Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Here's a story that will restore your faith in the human race and your will to live.

You know how I was flogging my newsletter yesterday? How I was asking you all to re-tweet it and subscribe? claireberlinski.substack.com

(I'm still asking, don't forget.)

I'm doing this in the hope of acquiring a huge audience and charging for the newsletter. One day. But for now, it's free. To everyone. I'm just playing around to see what happens. Maybe it will always be free.

I figured it'll be like my Twitter feed: I'll write about whatever I'm thinking about. Maybe even I'll just copy what I wrote on Twitter the day before.

There might be a viable business model in this "newsletter" idea. (That's my brother's theory, anyway.)

Or maybe there isn't.

But I'll see who subscribes, get a sense of what they like reading about.

And if I get a long list of fanatically devoted readers, I'll put up paywall. Or find sponsors. But first, I just need people to share the link.

People can't know they're fanatically devoted if they've never read the newsletter, right?

So anyway, I wrote this yesterday:

Now, honestly--between us--I didn't *really* expect people to avert their eyes and scroll down. It was sort of a joke, right? I mean, this is the anonymous, faceless, dual-key-encrypted-two-factor-authenticated world of the Internet. Things here don't work on the honor system.

But shortly after I posted that, someone sent a Euro to my PayPal account, with this note:

"I really wanted to read past the paywall of honor."

And .... poof! All of my cynicism about humanity instantly disappeared.

Seriously, doesn't that make you feel a surge of affection and tenderness for our species? Show me an AI-powered bot who would have that instinct. Only humans. We're not all good, but we're certainly *capable* of being good. That's unique to our species.

(It does leave me in a bit of a fix, though. If it turns out humanity is *essentially good,* what's left for me to write about?)

I'll figure that one out tomorrow.