What is this newsletter?

[Original kick-off email sent to pilot group on 3/23]

Intro:

Hello friends. I am starting a little friends-only newsletter and I’d like you to be involved.

The basic idea of this newsletter is that I’d like to know what the people in my life think about certain things. As I get older and it gets harder to keep in touch with people, I realize that I often don’t know what the people in my life think about certain topics.

Recently I saw a close friend that I hadn't seen in a few months and I was surprised to learn that he has a strong dislike of Timothee Chalamet, and that he enjoys going to see the Avatar movies in theaters. That got me thinking about what my other friends think. What’s Timmy’s approval rating amongst the rest of my friends? Do they also support James Cameron at the box office each time he returns to Pandora? Among the small handful of people I see regularly, I might have a good guess. But for people that I talk to on a less frequent basis, I might be surprised to hear their thoughts. Hence the idea for this newsletter.

Why am I really doing this?

Primarily, this is just meant to be fun and a creative exercise in writing more, plus a way for me to keep in touch with people.

By no means am I trying to make this a big thing or be famous. This is only meant to involve people who I know in my personal life. Your responses and information will be kept private to the best of my ability, unless you want to disclose your identity and hot takes to my small network. I'm not here to flame or expose anyone unless they want that.

Format:

The format of this newsletter-thing will be centered around surveys.

On a periodic basis (weekly? bi-weekly? monthly? we’ll see) I’ll send out a form with a collection of questions for you to vote on within a certain window. These questions will be primarily multiple-choice, but I will include a free-response text box if you care to expand on your opinions.

Your responses will be completely anonymous, although you can feel free to identify yourself if you’d like to, either in your free-responses or just separately to me. Once the voting window is closed, I will compile the results into a write-up, along with some of my own commentary, that will go out to everyone on the distro list.

Some other guidelines and expectations:

The rules and parameters of this will be a living thing, and I'll be clear about what addendums I may make to it over time.

The range of questions may vary. They may not all be original and some of them may simply be boring, or not applicable to many. But I will be open to suggestions!

In general I will try to keep things away from the directly political, although inevitably there may be some topics that bleed over into some political valence. I’m sure you all know my general political values but I’m not really here to get into any of that. The questions will mostly try to be light-hearted and not that serious.

The people who will be included in this and will be receiving the surveys will only be people I know in my life. That primarily just means friends and some family. Please don't forward the survey links to anyone else.

This is not meant to be a scientific exercise or a meaningful representation of society; the people I know in my life are disproportionately educated, financially comfortable, urban-dwelling, liberal, and millennial-ish (see: “WEIRD”).

So the topics of surveys may gear towards some subset of interests that are relevant to this crowd.

I may take some forays into more niche topics like sports, food, movies, etc. in the case there's enough participation to make it interesting.

The post-survey write-ups might also include some of my other stray thoughts, commentary, and blog-esque writings if I’m feeling up to it (i.e., not overly lazy / embarrassed).

Some other shouts

This idea is loosely inspired by a couple things:

Julia's delightful yearly Alternative Oscars ballot, which is always fun to partake in and help to brainstorm ideas on:

The random ad hoc polls that happen in my group chat with my home friends:

These examples might give some idea on what kind of stuff I'll be asking about.

Conclusion:

Before anyone says it I know this is kind of dumb. I’m trying not to think about it too hard. And there’s a good chance I lapse on this at some point and give up. But I’d like to give it a try and I hope you’ll humor me on this for a bit. Please don't make fun of me, my self-esteem is very fragile.

If you’re interested, just respond to this and let me know what email address you’d like the surveys and round-ups sent to (I just picked the email addresses that I have on-hand). Will have a first batch of surveys sent out within the week. (I’ll set up a more robust sign-up system eventually if this picks up steam. It will probably make sense to do this via Substack or Ghost or something similar eventually, but I just want to keep it lo-fi for now).

Note for new readers:

Use the sign-up button below if you'd like to be involved.