Feelings and not formats
Welcome to everyone who found this newsletter via Sophie Culpepper’s very generous note over at Nieman Lab.
In the spirit of sharing writing you want more people to read, this week’s newsletter features Millie Tran and her prediction for journalism in 2026 (and a small nod in this general direction).
Make Me Feel Something
By Millie Tran
Three things recently finally connected the dots for me.
An excellent piece about how to identify AI written content and it came down to: it feeling empty. Like a vessel just filled with words. Not feeling, nor meaning.
A TikTok of Ethan Hawke talking about human creativity and how no one thinks about poetry until your father dies, you fall in love, you have or lose a child, etc, and you’re desperate to make sense out of this life.
And a rec for stacy-marie’s newsletter calling it “one of the few experiences on the internet that makes me feel more human, not less” and that it provides a “respite from the news and looked it square in the face… the poetry recommendations have helped me process the cruelty and magnitude of certain news more deeply than straight news stories, and have also been a reminder of how big and beautiful the world can be.”
All three reminded me that what we’re actually craving is emotional resonance and meaning.
I just had a baby and my brain can barely string words together so I didn’t write an official prediction (sorry, Nieman Lab! And maternity leave should be mandatory for all!!). But if I were to have written something polished and not just via Notes, it would be: focus on people and make us feel something.
Emotion is and has been the connective tissue between people and information
In the social era, back to when I was at BuzzFeed, we chased emotion. But it was all based on platform incentives, not actually about genuine human needs
What’s diff now is that AI makes it about the person, not just social algorithms
Social algos guessed based on mass patterns, optimizing for engagement. We were basically chasing the signal of emotion, not the actual source. Now, AI responds based on individual intent and context. One was reverse-engineering platforms and the other is building around people
Think about your own behavior. I still share things that make me feel something, but almost all directly or in various groups. I also love looking at the comments whether on TikTok or in group chats — people love seeing what other ppl think. It’s also why prediction markets are fun and popular
They’re all ways of people wanting to see how others feel and interpret the world. It’s social meaning-making. We love collective interpretation!
If media is all becoming television (per Derek Thompson) — emotional, personality-led, communally consumed — then this is the dominant content
All of this is intensified bc of global uncertainty (now!), so people are seeking comfort, clarity and connection. Formats that evoke emotion or offer meaning become more valuable. We must respond accordingly
Build for people, not platforms. Build for feeling, not formats.
Ty for reading and happy 2026 — I believe in you humans ❤️