power: people who feel powerless seldom want the responsibility that comes with power. to a surprising degree, power is granted to whoever wants it, shows up and takes it. on a longer timescale than ppl typically think // trick to being in charge is to demonstrate extreme competence? takes a lot of training to be a king, because you have to be the source of your own restraint. neofeudalism seems kinda real. ppl choose to remain powerless. a king must be prepared to be dragged in the streets. // 98% of what we discuss is basically fantasy football. that’s fine, but if we increase the 2% of consequential things to 5% we can become more powerful // if someone has freedom, power, self-worth, etc they become a target for the bitter & neurotic. and defending yourself is often not a good move (get a friend to do it)
most people shouldn’t burden themselves with the responsibility of healing/helping the entire world… but what if some people are capable of it?
royal touch:senpais. don’t try to hack the path to senpai attention. earn it
narcissism. being open about your experiences, inviting others to share, can be the opposite of narcissistic. hard for some to understand, especially those compelled to protect self-image from scrutiny. narcissism is less about where one points the camera, and more about how obsessive, needy and fixated one is on controlling the frame, narrative. and you see how tricky this is because some amount of personal frame control is basic human sovereignty. every person ought to have the right to choose how they want to present themselves
seek excellent peers: seek out happy, secure, well-adjusted, warm, confident people and allow them to influence you. don’t try to encourage/motivate yourself entirely from within, always seek to involve other people. the antidote to despair about society is to meet individual people face to face. if there’s one other good person in the world, i’m on their team against all the legions of hell. very lucrative to seek and build supportive contexts. truth: some people give a shit. people aren’t really taught to care for themselves or each other. caring is the antidote to loneliness. /// “i’m 300% smarter when someone asks for feedback than when I write something myself” → simple powerful argument for finding network of peers to challenge each other to greatness. // “what will society think” → can I find a couple of dozen people who really give a shit? time giving a shit about people is never wasted
the secret to making friends who are “out of your league” is to treat them like people. busy, tired, distracted people. invite them to have fun, share cools tuff with them, be curious around them. famous people are lonely. “hank green diss rap” genius way to @ celeb.
world is crazy, cultivate meaningful friendships
collaboration: sharing is meaningful
trick to connecting with high status ppl is to find out what you both love and nerd about that
✱
clout: i’d like to be appreciated for all the bad i do not do. i hope people see and appreciate my restraint. this was a recurring thing for a while, but maybe now not so much? // i already have 1m youtube subs in my heart / if you know of people who have accumulated power and need help navigating that, ask them to DM me // refugee loses status, usually. unless you have international clout //
trippy to have some clout, talk about X and later notice other people talking about X // never be surprised when any kind of terminology percolates through the entire site. that’s part of the core premise of this site. if you think this is just inconsequential fucking around
when you accumulate status people start taking your praise a little too seriously
love it when old friends hear about me through third parties and they overestimate how big i am on twitter
✱;
innumeracy / world is big: “the 1%” is not the global elite. 1% is 70m people.remember to talk to people outside twitter. outgroup is more massive and diverse than you can imagine. reminder that the world is big and diverse, more than you know. no individual instance has any obligation to be “typical”
smarts: practice actually asking questions regularly and in a few years people will call you smart (which can be a distraction from asking questions) // real nerds are cool, problem is there aren’t many real nerds // smart person who has never questioned the narrative of their life is not smart in a way that matters. obsessively second-guessing everything is also not ideal. // i like to say i don’t mind looking stupid but i never investigate that as closely as i should. i still worry about looking stupid to myself // if you’re so smart why don’t you realise that politicians are pandering to the bulk of the electorate and not you? this seems to be a recurring trap for smart people. they’re good at processing data but they don’t think to question the data they’re presented.
