I've followed Sandofsky for years, brilliant mind, and shaves ever more of the aggro edge off it, but it's still there. This is brilliant writing. Absolutely top-notch. This is the most minor of nits: The moment for me was the abrupt shift to a paragraph about "Utah MLM"...then you remember the un-needed reference to Mormon missionary...and you wince, then smile, "Ben...you still got it, baby"
Of course it's all fine and it's all understandable because he's from Utah and Mormon and Utah has a lot of MLMs. And it's relevant later anyway, it illustrates that it's a Potemkin village company / depths of humiliation that Austin moved back to Utah. Blah blah blah.
But a really good example younger me, and even today me, would learn from. Stay focused. Delete the punches that feel good, and you excuse by saying they drive the point home / are explicit. People understood what you're saying without it, so it reads as gratituous.
I found the article compelling and illuminating, but I wish someone had proofread it for the grammar. Half a dozen times I had to reread a sentence and concluded it wasn't correct English syntax.
Of course it's all fine and it's all understandable because he's from Utah and Mormon and Utah has a lot of MLMs. And it's relevant later anyway, it illustrates that it's a Potemkin village company / depths of humiliation that Austin moved back to Utah. Blah blah blah.
But a really good example younger me, and even today me, would learn from. Stay focused. Delete the punches that feel good, and you excuse by saying they drive the point home / are explicit. People understood what you're saying without it, so it reads as gratituous.