There’s an enormous ceiling on the potential for a news publication. Even a news aggregator.

At the end of the day, there are only so many published headlines that will be deeply relevant to my interests.

I’ve been using this app, Artifact, made by the creators of Instagram. Does a pretty good job guessing what’d be interesting to me (starting to suggest lots of Knicks and AI content). But, it does a pretty poor job at suggesting what’d be significant to me (an article discussing the sleep issues I have, or the weird, nuanced experience with a girl I just went through, or the specific stage of impact-focused company-building I’m in). It can’t know these things through my consumption patterns. My consumption habitat would need a lot more texture for me to be able to communicate my deepest intentions / unresolved issues.

Wikipedia has a similar ceiling. It’s great for finding accepted info about things everyone’s heard of. But bad for finding any color of human experience, or specificity that’d be helpful or relevant or prescient precisely for me (except in rare, accidental stumble-ons).

Reddit is maybe the best example of experience based information. But the right stuff doesn’t get to you. And the really right stuff—the experiences of people halfway across the country or world who know what you’re going through—it probably doesn’t exist on the internet. They’ve likely never had a situation where they were incentivized to, or comfortable with, sharing about their likely vulnerable experience online. Redditors are very particular types of people. And Reddit contributors—even more particular. You need to be comfortable posting to a room with thousands or millions of strangers who you don’t know, and the vast majority of whom, despite the superficial overlap in identity that’s guaranteed by your being a part of the same subreddit, likely do not have much shared context with you.

That means that core, meaningful information about our life experiences, and connection around core, human experience, is either found in the people we’ve happened to meet in our lives, or in no one. If you have more than three such people in your life—who share core struggles, interests, dreams—you’re privileged beyond comparison. And if you don’t, you’re part of the majority of modern individuals who feel disconnected, alone with the things they care most about. Alone despite the great age of “connection” that Zuckerberg-types tell us we’re all in.

We need a database of human experience that requires deep intention & sensitivity to participate in—to access or contribute to.

-Davey

can we be emotionally honest without being emotionally online?

Throughlines (Part I)