The short version: I’m a guy with a lot of opinions. I like to share those opinions, and enough people seem to care about them that I figured I’d write them down.
The longer version: because of my family history and brain type, I’ve done detailed comparisons of essentially everything I’ve purchased since my teenage years. Soccer cleats, pens, water bottles, vehicles, multitools, on and on. Close friends who were looking to make a semi-significant purchase (mostly electronics/computers) would often ask me for guidance.
A few years ago, I joined an ultimate frisbee team. In our team Discord, we eventually made a channel for reviews/recommendations. I am one the main contributors, and I easily write the longest posts. A fair number of teammates specifically come to me for advice on a lot of purchases, and it’s a running gag that one of them no longer does any research for a given item type, just asks me what I have.
Friends outside my team started asking about things pretty frequently, and I started answering the same question for multiple people. When that happens at my job, my natural reaction is to write documentation so everyone can have access to the same information (and I only need to write/share it once). I was also feeling a bit limited by Discord’s 2,000-character limit, and a blog seemed like the best way to share long-form reviews with anyone interested in reading them. So here we are.
The underlying assumption of all this is that very few things in life are unworthy of focused consideration. I believe life is better when the things you own are easy (or even enjoyable) to use. But my goal isn’t for everyone to use the exact same stuff I do; other people have very different preferences and priorities that are just as valid as mine. My hope is that something here will give readers useful information for their research, whether that’s a specific attribute/feature or a new way of differentiating options.
I am not looking to “establish a brand” or make money with this. I just hope it’s useful and/or interesting enough for people to read.
Evening Latte 