Welcome

Everyone likes to be welcomed [View this email in your browser] Welcome to Wait But Why's email list! 3 Kind-Of-Important Things: 1) Save us from the icky folders. Without a little help from you, we're probably headed for your spam folder with all the creepy emails or if you have Gmail, your Promotions tab, with all the most annoying emails that no one wants to hang out with. You can save us by adding contact@waitbutwhy.com to your address book. Or in Gmail, just drag any one of our emails from the Promotions tab up onto the Primary tab, and when it asks you if you want to do this for future WBW emails, click Yes. 2) Read posts on the site, not in your email. Most of the emails we'll send are just the latest post, in full form. That said, we suggest using the email more as an alert that a new post is up but actually reading the post on the site itself (there's a link to the post on the top of every email). I know you're assuming that this is for some sneaky we-want-page-views reason, but it's actually just because the formatting looks way better on the site (especially on mobile), and because I put a lot of fun or interesting extras in footnotes throughout posts, which you can't access in the email. 3) You can reply to any email from us and we'll see it. Feel free to write to us with any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, hatred, etc. anytime by replying directly to any Wait But Why email. We read every email, but because we get a lot of them, we unfortunately can't respond to all of them. For our individual email addresses or more info about contacting us, [go here]. Two more things: If you want to take WBW offline, on vacation, or give it as a gift, you can buy Year 1 of WBW for e-readers [here] ($4) or the Elon Musk series [here] ($8). And if you're interested in supporting Wait But Why, check out our [Patreon page]. Thanks again for subscribing—it makes us like you. And of course, you can break up with this list anytime if you decide you're over it—just click the link at the very bottom of any of our emails to remove yourself from the list and hurt our feelings. Enjoy! Tim and Andrew P.S. If you're new to Wait But Why and don't know where to begin, keep scrolling down for some of the most popular Wait But Why posts. Some popular Wait But Why posts to start with: There are a lot of posts to choose from on Wait But Why—my suggestion is to go to the [Archive] and click on whichever titles entice you the most. Or, here are the three most common categories that WBW posts fall into and three of the most popular posts in each category: Category #1: Posts on Life, Happiness, and Why Humans Are The Way They Are These posts dig deep into human psychology, trying to get to the bottom of what's really going on in our heads. [Why Procrastinators Procrastinate] – Apparently I'm not the only one with this problem, as this is the post I get the most emails about—by far. [How to Pick Your Life Partner] – An exploration of why so many people end up in not-so-great marriages, and some common personality types especially likely to botch the big decision. [Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Others Think] – A post that introduces the Social Survival Mammoth—the part of our brains that makes us care so much what others think of us. The post digs into who the mammoth is, why he's part of us, and why he shouldn't be taken nearly as seriously as he is. Category #2: Posts on Science, Philosophy, Space, and Anything Mind-Blowing 2am stoned conversations, in post form. [The Fermi Paradox] – The mind-twisting discussion of whether alien life exists and why we've never seen evidence of any. The post I get the second-most emails about. [The AI Revolution] – A full overview of what everyone's been talking about with AI and the reasons I believe this is the most important topic in the world right now. [Putting Time in Perspective] – An infographic that starts with today and works its way backwards, in increasingly large time increments, all the way to the Big Bang. Category #3: Social Observation Posts Usually involving a lot of stick figure drawings, these posts break down something about society for what it really is. [Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy] – The most viral WBW post ever, loved by some and reviled by others. If I'm ever shot one day, this article is probably the reason. [7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook] – Probably WBW's most dickish post, this one digs into the psychology and human insecurity that leads to so much of our Facebook behavior. [10 Types of Odd Friendships You're Probably Part Of] – People tend to make a lot of their lifelong friends when they're very young, leaving us all with some odd friendships that don't make that much sense. This post identifies some of those and discusses the types of friendships we should be prioritizing the highest. [Don't send me emails anymore—I'm over it / you] [update subscription preferences]