Unpopular Takes
A new series for paid subscribers--but today's post is free
I am not, as you may know, someone who typically goes around posting “hot takes” on social media. There are at least three reasons for this:
Although I won’t run away from a conflict that seems important, I also am not inclined to invite that kind of interaction on purpose, especially with people I don’t know.
Related: if I’m going to disagree with you, I want to already have a relationship with you, and I’d like us to discuss respectfully in a smaller context, not in public spaces on the internet. Even then, usually if I disagree with you, I’m content to acknowledge to myself that I disagree, but not invest a ton of time trying to argue my point. If you ask me point blank for my opinion, I’ll be honest about it, but I rarely initiate debate.
Because I’m an introvert who is nevertheless an external processor, “hot takes” feel extremely risky to me, as I might spend a lot of time thinking about a subject in my head, but still not be sure what I think about it until I express it outside of myself so I can “look” at it and see if that’s what I really think. I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone who doesn’t also do this. My point is, if I put a thought out there that I’m not even sure I agree with yet, and then people pounce on it, that’s a sure way for me never to self-disclose again. Which is probably not great for a writer.
Bonus Reason:
I feel like even once I know what they are, most of my thoughts about things don’t generally fit in the recognized boxes, and so for me to make a definitive, pithy declaration about something—even if I’m sure of it—is likely to require a lot more explanation of what I really mean than most social media spaces easily allow.
But if I had a place where I could try out my ideas with a more manageable, countable group of people and we could bat them around together…oh wait. I do have that! This is what I set up paid subscriptions for at Gathered and Scattered in the first place.
There are already ~30 of you here, and there are about to be a few more in the next couple of months, due to the incentive tiers on my Kickstarter1 for Follower: How Getting Close to Jesus Brings You to Yourself. That means there needs to be something for you to read back here! So I might have to start getting declarative about things, and using this space the way I intended in the first place.
Enter Unpopular Takes, my new weekend series for paying (or variously comped) subscribers. Each of these posts will be entitled with a statement that I most probably really do think, and which I also imagine at least one of the groups of people I work with will find unfortunate, if not actually anathema. But don’t worry—the opposite end of the people probably won’t like my conclusions either. Or maybe I’ll be able to bring everyone around to see things my way. Who knows?
Based on the very strong yet varied responses I got to what was supposed to be a lighthearted post about my experience of Black Friday (who knew there was a Black Friday Spectrum?), it could get a little contentious around here…but I hope not. I hope instead that together we can respectfully break open some of our assumptions together, and look at the pieces to find out how they work, before putting them back together—maybe as they originally were, or maybe in some way new.
I trust that you will engage in dialogue together here around these posts, and that you will do so in a respectful way—both to my process (remember, I don’t have all this figured out yet! I’m trying out my ideas on you!) and to each other. Pushback is welcome. Rudeness and abuse are not. But I don’t anticipate that from you. Rather, I’m excited about the growth we can all experience together!
If you are curious about this series, but you are not already a paid subscriber or a person about to get three-to-twelve months of “backstage passes” because you helped fund the publication of my next book, I hope you’ll upgrade to paid.
If that’s not something you can afford to do right now, but you would like to be part of the conversation, please respond to this email or send me a private message on Substack, and I will be happy to give you a complimentary subscription for at least three months.
The Kickstarter funded in the middle of November—thank you! But you can make late pledges, including “Just.the.Book” which will act as a preorder at least until the end of the year. It’s not too late to help bring this book project to the next level!