Issue #16
I Send A Lot Of Texts That Start With "Hey, just checking in."
I tell myself it's because I care how someone's doing, and that's always true. But if I'm really being transparent, there's a second thing underneath it. I'm hoping the text comes back. I'm hoping someone checks in on me the way I check in on them. And somewhere in there, "just" showed up to make the whole thing smaller, softer, and less like a need and more like only a passing thought.
Just checking in. As in, don't worry about it. As in, no pressure. As in, please don't see how much I'd like you to ask me back.
I do it at doors, too. I walk into a room and announce "it's just me," so I don't startle anyone, sure. It’s also so I don't take up too much space arriving. As if me, fully, would be too much. As if I need to file myself down on the way in.
I've done this my whole life. I only recently started catching it.
My opinion on this little word, "just," is that it is a softening device. It then takes whatever comes after it and shrinks it half a size. The request, the price, the fear, and yes, even the person saying it. Sometimes it's a kindness. Sometimes it's a sales tactic. A lot of the time, you can't tell which until you stop and look.
Once You Start Looking, You See It Everywhere.
"It's just lightning." That's what you say to a kid at the window during a storm, the thunder cracking loud enough to feel it in the floor. You're not lying. It is just lightning, but the "just" isn't about the science of thunder and lightning. It's said to shrink the fear down to something the child can hold. That's love, doing its work through one small word.
"It's just around the corner." That's the one we use when we want someone to keep walking, when the place is, in fact, not around the corner, but we'd like the walk to feel shorter than it is. "Just" does the lying so we don't have to.
Kids learn it fast, then turn it right back on us. "It's just a dollar." Standing in the checkout line, pointing at the candy or the toy. Just, as in: this is small, so why are you making it big? They figured out the tricky move before they could spell it. Kids didn’t learn it in a marketing seminar. It's native.
Which is the part I keep coming back to. "Just" isn't a marketing invention. It's a human one. We were softening asks and shrinking fears long before anyone put that word in an ad.
So when a marketer reaches for it, they're not introducing something foreign. They're borrowing an instinct you already trust, because you use it on the people you love.
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The same word that calmed the kid at the window is now standing between you and your wallet. Just nine dollars. As in, small. As in, barely anything. As in, why are you hesitating over something this size? The "just" is there to shrink the spend before you've finished deciding whether to buy it, to soften the blow on the way in, exactly the way "it's just me" softens an arrival.
And it's rarely alone in marketing. Just one click. Just enter your card. Just try it for 7 days. Just cancel anytime (we both know how that part goes). Sounds easy, right? Each "just" is a tiny hand on your back, easing you forward, making the next step feel smaller than the one before it. By the time you've clicked this, then filled out that and entered your card, you've taken a series of small steps that "just" made sure it never felt like a decision at all.
That's the craft of it, and I'll give the marketers their due: it works because it's true to how we actually talk. The best persuasive language doesn't sound like persuasion. It sounds like a friend. "Just" sounds like a friend.
Here's Where I Land, and I'm not going to pretend it's a clean line.
I don't think using "just" is bad. The mother at the window isn't running a con. The friend saying "it's just me" isn't manipulating anyone. The word does real, gentle, human work, and a world without it would be colder and louder and possibly more afraid.
On the flip side, the same softness that comforts a child can also lower your guard right before someone asks for your card. The word doesn't change. Only the intent behind it does, and the intent is the one thing you can't always see.
So I'm not telling you to quit it. I'm telling you to hear it. When someone hands you the word "just," notice what it's shrinking, and ask whether it deserves to be shrunk.
As for me, the chronic user, I've started asking the same question in the other direction. What would it feel like to walk into the room and say "it's me"? To send the text that says "I'm thinking about you" with no shrinking word in front of it? To stop filing myself down on the way through every door, literally and figuratively?
I don't have the answer yet. I just know the word feels like shrinking, and I've done it long enough to want to see what I look like at full size.
So from here on, you'll hear it. In the ads, in your friends, in your own mouth. That's all this newsletter ever really does: hands you the word and lets you decide what it's doing.
Just notice. That part's up to you.
Until Next Wednesday,
~Aliya