#11: Newsletters and Knee-Jerk Reactions
The appeal of the newsletter and the human tendency of quick reaction
Hi friends,
I don’t know whether it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but I’ve been coming across newsletters everywhere of late. They seem to be the rage these days, and I find myself more and more preferring them as my primary source of information consumption. I follow a bunch of newsletters belonging to people and topics that I’m interested in, and going through them has pretty much become a part of my daily routine at this point.
I've always thought about why I like the medium of newsletters so much, and the other day I came across The Sneaky Art Post's newsletter which explained it perfectly.
It's neat. I read them at my own time, there's no pressure to read them all the way through, it's no big deal if you miss an edition, and it's a unique look into a person's life because one tends to share more personal things when they know that only people who want to are reading what they write, so there's no pressure to be performative.
Another great thing about newsletters is that, as a writer, you can talk about your interests and fixations in great detail, and as a reader, you can choose to skim past it if it doesn't interest you, or you can come across something interesting you wouldn't have come across otherwise. For example, I recently read this brilliant edition by Conflict Confidential about knee-jerk reactions humans have, something I would've generally scrolled past if I had come across it on, say, my Twitter feed.
It talked about how humans tend to handle conflicts and how, more often than not, there is an involuntary knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion, simply because we don't think enough about it. They can be negative or positive, like saying "yeah, totally" to plans immediately when they're brought up and later regretting that decision and trying to find a way out of it.
I noticed it happening a lot with me recently when my sister, who's always preparing these natural and supposedly healthy recipes for detox shakes, face masks, hair paste and other unholy concoctions, offers some of it for me to try, and I almost involuntarily shudder and say "Pfft. No thanks, I don't want that anywhere near me", until she tells me what she's put into it and its supposed benefits, and sure enough, I try them too and she's always right. Still, I end up rejecting the idea the next time again until the cycle continues and I eventually come around and warm up to it.
Like Amy Dallas says in her newsletter, these knee-jerk reactions are "unthinking, throwaway responses that we’ve conditioned ourselves to have. Sometimes it’s to deflect having to process information".
Apart from these surface level knee-jerk reactions to things, there are deeper ones as well. It's usually because of our bodies firing off natural physiological responses to external triggers in order to keep ourselves safe. These continuous physiological responses can make us hypervigilant and stuck on high-alert for long periods of time, which eventually takes its toll.
She talks in-depth about how to identify these triggers and how to "fix the jerk" (I'd encourage you to read the entire article for a great explanation). What stuck with me after reading it though, was the explanation of the Four F's of conflict, and it's something I've been trying to take note of every time I've faced conflict since.
CONFLICT 101 - The Four Fs.
Fight - Combative. Ready to take someone on.
Flight - Run away. Avoid.
Freeze - Get frozen in place. Disconnect.
Fawn - Try to appease. Take care of the other person.
The first step to fixing these knee-jerks is to identify these triggers, to make note of what your body is trying to tell you and to try and understand why it's doing so. Sometimes you'd never even know such a thing existed, and other times you learn about it and you're thankful that newsletters do.
Stuff I'm Listening To:
Lucy Dacus' new album Home Video is a great one and I've been listening to it all week
This 2am songs playlist that is long enough to hit shuffle on and not have too many repetitions
Fourth of July - Sufjan Stevens: Not that I need an excuse to play this, but since it’s today’s date and all…
Links of the Week:
Has it been 9 years already? 🤯
10 Types of Odd Friendships You're Probably Part Of: A detailed, funny, charts and graphic-filled list of the types of friendships you'll probably go through during your lifetime
Posts of the Week:
That’s it for this week. Have a great one ahead!
Raef