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Sean Sakamoto's avatar

With everything becoming 'data-driven' I wonder how much we're losing by ignoring what we can't, or don't yet know how to measure?

We've reduced human interaction to the most basic 'metrics': engagement, views, clicks.

What is the difference between an essay or story that affects a few hundred people deeply, maybe even alters the course of their lives, and a cat video that millions watch and then swipe past? From a metrics standpoint, the essay is an abject failure and the cat video is perfect content. (Here's a fascinating essay, The Bitter End of Content, on how content is optimized for meaningless by a reliance on metrics: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-bitter-end-of-content )

When is depth and intensity of connection or experience more important? How do we quantify that?

There's a popular anecdote about a girl walking down the beach with her father. Thousands of starfish have washed up on the sand after a recent storm. As she walks, she picks them up at random and returns them to the sea.

"You know that what you're doing doesn't make any difference. It doesn't matter at all?" In a hurry to get home, her father admonishes impatiently.

She plucks the next starfish from the sand and holds it up, "It matters to this one." She tosses it back into its home.

How do we measure the meaning we have to one another? Why would we even want to mine that for success metrics? The wonder of life lies between and beyond these shallow measures.

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Felix Purat's avatar

I gave up on the industry for the very reasons you mentioned here. Spent years trying to get poems published before they started charging at every publication: good timing, at least for the journals. It wasn't a worthless expenditure of effort, and there were some things I could have done better: but the cost/benefit ratio felt lopsided. I didn't feel like my poems were chosen to cultivate talent, but to fit an equality metric due to large submission numbers. (here we have numbers, once again) Nor did I feel that any but a tiny number of exceptions did anything different. That bit about the author bragging about 215 rejections is nuts. I prefer the story of Cormac McCarthy, who only sent The Orchard Keeper to Random House and got accepted the one time. (of course he was lucky that Faulkner's old editor was at the helm)

When I start my little publishing press, we'll see how that goes. I can do without NYC cocktail parties and bigger numbers mean less time writing. But I don't embrace the level of 'indie' either because the independent publishers are not independent ideologically or when it comes to the numbers game, even if they are independent business-wise. I don't think they would behave any differently from the big guys if they joined the club.

Perhaps a more Amish approach is needed: avoid the trains and other modern stuff in your "community," but on the rare occasion you go into the non-Amish world it's okay to ride a train here or there.

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