Hey bestie 👋

Welcome to the fifth most narcissistic newsletter on the internet!

Get ready for behind-the-scenes looks at my recent posts and projects. 

Let’s dive in.

Super Deep Quote

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Why this spoke to me

Yeah, yeah, I do tech nonsense, but my goal is to make you feel stuff. Like emotions. When people use products I’m involved with, I’m obsessed with how they feel using it. 

But more than that, I think human connection is about more than the zeros and ones that is making this text render on your screen. What is missing from engineering and computer stuff is often that human element. Why are we doing this? What are we here for? 

And, maybe, we are all sad, scared children who are afraid to be alone. Some of us run from this, others embrace it. When people tell you to ‘grow up’, they don’t usually mean this. But perhaps they should. You don’t have to keep being afraid, even if where we spawned disadvantaged us. 

Story Time 

My heart fluttered as I sat in a cramped chair along the windowless classroom wall.

I watched as the other kids finished sticking Valentine’s Day wishes into the little mailboxes we had crafted the day before. 

I was excited because I was finally the secret admirer I had seen only on TV shows. I left a small wish for every single person in my class… and one slightly larger, handwritten note to that special someone I had a gigantic crush on. 

I felt warmth spread through my body, thinking that I could potentially be getting one in return. And if not? Well, at least I’d get some candy.

I went home, eager, and cracked open my mailbox.

Not a single Valentine. 

Breakdown

But for real: Why do they make kids do this? Don’t they know this is traumatizing? What about the kid whose knees are weak, palms are sweaty? The one who legit has a crush and is peeing themselves. The kid who gets none.

Top 3 Threads 

Coming at you Hot N’ Ready like a Little Caesar’s pizza on a Wednesday night: 

Threads Success

Success is a self-defined metric, but the reason this post is so important to me is due to an epiphany I had: other social media sucks. 

Now, Threads doesn’t magically fix all the woes of social media… but at the end of the day, people come to connect or consume. 

But unlike most platforms, Threads works differently. If you don’t make an endless amount of YouTube videos, you are not going to get traction. If you don’t keep tweeting 24/7 you fall to the wayside.

People can complain all they want about not having chronological feeds (and I get the frustration), but this style is better for creators and people who spend their whole existences giving you those juicy dopamine morsels you so desire.

There’s a reason why all YouTubers are “quitting” right now. It’s because typically being a content creator is a 24/7 job that you are constantly on the line for. There are no vacation days.

I know poor little baby content creators. But still, I want to devour tasty memes and I prefer when humans don’t have to constantly live on the edge to do so. Yes, no one asked them or said they had to do it this way. Yet the world is moving increasingly towards this lifestyle.

Even independent journalists have moved from being journalists to being 80 different jobs they likely didn’t want or sign up for. It’s just the nature of our current reality. For a thought piece delving into this more, check out Joan Westenberg’s the dangerous myth of the creator-entrepreneur.

So if we could have a social network where people who post infrequently can still have banger hits, that seems preferable to me. 

The algorithm, revealed

You know I post a lot about Threads because I use a lot of Threads. If you are what you do, I am 85% Threads. 

But there is a lesson here: few people dig deep. How many people tried to find this content about the algorithm directly from Meta? 

If you do want to dig deeper yourself, you can read the full post from Meta about the algorithm here.

Advice from a CTO

This story popped off, and led me to think that I should start sharing longer stories here.

The original draft of the story was 10,000 words long, and it took me over a week to edit it down to these ~500 words.

This CTO experience floated into my head during a moment of profound despair: I wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat for dinner.

Just kidding, I was trying to figure out my life. The holiday season is over, my lease is up for renewal, and it’s almost time for taxes 🤮 This time of year breeds introspection.

Which ultimately is what the story is about: the repressed emotions of realizing you are on your own in the world, and then realizing maybe you don’t have to be. That love and support can come from even the most unexpected places. 

The implication at the beginning is that I was there utterly alone. Every other person had someone who had come to support them.

