Feedback Appreciated; Yes that means from you [Trenchant Edges]
I'm taking it easy because sitting too long this past week now means laying down hurts. Whoops.
Welcome back to the Trenchant Edges, the weekday newsletter I definitely remembered to update all the info about our newish format for! (Thanks to Stef for pointing out that I did not). Blah blah, plumbing the depths of fringe culture.
I’m taking a light day which will hopefully keep me from another serious relapse.
If you don’t care about me contradicting myself in two essays skip down to the next section.
Earlier this week I wrote a bit about Chapter 4 of the Invisible Landscape, which lays out a bunch of Terence’s speculations about the brain. Well, it turns out I also wrote about it last year and took, uh, a slightly different view on it.
Let’s take a look from earlier this week:
OK, so that seems fine.
But wait, from last year:
OK, so here you can see me kind of riffing along the same lines, but with a much more skeptical edge. This week I was all, “Yeah, that sounds right” vs last year’s, “Terry, are you just bullshitting me again?”
Kinda fun stuff. I pretty much agree with both versions so *shrug*
Just something I noticed and figured I’d call myself on.
This is me asking you to help make this newsletter better.
So, we’ve been going for a bit now and I’ve noticed people are kinda backing off reading each emails. We started May with a 20-30% open rate, now we’re hovering around 10%.
No shade here, but I would like to know if I’m boring y’all. Is 500-1000 words too much 5 days a week? Do my subject lines just suck?
Just want to make sure if there’s something I’m doing wrong to correct it.
Should I add a weekend email where I link back to the previous week?
Any other thoughts related to this?
Alright, that’s my curiosity here. To be clear, I’m gonna keep doing this for as long as I’m entertained and, I warn you, I really enjoy writing. Just nice to have an audience now and then.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Morning Stephen, Brad here... thanks for putting the question out there. I had not thought about it, so as a reader with a high open rate on your stuff, I will just share my perspective and riff a moment, see if that helps you:
I chose to subscribe to your writing because the value prop *blink* was “cool, this guy seems bright and is grooving on McKenna’s whackiness with a critical eye on his ontology, and also, Stephen seems like he is broadly heterodox in his thinking; this is all rare, it aligns with me broadly (gestalt hand wave) so I will pay for the read and support this adventure of his.
Your best writing here is when you take the time to bring de novo Stephen insights to the table. You know when you’re doing it. I would rather see fewer pieces with more brilliant ruthlessly honest Stephen brain showing up rather than seeing you feel like you need to meet some inbox quota. We’re not buddies, I don’t need to hear from you often, you’re MY WRITER, so give me the stuff you’re proud of on your tempo.
Other thoughts:
**Yes, better titles might help people who are sensitive to that style of browsing. I open based on trusted authority, but some probably do on titles.
**who are you? Share more about who the hell you are.
**what are some other big questions you wrestle with that you can situate in a larger frame? What’s the Stephen provisional philosophy of what’s going on? I know you groove on crit (of thinkers with last names starting with ‘Mc’) and there are commonalities in their views or reality, I know what you’re orbiting... would love to see a piece like one of those Edge.org questions you answer “4 things I suspect might be true but cannot prove” or “4 mental models that I keep coming back to.”
I hope this helps tease out my sentiments: let’s go to the next level together as writer and readers.
Keep it up, you rock.
The length is perfect. A weekend “digest” would be pretty great; I’m the type to always get my unread emails down to zero whether I read them or not, so if the newsletter shows up when I don’t have time to read, it’ll often just get ignored, so a second-chance email would rock.