It's a Stay Grounded Newsletter!
Extra! Extra!
Welcome to a Stay Grounded newsletter! Yes, I occasionally post actual newsletters. Usually these are a perk for premium subscribers, but this one is free for everyone! These newsletters are where I share tips n’ tricks, meta content, and other stuff that generally is too short to warrant its own post. In this issue we’ve got:
Special thanks to all my current and future premium subscribers for supporting!
I gave an interview!
I gave an interview to filmmaker Elena Rossini, director of The Illusionists documentary, and the woman behind the Realists and it’s accompanying newsletter. If you like Stay Grounded, you’ll probably like her newsletter too.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun! I have never been interviewed before outside of a job. We talked about making friends via the internet, what happens when good journalism collides with social media algorithms, and why despite what you may assume, I am not really much of a “self-help” or “wellness” sort of person, and certainly not a productivity junkie. You can read it here.
I Made Some Flipboard Magazines
Flipboard is a website and app where people can easily curate feeds (they call them “magazines”) of content they like, and those feeds can be then followed by other people. The killer feature about Flipboard IMO, is that you can follow “magazines” with the RSS reader you probably already have (meaning you don’t even need a Flipboard account) though admittedly their proprietary app experience is pretty slick too. The CEO of Flipboard is also a big advocate for decentralized, open social media like Mastodon, which is uncommon and nice to see.
I often come across good stories and so I created a few Flipboard Magazines I would like to invite you to follow:
“SG Recommends”
This magazine is where I share articles that are similar in spirit to what you’d find on StayGrounded.online, with a mild emphasis on smaller publications and lesser-known writers. It could be old, it could be new, it could be long-form journalism or a video essay, it doesn’t matter. I only add to this on average 1-2 times a week (not trying to add more noise to your digital life) and everything shared here I have personally read in full and deemed to be of quality.
“Thoughtful Reads”
This Magazine is for longer-form content that has nothing to do with tech but I think is neat. In the past six months I have added three things, including one just today so don’t expect too much from this feed. It goes without saying the same standards of quality apply to this feed too.
“Stay Grounded”
These are just Stay Grounded posts in case you have a Flipboard account already and want to follow this newsletter that way.
Mastodon & RSS
In addition to the new Flipboard magazines, I have a Mastodon account where I also sometimes share fun stuff I find. A cool feature of Mastodon is that unlike most social media, you can follow accounts from an RSS reader. It’s like if you could following someone on Twitter without a Twitter account. If you’re confused by Mastodon, I get it, it’s simpler than you might think. I’ve previously answered some common questions about it here.
I’ve mentioned RSS feed readers a few times now. It’s because I love them. If you don’t know what they are, I highly recommend setting one up. It’s kinda like a podcast app but for reading. Podcasts actually use the RSS protocol for distribution, which is why no one company owns or controls podcasting (though Spotify’s tryin’). RSS readers are a wonderful “whole grain” app for making your screen time healthier and reducing it overall. I like Inoreader but there’s a lot out there. Check out my post for more info:
Substack takes a page from the Ticketmaster playbook
Lastly, I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had on Substack’s newish “feature” and the danger I feel it poses to free speech and independent writers. Because some people have asked, I am in the (slow) process of moving Stay Grounded to its own website, and moving payments off of Substack too (I’ve set up a Patreon here in anticipation of this). It’ll be a while though because y’know, life.
When I chose to start publishing with Substack it was because Substack was (and to be clear, remains) a really solid newsletter-sending service that is worth the cut they take from paid subscribers. But Substack has made some moves lately that give the impression that they don’t want to be the best newsletter service, they want to be a below average social media app. The new(ish) “followers” “feature” allows Substack users to follow writers using the Substack app, instead of doing it directly (via email)1. On the surface it sounds innocent enough, but remember that locking audiences and creators to a single platform is exactly what allowed Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and many other companies, to enshittify themselves for profit. If creators and audiences can’t connect directly, middlemen can insert all sorts of junk into their interaction, and even de-prioritize showing audiences content from writers the middleman doesn’t like.
I have 144 followers right now, which isn’t a crazy amount compared to email subscribers, but it’s not nothing. It’s clear Substack would prefer users followed instead of subscribe because the narrower the gap gets between followers and subscribers the harder it becomes for writers to not be dependent on the company. If the only way for a creator to access the audience of people who specifically requested to see their stuff is via a middleman, it means they are pressured to do and write what the company wants of them, instead of how capitalism should work where companies are incentivized to keep their customers (in this case, writers) happy. It’s the Ticketmaster model. An anti-competitive move, a trap for small and new writers, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they start forcing ads into free posts or remove the ability of newsletters to be added to “recommended” lists if they don’t let them take a bigger cut of the money or something.
Look, it’s not the end of the world but after what we’ve seen with Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Amazon and YouTube lately, I think we all know where the path of “locking everyone to your platform” leads, and it’s not good. Thankfully open protocols like email and RSS exist!
A Good Video
I’d never heard of this guy (Mrwhosetheboss) before coming across this video, a quick poke though his history looks like he mostly does highly produced but still clickbaitey stuff like buying a bunch of luxury items and unboxing them on camera. Also all of his videos are in that hypercharged Mr.Beast-esque quick-cutting-never-staying-still style that give Millennials anxiety but Gen Z seems to think is normal (boomers will throw up).
So while I can’t really recommend the channel, I’ll be god-freakin-damned if he doesn’t give one of the clearest best-explained breakdowns about how and why Internet services have been rapidly declining in quality lately. (He doesn’t explicitly mention Substack followers feature but it’s totally there in spirit!)
That’s all for this issue, thank you being a subscriber (or fine, a follower 😉) . Don’t forget to like (that cool bird you’ll see when you go on a walk without your phone) comment (on it’s lovely plumage) and subscribe (to the idea that you are still a complete human without being constantly connected at all time).
See you next week!
If you’re worried about your email ending up on some spam list because a bad newsletter writer abused your trust, just remember you can add a “+” with the name of a source to know where spam is coming from, and it will appear in your normal inbox. For example, If your email address is JimSmith@gmail.com, and you sign up to StayGrounded with “JimSmith+StayGrounded@gmail.com” and later on you get spam sent to that email address, you’ll know it was from me. But I promise I won’t spam you unless I have a really great cryptocurrency project that will 100% go to the moon wait no come back.