✱
frames: atomistic/binaristic descartes!! frames? mariocastle, it’s hard to get people to see that their way of seeing is wrong, they might not yet even realise they have a way of seeing at all. the way we conceptualise things is broken, the error goes to the heart of western philosophy, and it’s perpetuated in all our systems – education, media, everything. the problem is the very way we think. being outside of this makes you insane, in the sense that sanity is adjustment to society. i’m personally capable of behaving in a polite, civilised way… chop wood carry water…
it’s hard if not impossible to learn frame-play in school bc its so rigid. first lesson is to cut class and do whatever you like instead
✱
LOSERS be wary of parma-students, people who are refusing the help they cry out for. loser frame. // time spent debating hard work is time spent neither working nor resting, being with loved ones, etc. it is The Loser Zone where everyone loses. // people don’t wanna heal… if they feel that their wounds have not been acknowledged, seen, respected? // progress hurts, and it hurts more before it gets better. stable equilibrium. it’s why ppl get stuck
you have one precious life and you choose to spend it attacking and insulting people from the shadows
i have the solution to a lot of my peers problems but they aren’t interested in solving. so i should go looking for people who want to solve problems instead and seek new peers amongst them. the important thing to note is that people love their problems and don’t want to be free of them.
lets not pretend you can’t tell that some people are ngmi
a lot of people don’t mean what they say. it’s hard, near impossible, but lots of people aren’t even trying
✱
grabby evil: not just that they did one or several bad things, but rather there’s a needy, resentful, hateful core within them that has a corrosive influence on everything it touches. they’re willing and eager to continually do more selfish, cruel things. resentment / defuse needy energy with casual lightheartedness
smalltime evildoers are just looking out for themselves. big time evil doers think they’re looking out for everyone else, greater good. every murderous dictator thinks of himself as a liberator
eris was so certain about my inner life. i try not to be so assertive about what someone else’s life is
i still like cigarettes. special occasions, once a year vibes
why I am so clever. witness how i do good replies. lively thoughtful comments section is rarely appreciated and rarely protected. i am the GOAT at cultivating great replies. i have mutuals who were lowbies who now have 100k+ followers and good vibes. how to point out my system works? you have to look at what doesn’t happen. the dog that didn’t bark. the problems i don’t have.
distraction: everyone gets distracted eventually (thing i learned in a bad place). you cannot explain to someone why they shouldn’t worry about something, i feel like you can kinda only distract them.
too good, cant ignore: if its really good, people will share it after you’re dead. your ideas become other people’s ideas. aaronsw lives on in us. when i get my essays right people will quote me 10x more than they already do (Advanced Stupid, American Cringe, Heartsong, Emotional Caravans, Tell It Slant)
gleeful vindictive: are you short? fat? ugly? abused? misunderstood? lonely? disrespected? disenfranchised? try RESENTMENT! it’ll achieve nothing. red flag: looking for people to dunk on. insulting people stains the hand that wields it. nietzsche: be suspicious of anybody who has a strong impulse to punish. my corollary: be wary of anyone who’s inclined to speak on behalf of everyone else, of gender, etc
wretchedness: people doing ok can find it weird that people who are down bad need to first believe that progress/healing is *possible*
obliqueness: make stuff slightly inaccessible. growing up i’d never have imagined that i’d advocate for obliqueness, “some feelings are better deal away from the public eye”
schools: i’d have learned better if nobody tried to teach me anything. i enjoyed working more than school. you don’t need to reform schools to fix education you mainly just need to become a curious person yourself and encourage the curiosity of others. school vs military, a substack essay?
