That gaze is a monolithic one: it’s the mass of readers I am potentially failing by writing something pretentious, boring and not worth their time. Everyone is watching! It had better be good! It's is the gaze that says: You can't write unless you're describing everything in the cellar. ​ And most of all, letters make me feel like I am reading things that were written to me and for me alone. And that's my favorite feeling in the world. ​ So maybe the privacy I’m talking about really is just trust, and the ability to write to someone you know will still love you despite your writing. ​ —I’m talking about a friend who loves you enough to edit your writing.

“It’s really amazing that anyone feels comfortable sharing their unfinished work with me to critique. Totally honored.”

I think that we underestimate the power law of throughput by how close you are to someone. And given non-linear decay of pairwise trust as you add people to group, and group trust being the GCD of pairwise trust. So much left unsaid in the public commons of the internet— Kevin Kwok (@kevinakwok) October 22, 2018