33 Comments
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Jefferson Graham's avatar

Do this more often. Great column.

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Summer's avatar

blogging never went out of style. i mean, substack is effectively a blog platform that has a slightly-better distribution system baked-in...

... seriously, wtf.

... been blogging every single day for the last 20 years. it's still here and it's not going anywhere.

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Behrouz Jafarnezhad's avatar

hey John, you're the creator of Pressgram, right?

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Summer's avatar

omfg. yes! how are you?

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Behrouz Jafarnezhad's avatar

i'm great mate, thanks. how are you? i see you've got a couple of newsletters for me to subscribe to lol

PS. i used to love pressgram; i'm pretty sure i still can find some posts with pressgram in my archive lol

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Summer's avatar

i've got a new venture-funded project... i'm using substack as a delivery system for the newsletter: yen.fm

... it's a b2b saas platform on the backend though: http://commsaas.org

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Behrouz Jafarnezhad's avatar

oh that's super cool! will definitely follow it.

shameless plug: would love your feedback on my last newsletter issue [it's along the same lines as this one]: https://perspectiveix.substack.com/p/-the-ex-influencerpresident-of-the

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Summer's avatar

checking it out!!

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User's avatar
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Mar 4, 2021
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Summer's avatar

cool. i mean, i know sobriety. i also know addiction. if you're aim is to help others get on the right side of it all... im' down. that's a good and worthy mission.

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Allan LEONARD's avatar

Great article. That model sounds like it will work well for those who wish to engage; a greater challenge is how to influence those who are more ready to accept simpler, less nuanced discussion. Discuss.

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John Ward's avatar

That is a GREAT point. It seems like there is a large group of people who want no deeper involvement in a conversation than the ability to express a reaction through an emoji.

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Miguel Amaral's avatar

Yes, I fear for my generation (college-aged and below). My fellow young people have even adopted a 'Twitter'-style of thinking, 'retweeting' the popular and oft entertaining sayings of the day (hashtag culture), and ending the conversation there. No room for hypotheticals or thought experiments and don't even mention genuine disagreements. Mindless scrolling devoid of any thinking.

Since television modern media has gotten only more and more engaging without being at all demanding, and we have the attention spans to show it.

This is not all young people of course, I've met a few gems (perhaps 1%) and read about a number of them doing great things so perhaps the future isn't so bleak.

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Paul Keefe's avatar

Fantastic piece. Would love more of these stories!

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Rahaf Harfoush's avatar

I loved this. It's also great training in this quick hits world to deep dive and sit with an idea.

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Behrouz Jafarnezhad's avatar

As someone who's followed Zeynep's work and the economics of attention for some time, both commercially and academically, I believe the problem is the lack of education and understanding of the attention economy - and its exploitation by social media platforms, not the attention economy itself.

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Michael Pershan's avatar

Alright how are you bringing back the blogroll tho?

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Nick Lewis's avatar

Love a good blogroll and if you’ve come across any sites built with Eleventy you will see some.

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Jack Gentile's avatar

You write, I will be the READER. Thank you.

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Anita Makri's avatar

“It’s hard to go for that scale with kind of complicated, nuanced stuff.” Yes. Good to see this acknowledged somewhere. Would love to see it cultivated more on Substack.

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Fransantonie's avatar

This is so true. Jus a simple thank you for underlining this important truth in our time.

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Michael Holloway's avatar

Back to email and blogs - the social media apps are dead via Congressional decree.

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Journeys into Neuroplasticity's avatar

Fantastic article! Thank you

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Tony DePrato's avatar

Good idea.

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ric leczel's avatar

Awesome post. I explore similar themes on my platform, riclexel.substack.com

Particularly the theme of tribalism, and how it manifested itself during my incarceration. I would be honored if you gave me a read.

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Marianne's avatar

NewsBox is right-leaning politically incorrect publication reporting on USA politics,China and Economy

https://plinews.substack.com/

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