twitter: realtime global text is still amazing. thousands of messages in thousands of bottles. twitter friends trading post. every node in a trade network gets wealthier through trade i believe. if i were in charge of twitter my main concern would be to facilitate conversations
fake humility is kinda cringe. false humility: not i’m not smart haha lol. true humility: yes i am smart and this means i’m capable of being Advanced Stupid so I have to be careful. / i write and delete/draft so many self-praising tweets / sometimes when ppl accuse me of trying to impress ppl i get whiplash bc i wasn’t even mentally present in the room they think i care about. i’m busy thinking about ppl who aren’t here
genderstudies: I got annoyed seeing an instagram reel from a spiritual healer type of dude “this is a message to all feminine beings” // a subset of guys want a girlfriend who’s one of the guys, opposite also seems true, both seem to suggest a sort of arrested development // trans women are immigrants to girlhood. // misogynists know that complaining about women is a fundamentally feminine activity. you’re one of the girls now, spill the tea sis // getting a wife isn’t that hard // ppl are suspicious of big brown man / i’ll never know wat it feels like to feel safe at night. nibras replies. so nice to walk city street alone at 3am
utilitarianism if steve jobs were utilitarian he’d never have founded apple. trying to find value is a trap, focus on what is interesting. for me meditation is not “for” anything, it’s to get away from utilitarianism // you can’t explain “total immersion into possibility” because specific examples block total immersion. optimizoors lose because they don’t dream creative solutions in their sleep
marriage: trick to getting married is that you have to be a delightful person. and not universally delightful, just delightful to your partner // a lot of my emo-psycho-spiritual gains were from marrying young; probably a bad idea for most people // wife worries i won’t love her, i worry she’ll hate me. (we discuss this often)
plaintext – easy to misinterpret people. text game is async, verbal game isn’t
✱
good marketing is invisible. in the early days, a lot of advertising was “what are you, poor?”
SWITCHBOARD KING king of the nerds, universal bridge node, switchboard operator between worlds // the ppl who choose to hang around me are a better argument for my way of being than anything i could say // i’m a drug dealer but for people. i’m a people dealer. i worry sometimes about pushing the strong stuff on the newbies who might not be ready to handle them
cultural sensitivity – would prefer a different phrase: there’s a particular thing that I know how to do, that i think anthony bourdain and alan watts knew how to do, which made them beloved in their respective contexts, which is something like: learn the “language” of other people but respect that it is theirs and not yours
Singapore
LKY heads on pikes, national trauma. everyone wants Singapore GDP but few know the psychological price we pay for it. if you know wonderful well-adjusted Singaporeans please introduce me. hardly anybody wants to listen to Singaporeans when discussing their imaginary fantasy of Singapore.
cool to witness singaporean soldiers questioning commanders about covid, breaks illusion of meek and subservient // singaporeans don’t appreciate nsfs enough // if you want to understand me you have to understand how bleak and oppressive the singaporean education system and sociocultural context was for a creative nerd like me
SG i don’t think it was right to jail the malay man who created the parody chinese lady for a month
crowdfunding and mobile payments etc starting to change things in singapore
LKY was nonchalant about genocide because he lived through WW2
✱
mint 1000 erasmuses – he wrote thousands of letters. each write 10k letters to the best people. build the most thickly enmeshed global social graph of FANs
megachurch marxism megachurch ass politics bezos cast into the pit of fire. parallels in climate and x-risk
observing public intellectuals rise and fall made me think I could do it better than ~98% of players
i am going to create/deploy billions of dollars of value, largely as a consequence of shepherding network effects
i hate “so true bestie” corporate speak
politics, ideology, etc is secondary to people simply giving a shit about each other. the costliest and strongest signal is showing up again tomorrow, next week, next month, for 10 years. when you have peers like that you don’t need to know what labels they identify as
always tempting to procrastinate because tomorrow visa is legitimately smarter and more skilful than me… but the
copes: it takes 6 months to a year to really build a cigarette addiction. its not the cigs themselves, its how you structure your life around them. copes can be bad but they’re typically being used to stave off something that feels worse, this needs to be acknowledged if you want to dismantle them.
frames, dynamism: “don’t you get bored of each other” is a misframe. people are dynamic and infinitely complex and full of gorgeous texture and nuance. we can only get bored of our static misunderstandings of ourselves and each other
malcolm tweet: money can’t remove internal friction → qt with pay me!!
when it comes to creativity, tools are not the bottleneck. context is usually the bottleneck. or framing.
i do believe you’re likelier to find outsized impact pursuing even weird niche interests than trying to pursue outsized impact
I don’t do hot takes, I just think out loud. ~99.5% of the time ppl are cool with this
the bulk of my audience will eventually be indian/african and i intend to optimise accordingly
a part of me feels guilty about napping all day – i have a lil workaholic in me that i’m in denial about. doubly complicated that my work is to have fun. and you can’t rush The Thing.
telling a story that is made up of accurate facts, that people find more compelling than the more-complex truth… conceit?
if you try to leave the Mormon church the send Mormon agents after you to try to win you back
turns out i’m less rejection-sensitive than most?
