Let your friends curate for you
quick personal story
Quick personal story:
My house in Nashville flooded this past week. Not good.
A hose came off the washing machine and water soaked the carpets, destroyed my hardwood floors, and the subflooring will probably have to be ripped out.
Oddly enough, something similar happened to my friend Pierre, who lives in Nashville. I remember this and I called him1.
He used to go to my church, we were on church leadership together, we used to meet up like every few weeks, and sometimes talk on the phone, but yeah we don’t see each other as much anymore.
But I’ve known him for more than 10 years. It was an easy call. And he had a general contractor that he used and highly recommended.
My first instinct was to read more about this company.
Look at reviews, you know, see if they make certain lists or whatever. But why?
Pierre is great. I’d trust him with almost every aspect of my life. He’s a great friend and person and he had a good experience with this company.
What else am I looking for? What more do I need? What could be better for me than Pierre’s word?
The only other element is cost, but insurance is paying for this anyway. So I called this contracting company. They’re going to do an estimate, and unless they’re busy or something, I don’t see why I wouldn’t go with them.
This felt like a stretch for me.
I usually tend towards checking things out for myself, not fully trusting the advice of others at first blush. There’s something ok about that probably, but it got me thinking:
Do I trust algorithms more than my friends?
like random Yelp reviews?
Or those SEO lists I help create?
Or the next YouTube or Netflix suggestion?
Or even a random stranger’s opinion, validated with a bunch of likes?
One of the interesting things about the potential fall of Google is the opportunities that could open, especially around the lack of algorithms.
More personal curation could be an option again. You know, your friend tells you something is good and worthwhile and you believe them.
Or dumb videos don’t get served up to you, you actually have to do some work to find them. Or maybe they have more “meaning” when a friend sends it to you rather than the algo.
Yes, the internet of this age wasn’t too far away. Articles and memes and gifs were shared via email, among groups of friends. The same is happening today with group texts. Newsletters are more popular and the real action happens from relationships to networking happens in the DMs.
Perhaps we’ll become each other’s trusted tastemakers once more. Or perhaps we’ll just trust our friends again.
That’s surely what they’re for.
More Things
Picked up “The Very Last Interview” by David Shields, who transcribed all of his own answers to interview questions to learn more about himself—and those asking the questions
Started reading “Losing Our Religion” by Russell Moore, a Christian pastor and theologian
Tiny rare books. At Austin Kleon.
What happens to all the stuff we return? At The New Yorker.
On when to set rules for your writing by Kevin Maloney. At The Creative Independent.
This post will not go viral by
How do journalists distribute their work? Related to what I was talking about above.
Last Thing
“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.” — Frank Crane
Keep going,
-Josh Spilker
This isn’t doing justice to all of my friends. Many of them called me. A lot reached out via text and social media. I’m very fortunate in that regard and am thankful for the strong community I have (had???) in Nashville. Pierre had this very specific experience so his recommendation was very helpful.