Tag: newsletters

Rethinking How I Use Internet: 4

~ Ahmet A. Sabancı ~ Leave a comment
This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Rethinking the Internet

Do you ever feel tired just by using internet, mostly the social media platforms?

Not sure when it started but I’m feeling tired every time I check social media in the way they designed. With algorithmic timeline, not filtered, filled with “personalized recommendations” and advertisement. Still not sure which part contributes that tiredness the most but when I check from the lists I’ve created or use my private accounts to see what people are up to, I can stay online more. In the first case, feeling of giving up everything related to internet comes fast.

I guess one of the main reason of this can be seen from this quote by Robin Sloan,

No reasonable human needs more than 10,000 other humans to read their words within twenty minutes of writing them.

Robin Sloan – platforms.fyi

Everything is too much on social media. Because that’s how they make money. You have to be bombarded with information you can’t really control all the time and you have to react to that information quickly. Otherwise no one will see you on these platforms. Algorithm starts to hate you and hides you under more and more ads. It doesn’t matter if your friend wants to hear from you, you have to please the algorithm first.

To please it, you have to be fast. You have to play by its rules and be prepared to react whatever it gives you. Otherwise, you’ll get buried.

And I think I want to be buried by the algorithm for a while. To rest and work slowly, not rushing to react all the stuff. Instead of feeling tired just because I want to hear from people I really want to, I prefer to be buried by it. Will be using those platforms lesser for a while, focusing my energy to the streams which I can control the speed of it. I’ll be watching and stopping by time to time, of course.

But if you really want to hear from me or talk to me, places like here or the secret channels will be your best shot.

On Newsletters

~ Ahmet A. Sabancı ~ Leave a comment

Don’t know if this is a real thing but I might be addicted to newsletters. Maybe it’s something about the format itself or it’s just I’m mostly following people I really enjoy reading pretty much everything they write. But there might be something more about it.

Something about the newsletters makes it more sincere, makes me want to read it without any interruption and with all focused on. Even some books can’t get that much attention from me.

My guess, it’s related to relationship newsletters creates between writer and the reader/follower. It’s not like a social network follow. I don’t want to miss any installment or any sentence. I asked the writer to send me these anytime they wrote something. And send it directly to me. I guess it feels more direct than anything else because we feel our inboxes are our most private zones online and inviting someone to access there anytime they want to share something with us feels different than anything else.

And it feels kind of free and open, like blogs. You can do anything you want, any way you want. No one can limit what you can do or kick you out just because you tried something. It makes people become more interested in newsletters because they think it’s something new (it’s not) and blogs are dead (it’s not).

I was experimenting with the newsletter format for some time in Turkish and one of my 2016 resolutions (which I kept in my notebook and, honestly, a bit lazy to turn it into a blog post) was use this format more actively. I want to see what can I do with this format. Also I really want to gain the habit of writing regularly and more (especially in English) so creating an English newsletter too seemed like a good idea.

If you can read Turkish, my regular newsletter called Tuhaf Gelecek is out every Sunday evening (according to Turkey’s timezone, GMT+2) and you can subscribe here: http://tinyletter.com/tuhafgelecek

And if you can read English, my English newsletter experiment Weird and Deadly Interesting is here: http://tinyletter.com/weirdanddeadlyinteresting Hoping to send the first episode in this month and hope to make it regular soon.

On the name “Weird and Deadly Interesting”: For some time, I was thinking about how to describe what I’m interested as a writer and couldn’t find any short description for it. I was not focused on couple topics that have marketable names. I’m always an interdiscipliner, needs a bit weird, after the really interesting and dangerous. I never liked splitting the world into pieces which everyone acts like they’re not touching each other. I wanted to see and write about the world, as a whole. And when I looked at the world with these eyes, this name describes what I see.

I first heard the “deadly interesting” from Bruce Sterling, at one of his talks. And it hit me like a lightning. Maybe it’s somehow related to where I live, where I’m looking the world from. But when I added this to weird, it really summed up the world from my eyes.

Anyway, if you’re interested in receiving my English newsletter you can click here and subscribe.

As a bonus, I want to recommend some of my favourite newsletters which definitely worth inviting them in to your inbox. With no particular order:

If you have a newsletter or know a newsletter that you think I might be interested, feel free to recommend via email or just post a comment below.


Updated at 18:05: Latest Orbital Operations Warren sent while I was finishing this, reminded couple more newsletters I already subscribed and also had some really good recommendations which I subscribed immediately. I added those to the list above.