FAN will eventually make me a million dollars and pay for my house / love going through old notebooks and finding pages like “ebook: 265 copies sold” / search champagne bottle for FAN
overheard at FF: making weird young people richer is generally a good thing. veritasium/lkevin kelly. “without obedience we won’t be able to correct mistakes” – is this true?
exit velocity for public intellectuals: first you struggle in relative obscurity, get by with the help of your finds, then you cross a threshold at which people make you stronger/more powerful
✱
scenes? big mediocre audience is a curse. noble diverse global crew of high quality special forces is where it’s at. our obligation to our work is not to make things mainstream, but to make things good
“we love each other, sure. but we’re from two different worlds.” – random passerby at SF lake
brimming with joy and gratitude with prigoose and friends. heart very full at the support and encouragement i received
karina story. was there another story like that? Roshini?
✱
solve for distribution:
there’s no such thing as nicheless
cold start problem is harsh. once you have 1000 customers its easier to get the next 1000. your first 100 customers
of course there are people with better tweets and fewer followers than me. they have better product, i have better distribution
✱
i like doing things manually, not interested in automating things. manually pick stuff out to cultivate taste
how to manage optimism/possibility in a healthy way
✱
cigarettes: i’m still being harsh on myself for not being amazing after quitting smoking. and i also still want to fix my sleep. phrase is probably wrong and needs changing… noticed intrusive thoughts of buy cigs, happens less and less. ‘without cigs i have to put in so much more effort into literally every part of my life lol.’ cigs increase exec function in the short run, withdrawal tanks it in the medium run, so tricky psycho-emotional challenge. dreariness. intertwined with the body, intertwined with everything. leaving a social group is like quitting smoking. i should do a food fast again. my circadian rhythms were fucked for a week
✱
ppl who are naturally talented are often mostly ppl who started as kids, never got self conscious about it, kept doing it, [waves hands] intertwined their neutrons or something / sometimes it hits me extra hard that each person obviously has a sort of internal drive core
from:vgr science shit trump bullying – about nerds swinning
hope is a scissor; some people have it and some don’t
i’m optimistic but i try to be realistic re: timelines. web3 would take 10+ years
trad: the world in general is still largely trad by default. most marriages are between straight men and women, they mostly follow trad gender norms, wives still often take their husband’s names
software engineers seem to be harsher on themselves than other types of engineers – or maybe they’re just more online
✱
i wish someone would give me a $100k loan. i want to be free to pursue my creative goals. actually do I even need this anymore? what would I do if I had it? how can I do it without it?
if I started over: I would’ve spent 95% of my time writing good replies
i’m optimistic about the kids; you can’t shame them into silence anymore.
wife: why do some people make excuses for other people for no reason? me: i call this “mommy daddy please stop fighting” energy
^ related: putin dicksucking is battered wife logic
respect people’s autonomy, nobody is obliged to care
we must dream of a higher standard of public commons for all
its so obvious that a bunch of people saving productivity threads are doing it with no intention of doing anything about it
gratitude: beloved wife / home of my own / good books / wonderful friends / thoughtful audience / two books published / nice tattoo / powerful laptop
gender/language/oblique: women soften the language they use to warn each other about creeps, i think because saying creep outright has a way of setting off creeps woh know they are creeps. so its oblique, and anxious weirdos get anxious
illegible
yinyang: individualism vs collectivism = both malnourished approaches. would you pick morning or night?
