It’s Not You, It’s Me

So August kinda got away from me. Let me start by saying sorry for the radio silence. I got hit with a nasty cold on the way back from a work trip and recovered just in time for a personal trip. The job job just took up all my extra cycles for those couple of weeks and my intended schedule here suffered. More importantly though, that job job converted me from a contract role to full time. Starting next week I’ll officially be the Senior Creative Strategist for Travel at Pinterest. I’m pretty excited. 

It’s an odd feeling, getting hired for the job you’ve been doing. Things changing and staying the same in the same moment. I’m choosing to lean into the change side of things. Let the job feel new for myself and discover how I can approach it differently or learn something new in the process. Part of that will mean letting Kinda Brief be more of a background project, at least for a while. 

Two years ago, when I got laid off, started freelancing, and started this newsletter, I had no idea if anyone would want to read it. You all surprised me in the most wonderful way. It’s been amazing having this outlet to talk about the squirrely places where tech, business, and culture brush up against each other with you. At a moment when I could have been full of doubt about my professional capabilities, you didn’t let me sink into that negativity. Thank you! 

So going forward my plan is to abandon any kind of regular schedule. No more news roundup issues. When an idea strikes me that I need to write through, it may turn into a one-off email. This project has always been evolving, so who knows how long this approach will last. But for now it’s what feels right. 

Before I pseudo sign off for a bit, I want to leave you all with two things. First, for everyone who values the roundup issues, I’m going to break down my info gathering system and share some of my favorite sources for staying in the know. Second, I just want to wax for a few paragraphs on the state of the web right now. Sound good? Let’s go! 

How I Work 

I have three main tools for getting the info I need to synthesize stories into a roundup:

• Email/GMail 

• RSS/Feedly (RIP Google Reader)

• Podcasts/PocketCast 

Here are just a few of the top sources I recommend in each category. 

What email newsletters 

• Garbage Day 

• Platformer 

• Social Media Today 

What’s in my RSS Feed?

• The Verge 

• 404 Media 

• Ad Age 

What podcasts am I listening to?

• The Vergecast 

• Tech Won’t Save Us

• Vibe Check 

• Keep It 

• The Town 

So how’s the web feeling these days?

One of the themes that’s been bubbling under every issue of Kinda Brief is that we are living through a big pivot in how the internet works and how we relate to it. That’s what’s made writing about it so much fun for two years. The past decade was defined by the rise of a handful of big American technology companies and their consolidation of influence on how we use the web. You shop with Amazon, you search with Google, you watch TV with Netflix, you socialize with Meta., etc. There were smaller players around the edges but they largely either remained niche or got acquired into one of the major platforms. 

Then the election of Donald Trump and TikTok happened. All of a sudden there was political and social capital across multiple countries and ideological positions to question the role of these companies in our lives. How are these platforms influencing our elections and our kids? That set of concerns has unlocked a wave of tech regulation in Europe, renewed anti-trust action in the US, and borderline moral panic conversations like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. 

How have the tech companies who control the walled gardens of the web responded? Generative AI. So now we are in a strange spot. The existing platforms are sinking resources into tech that has the potential to poison their value proposition by flooding the zone with low-quality, spammy content that doesn’t appeal to anyone. The potential for big self owns has never been higher for this collection of companies.

We’ve seen what happens when one of the lesser houses of the tech monopolistic court does a massive self own. Twitter decays into X. Meta was able to launch Threads off the back of Elon’s generally bad vibes last summer, and just this week Bluesky’s seen a massive influx of users, largely from Brazil, where X was banned after Elon picked a fight with their government over moderation action. What was Twitter is splintering off, part of its audience is going back into the ecosystem of an even larger established tech company, and part of it’s going out into the wilds of a new app. 

I think we are about to see that happen across a lot of digital spaces. Regulation and antitrust actions by governments will force the big platforms to pivot or drop aspects of their locked in platforms. Platforms that can’t properly moderate AI content or deploy it in a way that actually adds value for users, will see user behavior shift. These two forces are going to move attention around. Some of it will just hop over to the next walled garden that feels a little more well maintained. Some of it will seek out strange, DIY, novel, niche, and new pockets of the web where folks experiment with new ways of connecting online. 

I’m personally excited about exploring this new digital frontier, discovering the joys and challenges that will come along with it. My worry is that there won’t be enough of the me’s out there excited to experiment with a new online to make these experiments economically viable. Good ideas pioneered on niche sites will just get acquired or copied into the big players that survive this moment of realignment. Or maybe there’ll be enough of us punks to keep the web weird, fun, useful, and joyful.

*I’m very dyslexic, and this is a largely free project/hobby. I do not set aside the same time for proofreading that I do for other professional work. If you spot a typo that would cause a communication error, please reach out to gently let me know.