Welcome to Manu's website

Hi and welcome to Manu's website. For the past ten years Manu has worked with hundreds of clients all over the world and his creations have generated millions of page views. This blog started back in 2017 and since then has gained millions of readers. Manu also runs a very successful newsletter that goes out—very infrequently—to 150000+ users.

Does that sound familiar to you? Have you ever read something similar online before? Because it does sound familiar to me. You read that and think "Oh, wow, this guy must be incredibly good." No I'm not. I just typed some shit. No one will ever be able to check if that's true. No one will even care if that's true. That's just marketing.

I'll ask you this: what would your reaction be if I told you my newsletter goes out—very infrequently—to 15 people instead of 150000+? 15 people? Pfff, that's nothing. This newsletter probably sucks since it only goes out to very few subscribers. But how do you know? Maybe the newsletter started yesterday, and it's merely a matter of time before I reach a million subs.

Sadly, that's the world we live in. Fake it till you make it is indeed a thing that's happening on the web and numbers and marketing are an effective way to warp and twist our perception.

You read a hot take from a blue checkmark user on Twitter and immediately think it must be something worth paying attention to. No it's not. Complete idiots run some of those blue checkmark accounts. Do you think my opinion is worth anything in this world? Absolutely not. Would my opinion be worth more if I had a million readers? Still no. It's a damn opinion.

Necessary clarification: does this mean every opinion has the same weight in every context? Hell no. If two engineers are talking about engineering, I should shut up because I'm not an engineer and my opinion in that context doesn't matter. So if I go insane and start posting medical opinions on this site, don't listen to me.

My advice to you is this: ignore the numbers, ignore the marketing. I know, it's easier said than done but still, try to ignore the marketing. There's good content out there waiting to be discovered. And good content is good content. An excellent newsletter is still excellent if it goes out to ten people and a quality post is still a quality post if read by two people.