#5 A social medium for each season of life
Giving up on Twitter. And then giving it a second shot.
If you happened to start following the Tour de France after last week’s newsletter, then I assume you’re hooked. What an exciting Tour this has been, even as the riders pedal through a heat wave with some of them stuffing dozens of water bottles and ice packs into their jerseys.
So far, six of us plan on reading Two Wheels Good and chatting about it the last week of August. Let me know if you’re interested; I’ll send out a scheduling Doodle later this week.
Iris and I have traded roles these past two weeks, as she has been traveling in Mexico and now Los Angeles while I’ve been mostly at home looking after Coco, our dog, as he recovers from some mobility issues with his hind legs. He’s as sweet and playful as ever, but now close to 11 years old, he is inevitably slowing down.
A new project
The Internet wasn’t working for me at the beginning of the year. I took a break from Twitter, Instagram, and group chats. Instead, as if we were still in the 90s, I randomly called people on the phone and wrote letter-length emails. That worked out well for a while, but soon I missed the serendipity and strangeness of social media … that feeling I still get when stumbling into a fascinating conversation with delightful strangers.
I was describing my ambivalence to my friend Luis, and before long we decided to launch a new project called The Twelve Inquiries. Each month we publish a podcast episode about a particular topic. Then a couple of weeks later we host a conversation on Twitter Spaces with friends. Fittingly, the first topic is Twitter itself, as both Luis and I passed our 15-year mark earlier this year (just before the Musk madness began). On July 28th at 5 pm ET we’ll have a Twitter Spaces conversation with three friends (and fellow old-school Twitter users). You can set a reminder by clicking on the link below if you’d like to join us.
Next month we tackle masculinity, how it has evolved, and what our roles are in continuing its evolution. Come September, we indulge in some “techno-stalgia” — looking back at the technologies of our younger days to better understand our relationship with the technologies of today and tomorrow. And in October, we’ll explore mental health — how we’ve each approached it and what we’ve learned along the way.
So far, the project has been nothing but fun. I’ll share brief links in future newsletters when new episodes come out and new conversations are scheduled.
A useful tool
Spaces was Twitter’s attempt to copy Clubhouse, the original “social audio app.” And it really worked! In fact, as I type this, I’m listening to “Young Millennials talk Reparations” and it’s an interesting conversation that I wouldn’t hear on NPR. Just as blogging turned anyone into a publisher, Twitter Spaces turns anyone into a talk radio host at the click of a button.
Have a wonderful week!
David