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founding
Dec 26, 2021Liked by Resident Contrarian

This substack has ended up being the thing I look the most forward to in my RSS feed inbox. I found you from comments you made on Astral Codex Ten (which I had just found coming from Tanner Greer's blog) because I really enjoyed your written voice. You strike a good balance between confident and conciliatory in your opinions. I'm not here for any particular topic, but for your personal style and genuine-feeling write ups. I think as long as you keep writing about subjects you actually care about, regardless of focus or frequency, you'll have an audience. Nobody is a single-issue person - a broad set of topics to me is a feature, not a bug!

To your audience commentary: I'm a Christian, a software developer, I read hackernews, and even follow Sullivan. I'd be considered vaguely center-right, but that's in the context of my more left-leaning country. I've shared your blog with a few center-left Christian software developer friends via word of mouth who have liked you for similar reasons as I. I'll admit you being Christian is a small factor in my enjoyment. It feels like much of my corner of the internet has either hostile or low-effort feelings towards faith, and so you're sort of a breath of fresh air in that respect.

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I’m a definite gray-tribe type and I don’t need more quant stuff! I really liked the joke-telling post and the one on being poor. I often read substack on my lunch break, or after I get home from work, and my work is quantitative, so it’s a nice break to have stuff that isn’t quanty. (I mean, I read quant stuff too, but it’s not, like, a general preference I have)

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"Where y’all coming from, traffic-source wise?"

I am Christian, but I got here through a gray-tribe route, I think--either Slate Star or Marginal Revolution.

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Having a podcast or a youtube presence might help. Then reaching a point where you go on someone else's podcast and they hear you have a blog. People are into more consumable media nowadays. They don't have so much patience. Scott can brute force himself into success by writing so much and writing so well but he would be so much bigger if he made the rounds on podcasts, I think.

I'm glad that you've seen success and I appreciate when you gave me advice a few months back. I hope you and I both see similar success in 2022. Best of luck.

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deletedDec 26, 2021Liked by Resident Contrarian
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