John Roderick – XOXO Festival

A frequent guest at XOXO, John Roderick is the frontman and songwriter of The Long Winters, the receiving end of Merlin Mann’s weekly phone calls for Roderick on the Line, and one of our favorite storytellers of all time.

One of the most consistently funny talks from XOXO 2016 1 , John Roderick laid on the line the myth of no effort. 2 The idea that trying to be cool, to avoid being considered uncool, is unhealthy. Being cool is not more important than admitting to yourself and others that something required hard work. Because, as my dad likes to say, “If it wasn’t hard, they wouldn’t call it work”.

I wonder if some of this comes from the fallacy of youth. That as young people we’re not well-educated on how to take a compliment. Maybe it’s partial social anxiety at being “found out” (like imposter syndrome) so it’s easier to minimize and brush off the effort it truly took to do something. I was raised in the midwest, so part of how I was raised was to remain earnest and modest. Maybe that shortens the impact of our work and our growth as people?

In the second half of the talk Roderick got into why he kept finding himself doing things that came to him easily.

Speaking for myself (and many other people I know), some people keep doing the easy thing, or find another easy thing thinking it’s harder, but never get the courage to do the truly hard thing. Doing the truly hard thing is, unsurprisingly, hard.

So, my encouragement to you: Don’t be contented with being contented.

As Jackie put it while watching this with me, “There is always more to be done. Be ok with the ambiguity of that.”

Internet Health Advisory

I’m the “computer guy” in my family. Which means I’m often asked about what to buy or use, if an offer online is legit or a scam, and what to do when something breaks – always the guy when something breaks. 🙂 Most of my advice is reacting to someone’s inquiry. Yet this time friends, I have an Internet health advisory to share with you all. You didn’t ask for it, it’s my opinion, but I love you and think you should consider it.

Over the last year I’ve examined how I use the Internet and am trying to to better. Social media, a never-ending stream of terrible news 1, and always more things I could be reading/doing than there is time for, have motivated me to consider how I approach my consumption and participation on the web.

First bit of advice, get off social media. Bookmark a few sites to check. Sign up for an RSS service and throw a few URLs in. Foster Kramer writes 2 in a “An open memo, to all marginally-smart people/consumers of internet “content””

“By going to websites as a deliberate reader, you’re making a conscious choice about what you want a media outlet to be—as opposed to letting an algorithm choose the thing you’re most likely to click on. Or! As opposed to encouraging a world in which everyone is suckered into reading something with a headline optimized by a social media strategist armed with nothing more than “best practices” for conning you into a click.”

Get off of the services that try to tell you what to read and find the things that you want to read.

Second, make and find smaller communities. Either by pruning your friend list (do you need to know what someone you went to high school with – who you haven’t talked to in 20 years – had for lunch?)3, following a more selective group of people (and never brands), and turning off notifications for every bloop and beep these services try to innodate you with.

This article on “tiny, weird online communities” resonated with me and I hope it encourages you as well.

“The mainstream social internet is so big; everyone is connected to everyone, over a billion on Facebook alone. The consequences of connection — fake news, radicalization, massive targeted harassment campaigns, algorithmically-generated psychological torment, inane bullshit — were not part of what we were sold. We don’t really have the option of moving our lives off of the internet, and coordinated boycotts of our monstrous platforms have been brief and mostly fruitless. But many of us found ways to renegotiate the terms of how we spent our time online. Rather than the enormous platforms that couldn’t decide if, let alone how they had contributed to the election of a deranged narcissist or the rise of the virulently racist alt-right or a pending nuclear holocaust, why not something smaller, safer, more immediately useful?”

In the XOXO Slack the excellent Andy McMillan commented on this article with, “That’s a point I reflected on quite a lot in 2017. We’re really not built to handle this kind of ongoing awareness of every way every person on the planet is suffering.

Andy’s right. It’s good to be aware of what is going on in the world. It’s good to try to push yourself to be a better, more emphatic person, but at some point too much is too much for any one person. Don’t do that to yourself.

I spent more time in Slack than Facebook or Twitter this past year. I spoke up more in the communities I’m involved in online. 4 Sure, I’ll still post a few things to social media to let folks know what my family is up to. But most of my positive interaction with folks has been through smaller, tighter-knit, communities than sprawling Mega Malls of Madness. I don’t need marketing folks spewing “How do you do fellow kids?” stuff at me on Instagram and Facebook. I’d rather join a small community and listen and talk to folks interested in the same thing.

Third, pick up a phone, invite some friends over, go outside. A few years ago a good friend would organize gatherings of friends. It was an event I always looked forward to. A few good friends together in a room for an evening playing cards, board games, and experiencing each others company. I’ve decided to not wait for an invitation (I know you’re busy Ted and I love you!) and start hosting more get-togethers myself. Just this past weekend I had about 10 good friends going back years show up and hang out. It was great. No matter how close you are to someone over the Internet, nothing can replace being in the same room together.

So friends, as we enter the year of 2018, please consider this advisory from your computer guy. I know it’s hard. I know it’s easy to fill the little moments of boredom with one more scroll. If we’re honest with ourselves, what do we have to show for it, and what could we have done with that time instead?

You want an easy start? Invite me to the next poker night. 🙂

Image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons

Starlee Kine – XOXO Festival

A belt buckle. Britney Spears’ book. Jake Gyllenhaal’s true height. After years of producing stories for This American Life, Starlee Kine joined Gimlet Media and launched Mystery Show to instant acclaim, chasing every lead to solve everyday mysteries, revealing quiet moments of humanity along the way.

Mystery and intrigue abound in Kine’s podcast Mystery Show. In this talk she pulls back the curtain on what it takes to produce a show. The feelings and experiences of being human, and making stories about humans. The surreal and weird (good weird) way an engaging project can lead to unexpected destinations.

Star Simpson – XOXO

Star Simpson builds hardware with soul, currently working on sky machines at Otherlab. The creator of the PLIBMTTBHGATY series of coding events and the TacoCopter drone delivery concept, Star’s latest project is Circuit Classics, reviving the hand-drawn circuits of Forrest M. Mims III as hardware kits.

If you’ve ever done something creative 1 you’ll know the alternating feelings of “This is crazy”, “This is terrible!”, and “This is great!”. I enjoyed Star Simpson’s talk on how that craziness is what often leads to some of the best things people have ever made.

I’ve languished in sharing more videos from XOXO, but this one is rather timely. Just the other day I learned that the circuit board designs Star talks about are now available over at Adafruit!

Neil Cicierega – XOXO

One of the most prolific creators of weird and wonderful internet, Neil Cicierega is an artist, comedian, filmmaker, musician, and game developer. His many, many projects include Potter Puppet Pals, Lemon Demon, and his stunning Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence mashup albums.

If you’re a person of about my age you’ve undoubtedly witnessed one of Neil’s many creations. In the early days of the web, before social media, files were shared with what felt like more anonymity. Folks created multiple personas and tracing back the original was difficult. 1 I fondly recall discovering Neil’s Hyakugojyuuichi, a bizarre Flash animation juxtaposition, that even decades later is still enchanting – in a strange Niel Cicierega way. 🙂