I’ve been getting back into analog media this year - reading paper books, listening to vinyl, subscribing to print magazines, even getting the Sunday New York Times.
For some of the blogs I follow, such as Craig Mod pop-ups, I’ve found myself craving physical copies - a stack of paper I can bring to a coffee shop. The trouble with email clients is that they’ve become our default to-do lists. When I open mine, my mind switches into frenetic bill-paying, package-tracking, and appointment-scheduling mode. So, when I’m in a reading mood - the last thing I want to open is my inbox.
To get around that, I set up a separate email address (and app) just for newsletters. But I still find myself craving paper - I don't like reading on my phone, and whipping out an iPad creates a coworking vibe.
As an experiment, I tried sending a Contraption Company post to myself through the mail. I used the Lob API, which automates printing and postage. A few days later, I’d forgotten about it - until a letter from myself arrived. Every time I receive mail that isn’t a bill or junk, it sparks a small joy, and a bit of awe at the global postal system. [1]
I’ve been off social media for over five years now. Every time I glimpse a feed, I think of Dead Internet Theory - the idea that most content is generated by bots or optimized for algorithms. And, what human-generated content remains tends to be shallow and engagement-seeking. Amid the slop, personal blogs and newsletters feel like a last bastion of interesting short-form writing - spaces that can occupy a niche and stay there without bending toward a general audience.
Reading on paper feels different. It’s a slower, more engaging medium. But I think it’s also better for writers — too much feedback creates blandness by enforcing an Overton window.
Would you read a paper newsletter?
“I kind of to some extent feel like it’s probably time to switch off the internet. I don’t think we’re allowed it. I don’t think it’s good for us… once we decided that everything should be algorithmically driven in terms of what we see, we ruined the internet for ourselves.”
- James Hoffmann, The Coffee Show with Kirk Pearson
P. S. - I keep a list of blogs I like on my blogroll.
Thanks, Benjamin Franklin. ↩︎