discourse: people want to experience a simulation of meaning without having to be personally on the hook for anything. they’ll systematically de-agentify themselves and each other. homeostatic impulse
i never bother about group averages because i’m not interested in dealing with groups. i deal with exceptional people
c&h comics dad how does soldiers killing → how does being standoffish and antagonistic lead to a happy and fulfilling life?
frames? housekeeping: sometimes you just need to clean your glasses
what’s the relationship between civilization/culture, and individual human OODA loops (desires, fears, etc)?
i prioritise my imagination (contrast with consume products)
advanced stupid: when you think you and your scene are somehow immune to the problems that plague every other human group
abuse: my abuser got me because i’m stupid, but now i’m smart, not like all the other girls he went on to abuse
groupchat: people frustrated with their industry, but they’re mostly just discharging their discomfort
effort shock is real
pricing psychology is real, podcasts and youtube channels get funded while twitter accounts don’t
i gotta become mr marketer again to renovate my house – well it turns out I never really wanted to renovate my house and I didn’t want to admit this to myself.
old prestige is still typically perceived as european. cambridge.
credentials are funny for me bc people often assume it’s uni grads who say uni is unnecessary. i didn’t go and i say its unnecessary. i don’t respect credentials.
idk how to be gentle with people who talk big and then run away. I get very angry. routine rage at incompetence of unserious actors who ruin commons for everyone else
illusion of coherence and expectation of coherence is a recurring prelude to destruction, despair. ppl were so shocked when vjc girl did murders, she was so prim and proper
i never got to have good conversations at home, which is probably part of why i’m so online // lots of ppl who are hurting on the internet are bringing a lot of unspoken baggage with them involving childhood, parents, early friendships, early relationships
batch notifications by time?
dalio called dutch colonisation “gather riches”
that indian movie about the news channel bombing… so nakedly exploitative, zero-sum
jewel of life was always there. maybe you have to be struck by lightning to walk the warriors path. trauma is an initiation. i was anointed by the fear and suspicion of others.
twitch youtube book club? watch videos together
funny to see white friends worry about coercion re: diaper stuff. where i’m from coercion is your parents beating your ass
KWML: young men starving for genuine affirmation from trustworthy older men
whenever i feel internally conflicted, i consult with my 17yo depressed suicidal nihilistic past self. how would he feel about my current 2023 creative funk? // childhood loves are a source of power // “if you explained yourself better i might have responded better as well” i love this kid with all my heart
only way to pass the class on “how to not give a fuck” is to not show up
humor vs authoritarianism substack post
keep thinking about 47rpeg and how much money it made rc… it made me decide that I wanted to own the upside to my work benefitting from network effects
✱
ebook sales thoughts. i am proof a person with ADHD can write a 300+ page book without logging off. reminder someone bought my book from searching pericles // love it when people find my books readable, ie praised by ppl with poor attention span
i could be thinking about the subreddits (robert greene, etc) that i want to market to… i want my books to be better tho. FAN v1.1 maybe
target audience: introspect is for younger versions of myself. smart people trapped in fear and self-loathing, lack self-trust, self-respect, self-love. the most critical part of the solution is to reimagine, reconceptualize one’s relationship with oneself.
maybe at 10k sales i’ll do sensitive smart strong?
