*a quick promise to you: our newsletter will always only ever be written by humans and never by robots. we wish we could say that this is out of love & respect for writing & the environment, and while those are both true, it’s mostly that we really tried a couple years ago for months on end to get the robots to write in this very weird (but always hilarious, obvi) tone and it just…has not delivered. easier AND funnier to keep it highly manual and we are very okay with that. thank you for your understanding.

while normally how a mansplainer gets his water, “well, actually” will explore the different angles of an argument or conversation & favor celebrating nuance & complexity over the short-term satisfaction of “hot take culture”.

Hot take: I can’t fucking stand hot takes anymore & I think they’re destroying society.

Setting aside the whole “using the thing you’re arguing against to make a point” bit, I think that hot takes maybe used to be interesting. Perhaps when they were more sparse, or when people used them to be funny or start meaningless arguments to distract from the horrors (my personal favorite use case), or when they actually produced really thoughtful, deep, nuanced discourse (I might be imagining this use case). But somewhere along the way, they just got really fucking tired, largely because tryna-be influencers saw their engagement potential as dollar signs; suddenly, they’re not even just a hook for a larger discussion, they’re the whole discussion. And it seems like we should have a bigger problem with that, overall.

A non-exhaustive list of my issues with Nü Hot Take Culture:

1. Most of the time, they’re pretty fuckin mid.

As my former Project Manager Abhainn might say, they’re “medium salsa.” These takes are not hot, they’re barely tepid in a room set to 68 degrees. They’re things like, “Twitter is negative,” or “Having content that is different from other content will help you stand out,” or “You don’t need energy drinks to get through your day.” And here’s the thing, dear reader: As the hyperlinks show, these aren’t even exaggerations. They’re actual fucking “hot take” content.

WHERE IS THE SPICE? WHERE IS THE CAPSAICIN? When your “hot” takes have the Scoville Units of a bell pepper, maybe fuckin’ relax, buddy, and remember that you are allowed to acknowledge that this is simply An Opinion or even A Fundamental Practice or, if you’re feeling particularly fun, you can call it Mayonnaise Theory¹ (because Miracle Whip requires a little more zip than the recipe you’re sharing (feel free to use with abandon, but obvi credit me, you pirate.))

Before declaring something a “hot take”, ask yourself: How many Scoville Heat Units does this take actually have?

2. They’re just there to be engagement/rage-bait.

It’s no secret that “hot takes” have the potential for strong engagement. There are apparently multiple accounts across social media that support “hot take” format and their account owners have quite a following. Sometimes, they’re funny. Sometimes, they’re weird. But a lot of the time, they’re some bullshit like this:

Now, I want to be clear: I do not endorse a side here, pro- or anti-seat reclining. I do have my own opinion² but that is not the point. What IS the point is that this is NOT a hot take. How can I say that? Well, how about…all of these (note: even back as far as 2023, found by spending less than five minutes on Threads.)

Clearly, this is not a “hot take.” This is simply An Opinion A Lot of People Agree With. A hot take should ideally offer some kind of new or interesting contribution and not just basically rehash something like “Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?”³ or “Does Pineapple Belong on Pizza?”⁴ Again, this is some real Mayonnaise Theory shit. But the reason people do it is because it is easy engagement bait. Engagement drives up their numbers, they get noticed by the platforms, they can start to make money off their bullshit excuses for hot takes.

Before engaging, ask yourself: Who profits from my engagement on this absolutely batshit insane post?

3. By design, today’s “hot takes” not only lack nuance, but actively discourage discussion.

When not baiting or possessing the heat level of a Werther’s Original, many hot takes reduce complex ideas to bite-sized clips. At best, they’re fucking dumb, like “hot take: email marketing is absolutely worthless.” At worst, they eliminate any option to be wrong, mistaken, or simply not informed of all the context. At VERY worst, they are bolstered by things like “argue with the wall,” or “turning off comments to protect my peace,” designed to refuse any possibility of changing one’s mind with new information.

Not only does it mean that people are dying on a lot of weird hills, it also creates mega-annoying shit like Bean Soup Theory. But most of all, it’s completely eroding our ability to not only make space for new information or entertain ideas or experiences different from our own, but also our ability to even have these conversations or understand complex ideas or complicated scenarios in the first place. They force us inward, they reduce our ability to engage with context, nuance, or even the opposing argument. And they’re kind of fucking ruining society.

My solution: Create and consume more long-form content. Reject modernity and embrace tradition by deciding that some ideas have history and context and discussion worth having. Decide that the limits of your knowledge and experience do exist, and they aren’t the same as everyone else’s limits - that you can and should learn new things and let those things change your mind.

That’s why I’m writing the newsletter this way, my blogs this way, and eventually, our podcast (reborn) this way. That’s why our video content on social media will be longer-form and so will plenty of my written “takes.” I might be fighting an uphill battle, but the pendulum must swing the other way at some point: We cannot improve society by reducing everything to a sound bite and refusing discourse on the matter. We have to be intentional about consuming longer-form content to improve our attention spans, improve our ability to engage with bigger ideas, and, overall, make society a little less knee-jerk reactive and a little more “take a deep breath and consider all the angles.”

So fuck the hot take, give me the longer take. God knows my brain needs it.

1. Mayonnaise Feeling? MayoNotion? Up for workshopping.
2. And it is the correct one, obviously.
3. It is.
4. It does.

A poll for readers: Click the answer that sounds most like you.

Often in the business world, there’s a lot of discussion around personal responsibility, as in: don’t work at a job that doesn’t pay enough for you to live, go find a different one that pays more, don’t sign a job contract with exploitative conditions, etc. But what we need to talk more about is how the world of work isn’t actually about personal responsibility as much as it is about systems and organizations that, by their very design, outweigh any individual person in terms of size, volume, reach, influence, and more importantly, power and cash.

We also need to talk about how individual persons favoring their own personal outcomes are have the power to keep systems in place, even when those systems are broken, even when those systems harm the rest of the org chart…because fixing the system might mean a change to the incentivization structure…that benefits them…personally.

So individuals create or perpetuate systems designed to benefit them as individuals, but harm or shortchange all the other individuals, and then blame those individuals (who don’t actually have the power to create or perpetuate or alter the systems in question) for their choices?

And we’re supposed to believe that this is just “basic economics” and “how business is done?” Sounds like a pretty shit deal to me.

If you’ve ever said yourself, or heard someone else say, “If people are working at Walmart and still have to be on food stamps and ‘depend on the government’ to live, they should just find another job,” the Bonus Rant this week is for you. Because we need to start asking ourselves: Why are Walmart executives allowed to depend on the government to pay Walmart’s own employees enough to afford groceries instead of being required…to pay those people themselves?

FTE, part-time, contract, hybrid, remote, on-site: here are some of the opportunities we heard this week.

If, like me, it feels like the current media takeover feels A TOUCH PROBLEMATIC when it comes to getting actual news that isn’t, idk, fascist-state-controlled, might I recommend this site? I’ve personally been subscribing more to individual reporters these days like Ken Klippenstein, Judd Legum, Erin Reed, et al, but there are a few newsrooms I like & trust as well, like Ground News or 1440. Check them out if you are looking for a lil more reporting, a lil less editorializing:

Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.

Read the newsletter trusted by 4.5 million fact-seekers.

danielle has too many tabs open, but she swears they’re mostly interesting.

each week, we’ll end our newsletter with action item(s), or “what TF are you supposed to do about all this now?” we hope they help. 🤞🏻