My most popular posts in 2022 and other lists

15.01, Wednesday 21 Dec 2022

This is simultaneously the wrap-up post for 2022 and also the “Start here” post for new readers. Hello! You’ll find stats here and lots of links.

According to Google Analytics, my 5 most popular posts in 2022 were (in descending order):

Here are some more! 20 most popular in 2022.


Often my personal faves don’t make the popular list. I’ve collected my favourite, most speculative posts, on topics like

  • Interstellar travel and how to explore the galaxy
  • Roko’s basilisk and how to escape it
  • AIs as NPCs and in archives
  • British hedges

Explore here: 20 speculative posts in 2022.

(Some posts have extra tags. Please do go spelunking if a topic catches your eye. Dolphins seem to come up a bunch.)

More starting points!

Along with the speculative stuff, I have a couple of other long-running themes:

And then two posts which are outliers in different ways:

  • Fiction: The Prompt Whisperer (8 Mar) – a near-future short story about something a little like GPT-3, creative work, and a person who is uncannily good at prompt engineering.
  • Prototype: Action Cat (15 Dec) – this experimental voice bot joins your Zoom or Google Meet call, and transcribes in real-time to a hackable Google Sheets spreadsheet. A collab with Reduct.Video.

On The Prompt Whisperer: Bruce Sterling said, on Twitter, It’s pretty good, too. I recommend a look at that. – which hands-down made my month.

(Dear reader: if you have a particular favourite post from 2022 which isn’t listed then I would love to know! It would be interesting feedback.)


PREVIOUSLY!


Other ways to read and so on:

If you’d like to subscribe (it’s free)…

I love my posts being shared round. So if you read something you like, please do pass it along and post on whatever groups or socials you’re part of.

I like email replies – I like talking to people even more. I started opening my calendar for Unoffice Hours a couple years ago and it’s still the highlight of my week. Learn more and book a time here.


This year I’ve been collecting nice things that people have said about my blog. From the file:

  • Maggie Appleton on Twitter: Titling is an underrated skill. @genmon has a special talent for it – I am delighted!
  • Patrick Tanguay in Sentiers: Matt Webb doing Matt Webb things – which I think is a compliment??
  • Robin Sloan in his newsletter: an effervescent fountain of ideas. Super kind and at least 50% because I’d just posted about fizzy gravy.

Thank you!


Some stats.

  • 2018: 16 posts (19,259 words, 152 links)
  • 2019: 8 posts (7,267 words, 78 links)
  • 2020: 116 posts (94,349 words, 713 links)
  • 2021: 128 posts (104,645 words, 765 links)
  • 2022, to year end: 96 posts (104,636 words, 711 links)

So I’m coming up to three years of this “voice” – this frequency, these topics, a certain kind of structure to each post, this position on the dial that mixes speculative and yeah-I-kinda-mean-it-actually.

My current streak: I’ve been posting weekly or more for 143 weeks. Blimey.

I like writing! I’ll stop when it becomes a chore. For the moment this is my practice; my imagination happens in my fingers, and I figure things out by writing them down.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you being here.

Update 30 Dec, 2022: Finalised 2022 stats, above.

More posts tagged:
Follow-up posts:

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.