revising my self-assessment from a 3.5 star writer to 4star writer
✱
the best way to figure out if you’re in the truman show is to try and leave town // go on a long enough walk and it becomes an adventure // realest adventure accessible to us is facing our fears: daring to love, daring to create
i do feel a lil bit of tiktok moral panic / i wanna love tiktok and it does seem like the future in some sense, when it’s good it’s sublime. but i do get turned off by how people run memes into the ground harder than anywhere else
good to fight on tiktok bc you can convey tone
✱
crazy rich asians: you will never be enough. omnidunk
ponzi schemes like running from a bear. you don’t need to outrun the bear, just the next guy
its reassuring to know that there are others like me in history
if you wanna topple an evil empire it seems trivially obvious to me that there must be defectors inside who want to help
even if you’re cool with people being mad at you, once a space feels hostile, calmer and thoughtful voices tend to avoid/exit the situation
a good name is a vector
civilization transmutes brutality into bureaucracy
assholes: “we will imprison, evict, destroy the assholes” does not solve the asshole problem because nobody loves doing that more than assholes
cowardice: re: “oh no my friends talent is being wasted” no such thing as wasted talent, your friends are cowards // those quick to call others cowards are often the first to delete their tweets //
fan fiction is a fantastic vehicle for ideas
when the barrier to entry for something is sufficiently high, people can build shared trust in a remarkably short amount of time
marketing: do you have this problem! I can fix it! here’s how! call me now! “why I can fix it” is sorta secondary
interesting scissor at the intersection of race and institution: josaaay10 tsa agent common name harvard
important part of marketing is
it’s interesting how people will struggle to appropriately mirror others to support them, while simultaneously being (to me) excruciatingly conformist in
jungian video about man-children and mother-complexes made it even clearer that the internet is my mom
ninamuktik we learn love and trust from our parents
when the fog recedes it becomes so apparent that almost everyone is bullshitting themselves almost all the time, most of all to themselves
i post in public so people can correct me because i don’t think i’m entirely capable of correcting myself
easy to assume JBP is an evil selfish narcissistic asshole. it’s more interesting when you begin with the premise that he’s genuinely trying to help people based on his experience
is it fair to say that while individuals are varied, groups tend to lean more archetypal? people watching at dinner, seems like it
its straight up true that marketing works. so you might as well get good at it and shill the reality you inhabit
you too are descended from an ancient line of world guardians. you too are tasked with resurrecting the dragon of life
3 options: remain silent/dishonest, 2, tell the truth in a brazen unfiltered way and pay for it, 3 tell the truth in an oblique way which is boring to malicious actors and wins you support from sincere actors
the right girlboss can front a DTC brand of gentrified indian spices etc
as a kid i wished for a better public commons, that someone would be warm beacon of kinship, promised him i would be that
if you’re gonna fuck around with dumb shit, keep tabs/notes on it
you can never make yourself small enough to please people who are mad at you for existing
new years has a communal slingshot effect
there’s something comforting about a mass extinction event
do you see “bad” art as a stepping to good art? if you don’t, how miserable are you on the inside?
webschooled. you don’t need online courses or classrooms or credentials to be webschooled
responsiveness to feedback is an important valuable in assessing an individual
i’ve had to repattern my impulse to seek connection with the people who insult and despise me. a safety-seeking adaptation from my youth that is no longer relevant. i was also actively punished for having agency
having friends with more followers than me helps me understand why no rich person thinks i’m rich
i admire anyone who commits to their bit for decades. i became one of them, so i admire me
happily wait 10 years for a friend to watch something i’ve recommended
if i see lots of ads for something but none of my friends talk about it it makes me trust it less after a while. i am always bitching about blinkist
✱
i don’t like redpill, whitepill, etc analogy space. western pharmaceutical model of reality. i’m not taking your pills. i’m the control study
still think about the hero of suez
ppl on twitter struggle to realise that different people have different preferences // annoying thing about reductionist people is they assume others are reductionist too (men only care about looks, women only care about money) etc // tyranny of Most People – not even what Most People actually think but what most people think most people think
i think stable family unit has a regulating, normalising effect. disrupt this and you get unhinged mfs who can be good or bad
slept beautifully 9pm to midnight, then pacing about in fugue state. classic visakanv. actually interesting to look back how many of my threads were written late at night
beyond sane and insane. order is contextual. contexts are being restructured.
