the one where i maintain a newsletter out of social pressure (the only way i know how to gsd)

it is currently hour 20 of being awake

i’ve mentioned this in previous newsletters, but my friends keep up via letterloop, a friends-based newsletter where everyone answers the same questions and then it gets distributed as a newsletter. s/o to alyssa for running our newsletter like the navy!

we’ve been distributing ‘side quests’, and my side quest so kindly provided by mackenzie was to write a newsletter weekly (or at least biweekly). so here i am, trying to do just that!

honestly, having this social pressure is super helpful, because a big reason i only write a newsletter once a year is … i’m lazy. but actually, another big reason is because i put a lot of pressure onto the act of publishing any kind of public writing. and for good reason! who knows when an old blog post will get dug up from the dregs of the internet in 10 years and then i get canceled for a full one-quarter of a news cycle? it’s horrifying to think about, really.

when it comes to digital footprints though, i’m already a goner thanks to my 100+ articles/opinions in rice’s newspaper. the hot takes i had when i was 19 will forever be immortalized, or at least until the newspaper staff forgets how to renew our domain (yes, this has happened before. it’s ok, it happened to google too).

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i went to asia so now it’s my earthly obligation to yap about it even though every take possible has been discussed

re: hour 20 of being awake, i just got back from my longest PTO ever (eight whole working days) in japan and taiwan! there, i experienced time warp caused by the absolute onslaught of novel experiences, did not step foot into a car for a week thanks to tokyo’s marvelous public transportation system, and also basically conducted a silent retreat for my first 4 days since i was alone.

the google map-ification of my experience really stood out to me. i’ve talked about this before: in nyc, where a meal can casually run you $30 if you so much as sniff at the bevvy menu, it feels like a preventable mistake to eat a restaurant with a rating below 4.5. this extends to basically anything that has a rating system. (go look at how people rate random shit, like a walmart or a public bathroom in central park, if you want to see just how obsessed we are with rating).

while traveling in a foreign country, it’s even more tempting to meticulously plan each step — food, lodging, entertainment — with the rating systems available. it’s because our enshrinement of ratings as all-knowing comes from a place of optimization: i fear a subpar meal on a trip to a foreign country where i only have 15 meals. if you’re obsessive about having a good time like i am, just 1 meal being subpar (7% of the food eaten!!!) can feel like an abject failure of planning. like, why didn’t i pay attention to the review with the 65 upvotes that said all other reviews were bought? i could have prevented this.

it’s completely understandable why i do this, but also so frustrating that i do.

for one, it prevents me from just like, chilling. my favorite activity is to meander around. you can’t meander if you have five reservations in a day. you’re locked into your choices, believe it or not.

for two, it creates a cyclical effect where the ‘good’ restaurants are quickly separated from the ‘mediocre’ and ‘bad’ ones, and then more planning must be done in order to ensure you can even get a spot at the now-very-crowded ‘good’ restaurant. inevitably, said ‘good’ restaurant often turns out later to become quite mediocre due to the stress of the public’s demand.

for three and worst of all, it prevents and stifles the success of new places. one bad review can set a restaurant back months, further limiting the total expanse of options available. mom and pop shops with no existing brand awareness suffer the most in these situations — are we really expecting 55 year old popo to learn google maps seo along with cooking the best food you can get around town???

one thing i did not anticipate, however, was how different google review culture was in japan. a quick search for ‘restaurants near me’ would yield a crop of 3.3s, 3.4s, and at best, 4.1s — all black marks if they were in nyc. however, a deeper dive into the actual content of the reviews and i started to notice that many japanese people truly rate ‘average’ places as 3 (and this includes average meaning casual, not meaning average-tasting). or, super-indexing on things i don’t really care about, like ‘bad’ service (which in japan means they didn’t immediately greet you and offer you the world upon your entrance into the restaurant). apparently, japanese-based tabelog is even more extreme, with most restaurants consistently rated a 3. (see more discourse on reddit here)

the result was one of immense freedom. i could meander again!! it wasn’t so much that the rating system was that much more intelligible. while it’s definitely better than discerning if a 4.75/5.0 airbnb is actually going to be the most disgusting place you’ve ever stayed, i took even more freedom in the knowledge that i couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of the rating systems in japan in my short stay, and therefore why bother? i was doubly comforted by the knowledge that a mid meal didn’t seem to exist in japan.

while i didn’t fully embrace no-google-maps, i did walk into random restaurants and shops much more often, freed from the self-contained pressure of optimizing my time. as a result i had two bowls of very solid udon, one pretty good but very cheap bowl of ramen, one absurdly cheap and amazing omakase set, and one relatively pricey but super traditional omakase set (where the chef paused after each round to painstakingly write out the fish’s name on google translate. (“grilled mackarel.” “okay! :D”)

i’d like to extend this further out — what would it be like to read without checking goodreads to make sure it’s ‘worth my time’, or watch a movie without running to letterboxd? or even cook a nyt cooking recipe below a 4 star rating? or walk into a random restaurant in nyc and just let fate decide if it’ll be good or not?

here are some photos — i got a new camera (more on this next time!)

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i hope you enjoyed this more-casual installment of on a tangent because i definitely did not edit it. have i mentioned i haven’t slept in 20 hours? see you next time xoxo