When readers unsubscribe from the free newsletter, the service I use allows them to send feedback — and while not everyone provides that, I always read it when they do.
Happily, the most-common feedback is along the lines of “I’ve upgraded to Premium” so they don’t want the subset of stories in the free edition that they’ve already read.
“Why Aren’t You Cynical by Now?” It’s a common question: I’ve been writing True for nearly 25 years now, chronicling the sometimes staggering obliviocy of our species, but I still have an optimistic view of humanity. In fact, my optimism has increased over time — probably because I’m such an avid people-watcher.
Two readers (so far) don’t “get” a tagline from this week’s issue, so I thought I would explain the joke — even though I do understand “Explaining the joke makes it not funny.” Well, they don’t think it’s funny anyway, so let’s get to it. First, the story, from the 5 November 2017 issue:
I Expect to Be Called Names for my tag on the last story this week. Let’s start with the story, in the 29 January 2017 issue:
I Loved This Note this week from David in California:
Premium Subscriber Erik in Nevada wanted to really help True, but he didn’t want to do it via the new effort on Patreon, the “crowd-funding” platform for creative endeavors.
There was a little pushback from a story in the 11 September 2016 issue — or, really, about its tag. Here’s the story:
Sometimes it’s fun to poke at obliviots — especially when they’re truly oblivious to their idiocy.
I Really Hate to Keep sending traffic to Facebook, since they’re eating the Internet already, but man have I been having fun there lately. Baiting the political partisans is like shooting fish in a barrel: easy and hella fun.
Nick in Arizona recently re-subscribed after an absence. He wrote:
There Was a Protest Unsubscribe after I ran the plug (below) for Get Out of Hell Free cards in Friday’s edition.
There is some great additional detail on a story from True’s 16 August 2015 issue. To start with, you need the story:
Some Readers Seem to Want to top recent examples of “Stupid Reasons for Protest Unsubscribes”.
Every Month, There’s a Tagline Challenge in the Premium edition — an extra story without a tag at the end, and readers can submit their best ending for the story. This month, the story was about a robbery that went bad at a drug store: the obliviot managed to defeat himself by pepper-spraying …himself.
MSgt USAF (retired) Joe Ohio inquires, “As a multi-decade reader I find readers’ comments almost as entertaining as the stories. This brings me to my question. Being an English major I would like to know what the collective is for ‘obliviot’?”
The Minor Format Change introduced last week brought a lot of positive comments. Just one example: “Love, love, love the new way you tease the ‘missing’ Premium stories.” —Mark in New Jersey. That’s awfully nice. But, of course, there were protest unsubscribes last week because I stopped gathering all the “stories you missed” summaries into a large paragraph, and instead left their story slugs up among the full stories, and included a brief summary of the story there. A few examples:
I surveyed Premium edition readers to see what they might come up with to improve This is True — what would make it more of a “must-read” for them? This page reports on the results of the 3-question survey …and they had a lot to say — it’s long! There were a lot of comments, and a fair number of suggestions.
In all, there were nearly 1,100 survey responses, which represents a very large percentage of the Premium audience — certainly very “statistically valid.”
There have been complaints about advertising before, because they either bashed right-wing or left-wing politicians (and, because of what advertisers want to say, readers call me a “communist propagandist” or a “right-wing pukebag,” respectively).
What’s more patronizing: making a joke at someone’s expense, or the contention that the subject of the joke is not capable of defending themselves?
This week it’s war veterans who are not capable, or so some readers seem to be saying. Let’s start with the story — from True’s 8 February 2015 issue:
A Letter from Roland in Kent, England (where my family name comes from), really got spinning through my mind, because it really helps to put everything in perspective. Let me explain — starting with Roland’s letter (the italics are from the original):