The story isn’t supposed to be about my personal traumas: it’s about love and strangers. It’s about standing in the middle of nowhere silently screaming and then realizing—wait… maybe someone can hear me. It’s about feeling seen and wanted, which is something I had never felt in my life up to that point.

And if you feel that way, know that you really do have limitless potential. There will be obstacles, but there are no limits.

People have asked WHAT the demo was, and I will tell you. I actually shared a post on it before. This was my capstone engineering project so that I could graduate with a Computer Science and Engineering degree. My specialty was graphics and animations. I worked with a team of 5 to create a multiplayer networked game using the Unity game engine. I volunteered to demo the project and do a Q&A session.

Interweave and other things…

A few upcoming things:

— Updates to Interweave search functionality (filters, go directly to post, repost) 

— Suggested manual reposts from Interweave with quick post using intent URLs. Basically, we guess which posts performed well in the past and recommend that you repost them after they’ve left people’s minds. 

— Port who you follow on Threads to Bluesky 

Behind the Scenes

Here’s a simple framework for how I approach almost every new idea:

1. Have idea

2. Instant regret since I have 30 projects

3. Decide to validate idea

4. Spend the least amount of time and effort to validate the idea

5. Expand on the idea

So let’s break this down for starting this newsletter.

Lightbulb!

I’ve wanted to start doing longer form content, but I don’t know what felt right for me. A blog? Eh. A newsletter? Eh. Regardless, I’ve been banned kindly suggested to refrain from certain types of content on Threads. So I knew we would need to have a separate spot where we can talk one-on-one.

Instant Regret 

My initial thought was… more email? Is this what the world really needs? Like… I hate that I have 8000 Chrome tabs open and 10,000 newsletters to read through. But it remains the best way to talk to you directly 🙂

Validation 

I guess I could’ve just asked people on Threads if they were interested in an email list. But this took me around 15 minutes to whip up this custom form.

Do It Quick

Truth be told, it took me far longer to write the copy behind the email list than to write the code. 

Expand on the idea

I want to send a personal, non-automated message to every single person who subscribes and sends me their name. Why? I’m a masochist. If you went through all the effort of reading my eclectic copy, it’s only fair I can spend 5 minutes crafting a witty message for you at least one time. So if you wanna chat, definitely reply now!

Random Idea: MySpace for 2024

I get MySpace failed for myriad reasons, but it seems like we could together make another social network that is more Geocities than corporate minimalism. And maybe this time, we could not drop the ball at every step of the way. 

I want to make a network that is the most creative possible. Like… how do we empower anyone to make a fun stuff to express themselves and connect with other people? That’s what MySpace did, and I feel no network since has really accomplished. 

Like what if you can only have three posts, but you are allowed to use rainbow text and fully customize them in the most unhinged way possible. Fuck Foursquare, we’re ThreePost, the MySpace of the future.

I am starting to think this newsletter will quickly reveal how unhinged I really am and how different my social media persona is from reality. Oh well, c’est la vie.

IRL Update

I saw Poor Things in theaters, which apparently was a limited-run movie. I don’t really know how to describe this other than feminist Buddha journey, it was solid. It is definitely not family-friendly, by the way. 6 out of 9. Only watch if you like slightly artsy indie films, which truth be told I usually don’t.

Also, I’ve been working on a short music EP for a while. About 3 of maybe 5 songs are done. Likely, you don’t care since my whole “brand” is about making shitty programming projects and not shitty music projects, but I figured I’d mention it here anyway 😂

A heartfelt moment of deeply serious gratitude

So anyway, this is my first time really doing this stuff, so I appreciate you coming along for the ride and being a day one OG.

If you liked something about this, please tell one person you think would like my unhinged behavior about it. Not the cops. Don’t bring the heat onto me. No po-po, no problems.

IF IT ISN’T CLEAR LEGALLY I AM REQUIRED TO TELL YOU THAT I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT RUN A CULT.

Please love me forever,

Lucas

P.S. Yours truly, Lucas

P.P.S. i’m hungry, hbu? 

P.P.P.S. if ur still reading this, ur real cute n cool

P.S. P.S. P.S. P.S. If you want analytics for Threads, I got you Interweave - Tools for Threads