This is kinda a spoiler. (It’s a bit weird that, yeah, I want people to figure out that if they liked this post they should read Unsong, but ideally somehow this happens without giving away the whole thing)
(Granted, I did figure out that’s where Unsong was going and I guess the spoilerness didn’t matter much)
I think if you’ve read this post and you start reading Unsong, there’s not much chance that you wouldn’t guess they’re connected (I also did while Unsong was still being written, as did many of the readers in comments), so you’re not much worse off than if you had somehow stumbled across Unsong independently (which most will not); but if you read & liked this post, you might not know you want to read Unsong as well and will be much better off following my hint.
My solution for this particular kind of spoiler is to save the links for both stories in a note, make sure the first link’s display text doesn’t say what it is, and write a warning to not click on it or look at the URL. Given my lag rate on combing through my notes for stuff I’ve saved for later, I’m pretty much guaranteed to have forgotten where the hell I found the story or why it caught my attention by the time I get to it. It’s possibly the only area in my life where procrastination and forgetfulness are my friends.
Followup: Unsong.
This is kinda a spoiler. (It’s a bit weird that, yeah, I want people to figure out that if they liked this post they should read Unsong, but ideally somehow this happens without giving away the whole thing)
(Granted, I did figure out that’s where Unsong was going and I guess the spoilerness didn’t matter much)
I think if you’ve read this post and you start reading Unsong, there’s not much chance that you wouldn’t guess they’re connected (I also did while Unsong was still being written, as did many of the readers in comments), so you’re not much worse off than if you had somehow stumbled across Unsong independently (which most will not); but if you read & liked this post, you might not know you want to read Unsong as well and will be much better off following my hint.
My solution for this particular kind of spoiler is to save the links for both stories in a note, make sure the first link’s display text doesn’t say what it is, and write a warning to not click on it or look at the URL. Given my lag rate on combing through my notes for stuff I’ve saved for later, I’m pretty much guaranteed to have forgotten where the hell I found the story or why it caught my attention by the time I get to it. It’s possibly the only area in my life where procrastination and forgetfulness are my friends.