we wish". Less friction can make dreams a reality. Alas, unbridled freedom has consequences and so do businesses that exploit our nature. Substack creates a place and supports people who want to write. We need not maintain an email list, have a marketing plan, manage and figure out how to release our posts, facilitate comments. It is JUST AMAZING. Does it attract creeps? Sure it does. Can creeps ruin stuff? Sure they can if you let them. I do not envy the challenge to figure out what to do about people who just say crazy s#$%.

I think the common experience that many people share about Thanksgiving captures that for some. Even if not our experience, we can all understand the concept of the crazy uncle or aunt. It is worth considering if you don’t have a crazy aunt/uncle, maybe you are it! I love Substack and appreciate what it offers to me. It also pays to become familiar with the tools they provide to block stupid stuff. Don’t let one bad riff at Thanksgiving ruin a wonderful memory together.

As I become more “invested” in this personal posting adventure, it is natural to worry about what could go wrong. The great thing about life today is “there is less friction to do stuff and not be a victim”. I have taken a few basic steps to archive what I’ve posted and save the stuff I’ve drafted. My plan is imperfect but it is good enough for now.

I would guess that how worried about this you are (if you post a Newsletter) depends on your personality to some extent. We all have a certain level of anxiety and maybe we were just born that way. At least for me, when I started seeing levels of concern about conspiracies and trolls emerging on the platform, I thought oh well. Since not many people were looking at my Newsletter I thought it was like worrying about a wildfire in the next state. It is a tragedy and we count on people to not ignore it but it is not time for me to string a hose on my roof.

For my fellow Substackers who might be moderately concerned about this, here was my basic response. Please share better ideas that are easier to do if you wish in the comments or send me an email. I would imagine my plan took some time to evolve but was not a huge investment in time. Whenever my Email Inbox seems to be crumbling at the gates of SPAM invaders, I usually do a cleanup and unsubscribe to stuff I don’t want to see anyhow. The rest I just deal with by making email rules to put the stuff away I want without having to read it necessarily. Here is my basic evolution of a plan:

(1) I subscribed to a bunch of Newsletters. I rapidly got tired of all of the emails that announced their arrival. (2) It got worse once I started posting myself as you subscribe to your own Newsletter.

(3) I started using the Substack Reader instead of opening emails generally. Anytime I post or others that I subscribe to do, the posts end up at the top of the list and I can ignore the emails. This makes me peek at the ones I want to and gives me a reminder of what I MIGHT have to unsubscribe from at some point.

I created a couple of email rules in my Gmail account. (A) automatically mark MY POSTS as read and archives them in a separate folder named Substack/Posts so I have a record of everything I ever posted at least when originally released. This means 3-4 less emails a week. Hooray!

All of the other substack emails (from other subscriptions) I also (B) automatically mark as read and put them into another folder Substack/Subscriptions. This means quite a few less emails per week. Hip hip hooray.

While I have a few more email rules, they are unimportant to this discussion.

Now I figure if the kingdom of Substack falls to FakeNews or Q-Anon Central most of my effort is safe.

Now I can get back to the 98% of the Thanksgiving Dinner when my crazy uncle isn’t talking. Dinner can still be great! Time for another piece of the pie.

We can all accept a little drama at the holidays as long as there is something to sip and the desserts are bountiful.

Philosophical Analogy

Shall we blame the business? Well, that is convenient and perhaps makes you feel good. There is a wonderful economics principle called “The Tragedy of the Commons”. If we have a wonderful park in my town named Common Park and all of my neighbors own sheep and we allow everyone to bring their sheep to graze in our Common park, what happens to the park? I think we all can easily foresee what happens. Our formerly beautiful park will be overused and damaged and would be hard to walk around in without stepping in things. I think we all might agree this would a “tragedy at Common Park”.

What is our nature? I believe we are a combination of a lizard brain based upon millions of years of evolution and a higher-order brain in front that requires time and consideration to contemplate and show our best selves. That newer, better brain is what makes us human. It is our "better angel". It is also a lot slower than the lizard. Substack is a WONDERFUL invention. The Information Age ruthlessly drops the cost of computing and more unimaginable opportunities like posting your Newsletter become possible. Does it stop? Of course not, instead, the marginal cost to do wonderful things like Substack and provide a publishing utopia will see its incremental costs shrink thanks to Moore's Law.

Shortly after I started posting I struggled with what I might write about. I had one, back of the head idea that had simmered in my brain for over a decade and it became the only time I almost wrote a rant because it was something I believed in with passion. Take a peek but only when you have time as it is pretty long.

Music tonight as usual. The first song is one of my favorite old bands. Ignore the title or at least don’t judge me. This second one is a LONG SONG inspired by the crazy uncle conspiracy people of our modern world. I love the title. The drum play is great.

WHAT’S NEXT?

My next post is inspired by a professional Newsletter that just made me laugh about our need to “rank how good food is”. It triggered me to write this based on a mythical 5-star McDonalds. It is titled “That Could be a Post”.