Excuses get a bad rap, and they have for centuries.
Enlightenment satirist Alexander Pope once said, "An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded."
Florence Nightingale famously declared, "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse."
And then there's The Poet, who gave us the classic: "Excuses are like assh*les: everyone's got one."
They're all right, of course. We've all been on the receiving end of a lousy excuse. Everyone's had someone botch their car repair or bail on a dinner they've rearranged their week for.
But what about good excuses? Do they exist? Does every yin have its yang? What about excuses that lead you to do something more worthwhile?
"But that's motivation," you say. "An excuse is a justification NOT to do something. Motivation is a reason FOR doing something. Stop playing word games!"
Word games are silly and annoying, of course, but hear me out. Like any kid that grew up in a good 90's D.A.R.E. program knows, sometimes you need a good excuse NOT to do something.
I want to use the concept of a beneficial excuse to pitch my book club app. And who knows? You might find it useful in other areas of your life, too.
If you're reading this, chances are you use some form of social media. You have "friends" you "keep in touch" with on platforms like X, Facebook, or Instagram.
You might interact with people you've never had a real conversation with multiple times a day. In fact, many of us engage more with online strangers than with our own families or oldest friends.
Most of this engagement is shallow and noisy. Reacting to your online friends' noise is the norm. Back off the noise, and you back off the relationship. Give someone 99 likes in a row for things they post, and they'll be butthurt when you miss the 100th thing. You might make genuine friends on these platforms, but if your only connection is on that Big Tech platform of choice, and if you're tired of the noise, you'll need an EXCUSE to back off the noisy platform and onto something else.
This "reacting to noise" dynamic isn't necessarily because your friends are shallow, it's because the platforms are designed that way. Reactivity is the default mode. A "like," a "repost," a short comment…those are your only tools to interact. You're not really talking; you're reacting in soundbites.
And when you're forced to react in soundbites, you start to think in soundbites. Real conversations become harder because your brain, like Pavlov's dog, is trained to respond to performative quick hits with more performative quick hits. Want to escape the madness? Again, you need an EXCUSE to move your relationships to a better medium.
Even if you're not a heavy social media user, you probably have old friends you haven't kept up with as much as you'd like. Some people are great at raw "catch-up" calls, but it can be daunting when years and major life events have piled up. Sometimes, when reconnecting after a long time, you need an excuse NOT to talk about everything that's happened since you last spoke.
Now for the unabashed pitch: El Junto provides GOOD excuses in all these areas.
Since beta testing for El Junto began in August 2024, I've used it as an excuse to have spectacular longform conversations with friends I'd previously only interacted with in 280-character (or less) social media quips.
That's the magic of longform conversation: it builds relationships in ways that popular social media simply can't. Those platforms are DESIGNED to keep things shallow so you'll keep scrolling (and passing ads along the way).
I've spent upwards of 12 hours talking with high school friends and Army buddies I'd gone years without talking to. Sure, we "catch up" during El Junto book clubs, but the book gives us a good bridge. Knowing we're there to talk about the book reduces the pressure to upload your whole life update into your friend's brain in one go.
In summary: I'd be honored if you gave El Junto a try. There's no good excuse not to, and there're plenty of good excuses to download it.
Thanks for reading my first blawg.
-James
President, El Junto
9th Oct 2025