đ Iâm JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, youâre in the right place.
While youâre here, a few things Iâve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a product, brand, and GTM lab.
You can buy my book Permissionless here.
âGood manners are made up of petty sacrifices.â
â Ralph Waldo Emerson
The point of having good manners isnât to honor an arbitrary ritual; itâs to show a modicum of respect to the folks you come into contact with every day of your life.
We are - as George Costanza would unhappily tell you - living in a society.
No matter how much certain corners of the internet might complain about respectability politics and insist that theyâre specially anointed creatures to whom social expectations cannot possibly apply, there is a basic level of decency that we have to agree on.
We need a baseline that acknowledges a simple moral fact: that other people are actually real people. They have inner lives you canât and donât get to see; they have sentience, no matter how inconvenient that might be. You donât get to treat them as disposable, you donât get to process them into content, and you donât get to claim their time, publish their flaws, or distribute their worst moments at will.
Technology didnât create selfishness, but it has made selfish acts extraordinarily easy and almost inconsequential. Itâs easier than ever to treat a friend as an audience, use a stranger for content, present a private moment as evidence, feed a human voice into a training set, and turn somebody elseâs misfortune into afternoon entertainment.
Attention
1. Write to the people you love in your own voice, not OpenAIâs.
Donât outsource intimacy to ChatGPT or any other tool.
A clumsy message from you means more than immaculate copy generated on your behalf. The people who love you arenât waiting for polished prose. They want evidence that you were present. If youâre fighting with your spouse, fight with them. Have some skin in the game. If youâre confronting someone whoâs fucked up, confront them; donât hide behind a chat output.
AI has its place.
That place is not in a 3 AM text conversation with someone who thinks thereâs a human being on the other end.
2. Remove your headphones when another person enters the interaction.
If youâre ordering a coffee, take out your AirPods.
Show the person taking your order that you donât see them as disposable.
I posted this on Threads, and a huge number of people were wonderfully offended by the notion that they should have to inconvenience themselves for even a second to remove a listening device and show the person in front of them that they see them as human.
But nobody should have to compete with a podcast for proof of their existence. Same goes for phone calls, music, everything else. Even if you take a single AirPod out and see // hear the human in front of you, it counts.
If you use AirPods as a hearing aid, you can literally tell the person youâre speaking to. Indicate that youâre paying attention.
There are solutions here.
(If you want to see them, that isâŚ)
3. Donât make your convenience somebody elseâs administration.
A seven-minute voice note may save you time (of course, writing out a text has now become an impossible ask) but only by taking seven minutes from its recipient.
If your message takes minutes to transcribe, interpret, and excavate, write it clearly or ask whether the recipient has time to listen. And if they donât, make time to see them yourself. Sit down and have that conversation.
4. Keep your private soundtrack private.
Use headphones for music on the train, TikToks in the waiting room, and phone conversations in the supermarket.
Everyone shares public space, and no single person gets to program it. Your tastes might be refined, but they are not the tastes of every human you interact with. The commons shouldnât be polluted by the tinny speakers of your smartphone, no matter how interesting it may be to you.
5. Ask before adding someone to a group chat.
A group chat does more than collect contacts. It repeatedly captures peopleâs attention, often exposes them to strangers, and follows them on a device pressed against their bodies.
Donât enroll people in small digital societies without their consent. Just ask.
6. A read receipt isnât a subpoena.
People may open a message and think before answering. They may feel tired, distracted, busy, or unsure of what to say, and they may forget.
Instant delivery doesnât require anyone to respond immediately. And it doesnât give you the right to demand their focus and attention every single time you feel the urge to share, ask, or prod. You are not the arbiter of anyoneâs time, no matter how powerful your phone might make you feel.
7. When youâre with someone, stay with them.
A phone placed face-up on the table joins every conversation as an unwelcome and uninvited third guest, alert and constantly open to distraction, always ready to outrank the person who came to see you.
Put it away.
Turn it off, for the brief 45 minutes youâve agreed to devote to someone else over a cup of coffee.
If the world comes to an end inside those 45 minutes, it will find another way to let you know about it.
Privacy
8. If people canât see the camera, donât use it.
Smart glasses, the now-confirmed AirPods with cameras, and any other device that obscures a camera - or at least makes it less obvious that youâre using one - are the domain of pure assholes.
Donât use them.
People deserve to know when someone can turn an interaction into a file and broadcast it to the world. If you canât commit to not using Meta Ray-Bans or whatever other form theyâve taken this year, at least disclose it. Itâs not hard to say, âjust so you know, my glasses have the option to record you; if youâd be more comfortable, I can take them off, or you can examine them.â
If thatâs too hard of an ask - you shouldnât be wearing them in the first place.
9. Other peopleâs children arenât your content.
Donât publish a childâs face, personal details, school, routines, or vulnerable moments. Not your child, and not anyone elseâs child either.
Adults shouldnât assemble a public identity for a child who canât yet understand what âpublicâ means. Itâs your job to protect the kids in your life from the panopticon, not host a firesale on their privacy for your own gratification.
Yes, this means the end of parenting influencers.
No, nobody is going to miss âem.
10. Donât screenshot the group chat
Donât trade somebodyâs confidence, anger, affection, or bad joke for social approval. If you donât like whatâs going on in the group chat, youâre welcome to leave. Youâre welcome to call it out and burn it down. But sharing screenshots of someone who thought they could trust you probably makes you an asshole.
