Picture this: Anne and I are walking, deep in conversation about one of the twenty-odd disasters befalling the world these days, when out of my mouth pop the words “like I said in my newsletter.”
Woah. If this feels like a terrible, terrible example of 21st century technological creep, that’s because it is! I can’t have a conversation with Anne without referencing something I wrote on my blog? What’s wrong with me?
I might as well be this moron:
Luckily for my relationship, this kind of self-promotion is an outlier. I don’t usually refer back to things that I’ve written in conversation, mostly because I can’t assume everyone has read what I wrote and also because it can be obnoxious.
But what if I did? Last week, my newsletter laid out a point about optimism that I had been trying to articulate for a while. The trouble is that, unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell, it is difficult to clearly and succinctly outline an argument in casual conversation. Even more challenging is keeping your thoughts on track when the people you are talking with keep leading the discussion in different directions:
You: I think, between the big three, McDonald’s is better than Wendy’s and Burger King because it has Big Macs, and that is my favorite fast food burger of all time
Them: Yea but you love Shake Shack!
You: Well, yea, but between those three McDonald’s is better. If we include Shake Shack…
Them: Dude you’re all over the place! What do you like better, McDonald’s or Shake Shack?
If your life is anything like mine, then this happens a lot. And it’s not any one person’s fault (although some people are fairer conversationalists than others) – it’s the logical outcome of multiple semi-informed people trying to have a discussion with one another. We would struggle just as hard playing bridge, since bridge is also a game where the majority of us are inexperienced and do not fully understand the rules.
So with that context, I actually think a world in which more people blogged would be a great one. There would be far more time to think through our own opinions, to put those opinions on paper, and then to refine what doesn’t seem to make sense. For In Defense of New York, I initially wrote the piece arguing that New York City will be completely fine after COVID. Then, in the process of refining the argument, I realized I had no idea what I was talking about, and stumbled upon how I really felt: that we should all just stop making outlandish predictions. If I’d been talking with a friend, I wouldn’t have had the time to reconsider and revise my opinion before I found myself digging in my heels to defend what I’d said.
A light version of the “everyone’s a blogger” pipe-dream has been happening in the last six months, as politics and COVID take up bigger and bigger chunks of everyone’s brainpower, and texting conversations become more frequent. But while texting a friend gives you a bit more time to flesh out your thoughts, it’s pretty limiting. For one thing, it’s still hard to flesh out an argument without being interrupted, as anyone who has had to respond to multiple points in text message form will recognize (yea haha, totally agree with you on that first point. And on your second point, no f*cking way dude).
But it’s a start. For now, we can imagine the outcome if, before entering any substantive discussion, each participant had to sit down and journal for ten minutes, then read aloud what they’d written. Feasible? No. Incredibly lame? Yes. But I’d wager a lot of money that the discussions to come out of that process would be a lot more productive.