I write here for many reasons, not the least of which is because I can’t shut up about the things that interest me. For all you people out there, hemming and hawing about starting a blog, if people tell you to shut up about what interests you, that’s a clue to start.

Writing, however, doesn’t pay the bills—least of all the hosting bills. I’ve had the option available to become a supporter of my writing for a while, either as a $3.00 a month subscriber, or just with a one-time donation. My supporters have done so out of kindness and love, because I have had nothing to offer in return except my continued writing on this site. Until now.

I recently launched The Untitled Sanspoint Newsletter Project, a bi-weekly supporter newsletter. For anyone who supports my writing as a subscriber or a donor, you’ll get a newsletter in your inbox every two weeks with additional thoughts on technology and culture along with a selection of interesting links. You can preview the first issue here.

Right now, it’s on the honor system, but I trust my readers. You come to me instead of some of the bigger names in technology writing for my perspective and ideas. Or, because you’re hate-reading. Either/or. Your support will allow me to write more and keep the lights on, and in return, I will give you a piece of myself in your inbox.

I hope you’ll consider becoming a subscriber, or even a donor. Any amount of support gets you a subscription to the best darn email newsletter written by someone named Richard J. Anderson. [1] Plus, you get to feel smug that you’re supporting another independent technology writer in this competitive attention economy. Who could say no to that?

In short, peer pressure is always terrible, and social media are a megaphone for peer pressure. And when you use that megaphone all the time you tend to forget that it’s possible to speak at a normal volume: thus my first protestor’s apparently genuinely-held view that if you’re not talking to peers on Twitter you can’t possibly be talking to peers at all. (We must all have been trapped in our silos of silence before 2006.) But the more general view of both of those who wrote to me — that rapidity of response is a virtue, and therefore that technologies that enable rapid response are superior to ones that enforce slowness — is the really pernicious one, I’ve come to believe.

— Alan Jacobs – “I’m Thinking It Over”

Social Media engenders a very specific kind of rapid discourse, where being first matters more than being correct, accurate, or humane. Jacobs’s list of alternate ways of thinking about stating an opinion online is essential, and worth thinking about. You are allowed to not state your opinion. You are even allowed to not have an opinion at all. It’s all valid. You don’t need to use the megaphone all the time.

And, yes, I am linking to The American Conservative. This is still worth your time, my fellow left-wingers.

Chantal Jandard has done some science that seems to prove some thoughts I had on conversational metadata. Turns out, it might be a UI issue:

Designers must be aware of their role in social UIs and give the same thought to social dynamics that they would to legibility, scalability and others. They must be aware of what social friction they are introducing or reducing, and they need to ask themselves, “How will this UI make my user look to others?” and “How will this UI affect the quality of social interactions?”

After all, if a communication UI can’t communicate properly, what’s the point?

— Facebook and How UIs Twist Your Words — User Experience Design (UX) — Medium

It’s a data point, not solid proof, but the idea is worth exploring in detail. When we’re interacting with strangers online, we grasp for anything that gives us more data on the interaction. This includes the UI of what we’re using to communicate. And none of it is as useful as the real thing.

Back when I worked for The Startup, my job also included some Q/A testing. I took this aspect very seriously, since as the Community Lead, I saw myself as the public face of our product. When our users—or would-be users—ran into technical trouble, I’d lobby for a fix. The on-boarding process was a particular sticking point. It was a multi-step, multi-page mess, and people often abandoned it halfway through. They’d still be registered, and we could count them in our user numbers, but they never came back.

Our CTO was more interested in rolling out new features than fixing core functionality. When nobody used the new features, he blamed me for not promoting them enough. When they did, and they broke—which happened a lot—I took responsibility, falling on the sword for our users. If you paid $99 to post a job, and ended up with no listing, but a charge on your credit card, swooping in and making it better with a free upgraded listing is bound to make you feel better.

The CTO disagreed. Vehemently. He’d grudgingly get around to a fix, while conspiring with the Founder to propose and built out another quarter-baked feature at the next Scrum. Meanwhile bugs and issues languished, despite piles of tickets in Jira—which the CTO administered and used to set priorities. When I pushed back against shifting the focus of development away from the core product, yet again, towards the new job board feature… well, that’s when I knew I was on the way out.

This isn’t a problem exclusive to my former employer, or even to startups. It’s prevalent enough that there’s multiple names for it: “Shiny Object Syndrome” and “Featuritis” for example. New features look cool. You can write a press release or a blog post. It looks like progress, and can even be a driver of user growth. Whether you’re a venture-backed startup who needs to get the numbers up for your next round, or a publicly traded company who needs bigger returns this quarter, new features provide the illusion of progress. Plus new features are more fun to build for the development team.

So when Twitter ignores fixing long-standing bugs that allow bad actors to ruin the experience, or adds and proposes new features like Moments, Polls, and 10,000 character Tweets, they’re focusing on the illusion of progress for their investors. The product team isn’t loyal to the users, they’re loyal to the investors who keep the ship afloat. Worst of all, this is by necessity. Otherwise, how do they keep the lights on and cover the catered lunches for the staff?

There’s only two ways out of this conundrum. The first is never to get into it: to have “a thousand no’s for every yes” as part of the culture from the beginning. A brief look at the technology sector will confirm the rarity of this approach, however. Companies with a culture like this are rarely rewarded, and consequently rare on the ground. This leaves the other approach of having leadership stand up to investors for the good of the product—which rarely ends well.

In the case of Twitter, I can’t see Jack Dorsey having the temerity to stand up to public shareholders to put an emphasis on the tools users need to deal with harassment on the platform. If he wants to keep his gig, he’d be better off proposing new features to grow the company’s audience, get more advertisers, and improve the company’s finances. That’s all the investors care about, which really sucks for the rest of us.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. The stream demands our attention. It begs us to feed it, and it begs us to engage to with what other people are feeding it. Social media often feels like a digital superstimulus, designed to glue us to the screens in our pockets. And I won’t lie… I’ve checked Twitter while I wrote this.

Naturally, some people are opting out.

It seems every day I am reading about someone else feeling something similar. Someone quitting Facebook, unfollowing everyone on Twitter, deleting their Instagram pictures and account, or closing up shop on their YouTube account. It seems there is just a breaking point that people reach, and when it hits it really hits.

— Casually Norm – “Not What I Signed On For”

The frustration rings true. I deactivated my Facebook for the umpteenth time this month, largely because I hit another breaking point with the noise of other people’s lives. More specifically, I hit a breaking point with the noise of the people I know interacting with people I don’t. I might have to unfollow everyone again when I do come back. [1]

For the ones who quit, temporarily or permanently, I salute them. Opting out is a valid response. I admire the dedication of someone like CGP Grey and his process of dialing down to make his life easier. It may have been temporary, but the idea holds merit. Sometimes we just need to turn everything off.

One of the next great challenges as we move into an increasingly connected future is finding the balance. It’s going to be different for all of us, and the amount of connectivity we can take will vary from day-to-day. Nobody is forcing you to keep a Twitter client on your phone, nobody is forcing you to stay on Facebook. Nobody is forcing you to feed the void that is the social Internet. You choose to do it, and you can choose not to. More importantly, you can choose how you do these things, so that you interact on (for the most part) your own terms.

If that changes, and it might, then I will worry. For now, it’s okay to dial down and remember what is to breathe.