Frequently Asked Questions
So what’s the deal with the king?
He’s there, he’s not that sure why, we’re not that sure why, but that’s the situation.
Is Wait But Why a blog or a real website?
Again, we’re not really sure. We want you to think it’s a real website and when you forward the link to someone we don’t want you to say, “Check out this guy’s blog” cause then it seems like it’s just this guy writing and it’s just a blog. We want you to say, “Check out this site” cause then we seem like a bigger deal and it seems like a legit thing. Okay?
Do you guys have jobs?
Maybe you should spend less time asking us judgmental questions and more time realizing that you’re on question 3 of an FAQ page on a procrastination website.
Are you writing Wait But Why to distract yourself from the fact of your own mortality?
Christ. Yeah, probably that is deep down a bit of what’s happening. What the hell kind of question is that?
It just seemed likely.
Okay. Anything else?
No. Is there a reason we’re still here?
Oh if you’re ready to leave, by all means let’s leave. I didn’t want to be the one to suggest it since I work here.
Yeah sorry it’s kind of getting weird to be in here alone with you.
Great. You’ve made your point clear. And let’s remember that you chose to come in here and no one is forcing you to stay.
Okay I’m just saying.
Let’s both move on.
Agreed. Bye.
Bye.
Contact Wait But Why
We love hearing from readers—praise, criticism, suggestions, feedback, thoughts on a post, your general weird thoughts on the world…go for it.
Here’s how to reach us:
| Questions, feedback, business | Contact[at]waitbutwhy.com |
| Tim Urban | Tim[at]waitbutwhy.com |
| Andrew Finn | Andrew[at]waitbutwhy.com |
| Alicia McElhone | Alicia[at]waitbutwhy.com |
| Store-related questions | Shop[at]waitbutwhy.com |
Here’s the deal with getting responses back from us:
For business-related emails
Things about partnerships or translations or re-distribution or permissions, etc., we’ll try to be back to you within 24 hours (unless we suspect that you emailed us as part of a mass or form email, in which case we’ll probably not respond). If you’re trying to reach us for business purposes and haven’t heard back in a couple days, please email again—your email either got lost in the shuffle or each person on our end thought someone else was responding to it.
For store-related emails
Same 24-hour rule, and same “try again if you don’t hear back” advice.
For content-related emails
Everything from praise to constructive feedback to good old fashion hate mail to your own musings about the world to a funny joke to an unfunny joke to your procrastination goals to anything else you want to email us about. Here’s the situation:
1) Email us. We love getting your emails, and I promise you this—whoever you email (the “contact” email for both of us or the individual “tim” or “andrew” emails for one of us) will read your email, every single time. Sometimes they back up and it takes a while, but neither of us is yet to archive an email without reading it.
2) You may or may not hear back from us, depending on a lot of things. We’re lucky to receive a whole lot of emails, and while that really makes us happy, it’s no longer realistic to promise a response to all of them. Sure, we could write back a one-word response or a uniform canned response or hire someone to respond for us—but those are all kind of inauthentic and shitty ways to respond to what are almost always thoughtful reach-outs from the people who appreciate the site the most. We’d rather do this—whenever it’s a down day or there’s a week off from posting, we’ll do whatever we can to catch up on responses, and sometimes an email comes in just as we’re in a good place to respond and you’ll hear back right away. Other times, you’ll hear back eight months later and you’ll have forgotten that you ever sent the email and it’ll be weird. But right now, the backlog of need-a-response emails is in the thousands, and there’s just not enough time to get to all of them. And if you never hear back, know that you were absolutely not ignored.
