Bonus Letter: Year-End Lists
Modern life is weird, and we should talk about it. This belief animates Halgorithm, a newsletter highlighting stories that enrich the conversation about what it’s like to be human now.
I love making lists.
I obsessively catalog the things I read and watch, and I relish the opportunity to compress it all into a fun little ranking to share with friends (and subscribers!) so we can discuss, debate, and discover new things. But I have to be careful. I have to be careful because when I anticipate sharing my opinions, my opinion-formulating process can itself become corrupted. The expectation that I’m going to make a year-end list influences what cultural artifacts I consume and how I go about processing them. “Will this opinion impress that person?” “Who might this exclusion alienate?” It’s the sort of weird politicking that surrounds the Academy Awards nominations process or the seating arrangements of Thanksgiving dinner with extended family. I lack the self-confidence to simply like what I like without scanning for the approving nod of some authoritative onlooker, a fictional composite of everyone who possesses my taste only better. And it can be an effort to permit myself a just-for-me thought without wondering how it will play on social media.
I admit, this level of anxiety materializing over something as frivolous as a year-end list is … well it’s embarrassing. So why am I doing this to myself?
Because I love making lists.
The Most-Read Halgorithm Links of 2018
I looked at the analytics, and here’s what subscribers clicked on the most through Halgorithm’s first 20 issues:
YouVersion Bible Lens App: Mediating the Bible Through Your Life, Christ and Pop Culture
Under Pressure, Commonweal
Welcome to Hotel Millennial, The Outline
Tell Me It’s Going to Be OK, The Baffler
The Love Song of Dril and the Boys, HuffPost
What Is It Like to Be a Man?, The Hedgehog Review
How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million, The New York Times Magazine
Crawling the City, Logic
Favorite Articles and Essays of 2018
Here’s a list of my favorite feature stories and essays of the year. Not every piece included is on-brand for Halgorithm. But if you enjoy reading narrative nonfiction or chewing on cultural criticism, bookmark the page and scroll around for something that sounds interesting.
I’ll see you next Sunday with a regularly scheduled newsletter.
THANKS FOR READING HALGORITHM
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