> Too many negative comments here.

I wonder if the author’s use of “you” rubbed some people the wrong way: “You are alone and powerless. You encounter a deep challenge,” “When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you’ll never think possible,” etc.

The pronoun seems intended to refer to the author’s own experiences, but I can see why some readers might think it refers to them. I had a bit of a negative reaction to those “you”s myself, as I experience cafés very differently from the author.

I have a similar negative reaction to op-ed articles that use “we” to refer to some sort of personified zeitgeist. From some essays currently appearing in the Opinion section of the New York Times:

“We are all in a constant state of grief, even though we don’t always admit it.”

“But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection.”

“Over the past six decades or so, we chose autonomy, and as a result, we have been on a collective journey from autonomy to achievement to anxiety.”

Oh, this one is difficult. I vacillated a lot in my early writing between I, we, and you.

Too many "I" sounds self-fixated and irrelevant for the reader. "You" is way too presumptive, unless addressing a specific person or specific group with actual evidence. "We" can also read as too presumptive, but I feel like it works in the case of processes the reader could volunteer to be part of. However, it must not be used to project emotions or experiences onto the reader.

For now, I've personally settled on "we" for most things (because the reader could hypothetically choose to follow along actively), but switching into "I" if I need to discuss something negative or a failing of my own. In other words, I would never project "a constant state of grief" on my readers – that I can only attribute to myself.

When I refer to something that cannot be experienced by myself, only by my readership (e.g. because it happens only to people who do not know where the article is going), I prefer "the reader" over "you", because while it might be true for the median reader, it might not be true for each and every individual reading.

I'm glad someone else also cares about this! I don't find it discussed very much.

-----

Here's a decent example of what I mean: https://entropicthoughts.com/packaging-perl-and-shell-for-ni...

(1) It starts out with "I" having trouble packaging – my readers are generally more intelligent and experienced than I am, so I won't assume they have the same trouble.

(2) Then we go into my experience, but phrased in a way where the reader could hypothetically follow along. Thus, I ask the reader to imagine "we" have a Perl script.

(3) Somewhere in the middle, the article refers to something that might be noticed by "the very attentive reader". I do not expect everyone to, not even the median reader, but I realise some readers might.

(4) The appendix contains a note in case "you" are very curious, because here I do address each and every reader individually.

Without knowing the author, I wonder if that's a natural construct in their native language. As I've moved from Canada, I find myself consciously having to check to see if I've written "I", or "one", given that my local language, places a preferred conjugation in the you imperative.

Personally I found the writing style unpleasant, because people on LinkedIn write the same way. I associate it to a specific kind of low-value content.

In this case, the use of "we" is also funny, because the opening sentence is such an unusual take.