Let me rephrase the inimitable Stephen Pressfield here:

https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Sh-ebook/dp/B01GZ1TJBI

Problem is nobody seems to have gotten that memo.

Let’s see here. George Carlin did a very funny riff on the Christmas letter which is information you don’t want about people you don’t care about.

And how is this different?

It’s the written version of the offensive kissy face.

OMG I AM JUST SO FUCKING INTERESTING, HERE’S A NEWS FLASH, I FARTED IN THE ELEVATOR, OMG THAT IS JUST SOO..

Stupid. I dumped Facebook for this reason. I don’t follow Twitter for this reason. I am this close to the same thing on Linked In. I have had it with the public masturbation about personal details that are so average, so boring, so inconsequential. Hey Sparky, how bout you let us know when you cure cancer, will ya?

The newsletter-as-sales pitch has been around a lot longer than 2018. A lot longer. I’ve been seeing them for decades. Every professional speaker just HAD to have a newsletter chock full of juicy stuff, and that was nearly forty years ago. To your point Erica, it’s utterly meaningless after a while. We are demonstrating little more than our desperate need for acknowledgment, and somehow readership convinces us that we are not, after all, breathtakingly average. As most of us are. And please, why on earth is it now such a crime against nature to be like everybody else in most things?

Those people whose personal lives are meaningful to me have my full attention. Anything beyond that smacks of neediness on my part that I have to be a voyeur to an extent, or that I have to produce a newsletter in the (foolish and egotistical) belief that someone actually wants to read it.

Years ago I found out just how fascinating everyone found my Christmas letter. I put endless hours into it. Lots of photos, lots of copy. Lots of time and money and postage.Then one year, fuck it. Nobody ever said a thing. Clearly nobody cared.

Precisely. I put that effort into solid writing that earns me a living these days. For people who do care.

Didn’t hurt my feelings one damned bit. I can’t understand how we got to the point that we feel others need constant updates on the size and shapes of our toenail clippings.

To your last comment, I might add that while newsletters (paper, email, no matter) have been around a very long time 2020 might better off be the year we grow up enough to stop being so needy for acknowledgement. We are better writers without it.