Newsletters

I’ve recently gotten back into newsletters. Not ones from companies, but ones from actual people (currently, I’m enjoying Austin Kleon’s, which includes 10 interesting things to check out).

What I love about these newsletters is that I’ve already given permission to the creators. I’ve already enrolled in a list, and I actually look forward to the newsletter every week. Compare this to my RSS or Facebook or Twitter feed, which basically does exactly what the word “feed” entails: it feeds me… total crap. Since we literally scroll through our feeds searching for gems amongst a sea of shit, the headlines and 160 character tweets have to be eyeball-grabbing. So we have our eyeballs grabbed and released over and over until something of value appears or until we get tired and move on.

The newsletters I subscribe to are illustrious, well-designed, and full of interesting content. It might make sense to scale down my intake to just newsletters, only returning to the land of social media every week or so.

If only.