minute thoughts 12.15.19

One of the crowning jewels of my apartment furniture collection—my tea cart!

Thoughts while discussing the propriety of sending Google Calendar invites to a wedding

1. If you need any holiday gift guides, here is the best one, second only to Deadspin writer Drew Magary’s legendary takedowns of the Williams-Sonoma catalog. If you’re curious as to why gift guides are a thing, Amanda Mull of The Atlantic wrote this great explainer, but I find the quality of gift guides is directly proportional to how intentional their categories are. The most useless ones are those predicated on archetypes—they peddle condescendingly generic and pointlessly gendered “For Him” and “For Her” gifts (like whiskey stones and manicure sets), and to purchase from them is usually an act of eleventh-hour desperation or existential hopelessness. The slightly better ones are grouped by interest: “For the Techie,” “For the Chef,” “For the Fashionista.” And the best ones are not grouped at all, because they’re more thoughtfully curated for the reader vs. cobbled together in an attempt to cover all bases.

2. Pieces like “The 8 Million Reasons to Love New York” from The Cut remind me just how beautiful and chaotic and wonderfully rich with character this city is. All of these portraits rekindle my love of storytelling; they make me want to explore the city and its diverse subcultures or get lost in new neighborhoods. There’s something comforting about relating to other people through the same starry-eyed wonder that draws all of us to the city.

The rest of us have sought this place out, have moved across the Hudson or the world, for the opportunity to lose ourselves and become ourselves and, in the process, to take pleasure in the jostle of other people’s dreams.

3. As much as Guy Fieri and Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives get made fun of, you have to respect him. He’s a legend. I loved both this Esquire Q&A (ESQ&A) with him and his Hot Ones interview. He seems like a really genuine guy. In the Esquire piece, he talks about his life on the road while filming and that outside of his shows, he actually eats pretty healthy, goes to the gym, and sleeps at 9 pm: “And I have to do that, because I have a real responsibility. This is their one time that they’re going to be on The Food Network.” That’s just...really sweet.

4. This Marie Kondo piece in The Atlantic is great—essentially, it asks, “What is the endgame of celebrity?” (the answer, in the Influencer Age, is inevitably “sales”). My director at work and I were trying to think of what commodity would’ve actually been appropriate for Marie Kondo, and I think it would’ve received a much better response if it was reasonably-priced organizational stuff. But a $75 and tuning fork, $108 body brush, or $34 felt tissue box cover that claim to “spark joy” feels very off, especially because the premise of the KonMari method is determining what sparks joy to you personally. Kondo claims that she has personally touched each item in the store, but that again feels very hollow when you’re essentially using a proxy. This piece from VICE argues that the backlash is a manifestation of the Western racism against Marie Kondo—and I definitely will not argue that a lot of the criticism is racist—but I think it’s more that her entire philosophy is about getting rid of unnecessary things and that a lot of the things she’s selling are extremely frivolous. Gwyneth Paltrow is known for being a shallow, out-of-touch airhead with a “let them eat cake” attitude, so an $80 water bottle with a crystal in it makes sense for her. But I think we all expect better from Marie Kondo.

5. Wow, this actually hurt me on a spiritual level. I make plans with all of my friends via Google Calendar and I would be aptly devastated if someone declined them as a way of ending our friendship.

6. I found this “Dear Data” project a little over three(!) years ago in a Friday Five but I’m just now getting around to reading all of the postcards. Their beautiful and creative ways of plotting data always amaze me.

7. As a strategist, one thing I’m always fascinated by is microcopy. Microcopy is the tiny words in digital products that guide you through a process, whether it’s checking out while online shopping or using an app for the first time. You’ll find it everywhere—on “buttons, form fields, success and error messages, 404 pages.” It gives a brand its distinct voice (and if you’ve never noticed it, that means it’s good). But I find it particularly interesting because these words have to be so carefully chosen; they rarely register with you on an everyday basis, but they shape your experience with the product and your attitude toward usage. WIRED did an amazing analysis of their own paywall launch last year, in which they noted that specific word choices actually dictate behavior:

We also ran a bunch of interesting experiments. When we asked people to “place order” instead of “start my subscription,” 9 percent more did so. When we included coupons with the offer, fewer people subscribed than when we told them they could just “Save 50%.” For some reason, it seems, people much prefer “deliver to” and “customize your offer” over “choose a destination” or “choose an offer.”

It’s incredible smallest details can subtly game our psychology—they can affect the way we think and feel about a product and the way we interact with it, and we barely even notice. These details are important, especially now that everything is digital. The fact that WIRED is paying attention to these things and noting trends puts them ahead of other digital publications when it comes down to understanding what drives subscriptions.

8. This is the winter content I’m here for: What Tea Rituals Looks Like Around the World (only semi-related, but this made me roll my eyes; it’s exactly the kind of well-intentioned but ultimately ridiculous co-opting of cultural traditions that gives me a gross feeling of constantly being exoticized by white people).

Edit: This video by Tastemade Travel is also a great watch. I desperately want someone to take me to Aroma Tea Shop in San Francisco.

9. Two very different but equally great interviews I’ve read recently: Ronan Farrow interviewed by Tarana Burke and Megan Rapinoe’s Sports Illustrated profile. Ronan Farrow and Tarana Burke are two incredibly eloquent and incisive people and it’s a delight to see them in conversation with each other. This is how I imagine Marvel fans felt about Infinity War. And not to be dramatic, but I would die for Megan Rapinoe—her grace and candor is unparalleled and she deserves recognition not only for her talent, but also for the way she’s handled her sudden ascent to superstardom and all of the people that criticize her for her politics or invalidate her success for being a woman.

10. I recently took the 5 Love Languages quiz after not having taken it for maybe seven years, and it’s interesting to see how my love language(s) has changed. Quality Time used to be my priority, but I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve started appreciating Acts of Service more. Taking care of something that I need and reducing the amount of stress in my life is, to me personally, the purest expression of love. What’s interesting is that Words of Affirmation was #3 both times. A lot of people don’t care about words, because they’re easy to say, which is true. But I think since I’m a writer I know how difficult it is to articulate yourself in a really thoughtful way, and I appreciate it so much when people take the time to do it.