UPDATE, June 1, 2023: Here's a link to the original post on Mastodon by Matt Birchler that started this. If you can't follow the link, he's updated his original post to confirm from a member of the Ulysses team that this was indeed a joke and is riffing off a previous newsletter in which Fehn had raised the ire of Musk fans by criticizing Musk:
Me just opening my newsletter for updates from my writing app:
Editing for visibility: I’m choosing to assume this is a joke that didn’t land. The Ulysses newsletter has gone off the rails recently though, so it’s all just weird.
Edit 2: got confirmation this is a joke. Apparently the Elon trolls came for Marcus recently, and this was a sarcastic response to them. Sounds like many readers didn’t have that context, and this read like a normal Elon Stan letting their freak flag fly ?
This is why you don't try to be funny in a company newsletter!
I begrudgingly use Ulysses. It’s a fine app–in some ways even a great app–but I was not pleased when it went to a subscription model and mused at the time that they would have trouble adding genuinely useful features to “justify” the sub. And I think that happened.
But this post isn’t about the subscription model Ulysses uses. It’s their choice to charge a sub, just as it’s my choice to pay for it. I grumble, but for now, I pay, as I’ve yet to find another program that does everything that Ulysses does in a way I like. What this post is about is the Ulysses newsletter the company sends out periodically to its customers. More specifically, it’s about the current newsletter May 2023), which I think is attempting some ill-advised humour that may result in them actually losing customers.
I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t love email, they tolerate it. And when it comes to newsletters, I’d also reckon a lot of people may sign up for one (no harm, no foul), but then unsubscribe when they realize the newsletter isn’t providing enough value. I have culled a lot of newsletters in the past year for this very reason!
The current newsletter, which was sent out today, is written by Ulysses GmbH & Co. founder and creative director, Marcus Fehn. He is German. Is this important? Maybe, if you think some of what I’m about to highlight can be explained by differences in language, culture and things getting lost in translation.
Hello, fabulous subscriber of our newsletter,
Marcus Fehn, Ulysses founder and creative director
This is Marcus from Ulysses, and I’m about to tell you something newsworthy. But first I need to make a statement:
**I love Elon Musk**. Elon is one of my favorite people on Earth, on the Moon, and of course on Mars. He’s a great innovator, probably a fantastic lover and an overall nice guy. I wish I was as smart as him. Or just 1% as smart as him. I also love Twitter and what he has done with it. Twitter was great before Elon, and it’s much better now. It’s a haven for free speech, a civilized marketplace of ideas, and it should be the blueprint for all social media apps going forward. I also applaud it for teaching kids how to behave in public.
There is some debate on Mastodon on whether the above is:
- Very obviously a joke and meant to be funny (the haha kind of funny)
- Meant to be sincere praise of Musk and Twitter
There is no debate, however, on this being a baffling and just plain odd way to start out a newsletter to customers of a subscription-based markdown writing app. If it’s a joke (and I think it is), it’s executed just clumsily enough to make people think it might be legit. You could argue that just makes it more like satire, which is like funny jokes for sophisticates. Or grumps. (I like satire.) But even as satire, this is a completely tone-deaf way to start a newsletter. As a Ulysses user, I don’t care what Fehn thinks about Musk or Twitter, unless it somehow impacts Ulysses. I get that Fehn may have opinions or just likes writing things, but starting a company-based newsletter with this is bad form all around. This is why blogs exist, Marcus!
The rest of the newsletter continues in a jokey manner, with Fehn talking about 20 years of Ulysses and “20 years of hate mail, but that’s a different story” and that he’s visiting San Francisco and will be “the one in the bullet-proof vest, just in case.” I think he’s just trying hard (too hard?) to be funny, and a lot of it comes off flat or weird. The newsletter does exude with his personality, but that again is debatable on whether it’s a plus or minus.
For me, the whole thing is weird and off-putting, and it’s made me once again start looking for alternatives to Ulysses, preferably something that works on both Windows and Macs. And isn’t Scrivener. 😛