Are there exceptions? Sure. If the people in your group chat are planning on bombing a Walmart, itâs probably worth capturing some evidence of their malice aforethought. Anything outside of that - deal with it as an adult, donât share it with the world for clout.
11. Donât film strangers at their worst.
A person crying on a platform, confused in a shop, or unwell on the street isnât the opening scene of your next viral post. Or at least, it shouldnât be.
Help them, find someone who can, or give them space, but donât convert their distress into proof that you were nearby. Maybe theyâre crashing out. Maybe theyâre being assholes to the folks in their immediate vicinity. Neither of those things are actually helped by your documentation and livestreaming.
If someoneâs committing a crime and you need to capture evidence, go right ahead. That principle applies pretty broadly to all of these rules. But someone being a dick isnât a crime that needs a global jury; people need to be able to sort their crap out between each other, one to one, as grown-ups.
We used to be able to do that.
Why canât we do it now?
12. On the subject of disclosure by the wayâŚmake it your guiding light for AI, too.
If you use AI - if youâre excited about AI - be honest about it.
Stop hiding it.
Refusing to admit to it is cowardly behavior, and it says youâre ashamed of your workflow, jealous of writers who donât use AI, and uncomfortable with your own choices.
Either use AI and admit to it, or donât use AI.
But donât be defensive and play games with people.
Itâs that simple.
I keep a monthly-updated âHow I AIâ disclosure on my Substack About page for anyone to see.
Being transparent about how I use these tools is non-optional for me.
Itâs not a high bar.
13. Aim your surveillance at your own property.
Use doorbells, dashcams, and security systems to protect what you own without documenting your neighborsâ entrances, conversations, and daily routines.
Protecting your property doesnât give you unlimited jurisdiction over everybody elseâs life.
Public Life
14. Donât let a screen remove your body from the world.
The footpath, doorway, and queue still exist, along with the person trying to walk around you.
Youâre more than welcome to focus on a screen, but donât block the path. Move out of the way.
You wouldnât stop your car in the middle of a freeway to read a text. Donât stop in the middle of a footpath either.
15. Donât join in a punishment because it has attracted a crowd.
An algorithm will regularly show you a stranger and invite you to help destroy them. It will offer one clip, sentence, or accusation, then encourage immediate certainty.
Refuse the pleasure of acting as judge, jury, and eager member of the crowd.
You probably donât know the whole story, and the crowd certainly wonât know when to stop. Even if itâs all entirely justified, the mob doesnât need another pitchfork-wielding, pearl-clutching, outraged asshole.
Kierkegaardâs formulation: âThe crowd is untruth.â The algorithm has simply given the crowd push notifications.
16. Give credit as a matter of honesty.
Credit the person who created the joke, photograph, argument, report, artwork, or recommendation you share.
âFound onlineâ often means, âSomeone made this, and I didnât consider their identity worth finding.â
Take a few minutes to research where it came from.
You have the time. You know you do.
Put the effort in.
17. Do the small work of civilization.
Return the trolley, clear the table, move your bag from the empty seat, leave the shared kitchen usable, and let people off the train before you board.
People with more convenient lives can more easily neglect these gestures, but they havenât become obsolete.
Human Things
18. Donât announce a life that isnât yours.
You may know about another personâs death, diagnosis, pregnancy, engagement, break-up, or redundancy, but you donât get to publish the news.
Information can involve you without belonging to you.
Ask yourself - why does it matter so much to you to be the first person who knows? Why does it matter to you, beyond getting attention and having the gratification of other people sharing your announcement?
And isnât there a higher aspiration than being a rabble-rousing town cryer whoâs only paid in likes?
19. Answer human effort with human effort.
When someone offers you grief, courage, love, or vulnerability, donât answer with generated language to avoid the discomfort of finding your own words.
Write the apology, toast, or condolence card yourself.
Your words can be imperfect.
Thatâs allowed.
Encouraged, even.
20. Allow people to leave their former selves behind.
The internet preserves old material by default, while human beings survive because they can change.
Donât excavate an old photograph, abandoned opinion, or decade-old mistake merely because a search engine preserved it. Hold people accountable with context and proportion, and allow them to become someone better.
Donât turn a permanent record into a permanent sentence.
Remember: cancel culture is fairly pointless, at the best of times. Itâs even more pointless if you wonât offer anyone a chance at redemption.
21. Never forget the nervous system.
Every account ends in a human body.
The person in the photograph can feel humiliation. The person behind the username may shake while reading your words. The person in the viral clip must continue living after the crowd grows bored.
Before you record, post, forward, expose, mock, or reply, ask:
Would I do this if the person was actually standing in front of me?
Would I use these words if I could see their face change, take the photograph if they could look into the lens, or press send if I had to remain in the room?
As Kant put it - âMan alone⌠is an end in himself.â
People are never (or perhaps, should never) be merely a means.
They are not raw material for your content, background characters in your day, obstacles to your convenience, or instruments for your gratification. Their attention is not yours to seize, their privacy is not yours to trade, and their worst moment is not yours to publish. Every rule here comes back to that one fact: other people do not exist for your use. They exist for themselves. Act accordingly.
Preach! đ