Chris Best

I've always believed that

The things you read and the media you consume in general is not just how you spend a big chunk of your life, it changes you.

And so great writing and great culture in general is this deeply valuable thing.

And so I was like, I should write.

How hard could it be?

I would love that.

I have ideas.

I know how to type.

I'm a programmer.

I love reading.

And I started writing what I thought was going to be an essay or a blog post or a screed of some sort, like detailing my frustrations with the media economy on the internet.

kind of just complaining in broad strokes.

Look, the internet came along, smashed a lot of the business models that used to sustain culture and hasn't really, I mean, it's created a lot of wonderful things.

There's been a lot of promise, but it hasn't yet replaced, especially like the economic engines that made those things go in a way that was satisfactory to me.

And I was just kind of whining.

I was going off and saying, wah, wah, you know,

Sure, Craigslist killed the classifieds and maybe Facebook is not an unalloyed good.

And I sent it to my friend Hamish, who's actually a writer.

And he let me down very gently.

He's like, these are all good points you make, but it's 2017 and you are not quite as original as you think you are.