prioritising joy is a rising tide that lifts all the boats in your soul. muscular tension melts from your face, people want to be around you
when someone seems to have magical qualities, just investigate where/how they put in the work
“surprise me” random scheduling on a calendar app
i don’t wanna wake people up i want to connect with those who already get it
women like me
ppl keep warning me about survivor bias. i keep surviving
make a smaller version of the thing you like
writing a book can be torturous because it casts searchlights across all your failures and weaknesses and shortcomings
newton and maxwell both had nervous breakdowns; advancing humanity is scary stuff. independent thought is a burden
how does it feel like as a married man to reciprocate flirtation in a polite and respectful way? maybe roughly the same as being a sweet old gentleman like some 80yo guy. like yes ma’am gosh you’re pretty have a good day young lady
been trying out a mental exercise where I swap “no way” “wtf” “unreal” “that’s crazy” with “of course”
we will never have a whole world of people selling online courses because it takes a certain personality / psych profile to do it. it’s not common even if it seems common.
bad design: waiting room for kids to get immunised, everyone’s scared, hears kids screaming, parents are nervous, i’m nervous, whole room is anxiety
i wish we lived in a world where people experiencing cognitive dissonance stopped to ask for clarification
i don’t want to measure my life in $, but my country does, so it’ll be fun when my distraction log is eventually worth more than other people’s student loans
wonder sometimes if my ADHD symptoms are downstream of childhood nutrition and stress. seems likely-ish. hard to know
view source and deconstruct
spousal superpowers is likely a thing, like fast workers
ambition for me includes strengths/smarts/sensitivity, mainstream definitions tend to leave out sensitivity. i’ve spent all my life trying to encourage other people, raise their aspirations, and maybe 1% of people really respond to it. // investigating your meaning-nexus by asking yourself lots of questions, trusting and honouring your own curiosity and taste. i’m not right because i’m smarter or wiser but because i struggled with it more/longer. though you could argue that that’s what the thing really is.
to some, it looks cocky when someone is preparing for success they don’t yet have. but if you succeed without preparation, you’ll likely handle it poorly, leads to bad outcomes
feels like my writing would be more honest if i articulated how i actually succeeded at clawing out of gut wrenching misery… out of curiosity? hope? cup overfloweth? born to be wild?
if reading tweets makes you unhinged and insane, respectfully, you don’t know how to read. i don’t mean words, but texts. and for context, i didn’t know how to breathe
books make me feel loved. all books
do100thing and tell100people and you’ll be able to get a job, apprenticeship, whatever
i love latin america i feel so much affinity somehow. rock and metal, long novels, poems, being sensual
occupy wall street mourned steve jobs’ passing
we are insufficiently outraged about the lobotomisation of creative souls
i can’t tell you what the cool opportunities are in advance
index your notes. broken twitter search hurts my brain
disassemble desires, hit inspect element, find constituents, break it down
are people meaner to friends and loved ones than strangers sometimes bc of desire for approval? 🤔 or why
locked alts are important, we’re still learning this
eventually you have to introduce filters to manage correspondence
high-functioning narcissists can have a very developed theory of mind
not possible to have any space be 100% inclusive // problem with [redacted] is that it’s too easy to join; barrier to entry too low, you get unserious, low-effort behaviours
i believe that network density is an important variable. better than large audience prone to erosion
media used to dismiss Facebook as trivial
i read terrible books and yet i’m not a terrible person
me existing publicly as a brown person is itself my anti-racist activism. growing up a minority i’ve always had to accept that from time to time people will treat me poorly for no discernible reason
var inspired me to believe i can do it too
always be prepared for an opportunity
i don’t care for sports too much because they’re finite games. social domain, arts more interesting, easier to become global outliers
“Desert Storm is a perfectly calibrated, perfectly produced tv show brought to you by the US military.” – David Sirota, 90s doc
multi-billion dollar corp tried to rally crowd against multi-million dollar actress and kinda partially succeed (black widow?) bc ppl love institutions more than individuals maybe? sexism? hard to say
problem with self-deprecation outside of close circles is people typically take you at your word
no need to be people’s volunteer mom or local volunteer cop or social regulator
“the elites are 50 steps ahead” yea just get 3 steps ahead of your laundry / “little things add up” is easy to nod along to but hard to appreciate. arrows that blot out the sun
head english, fingertip english, mouth english
our entire childhoods needed a content warning
mrs teo was the first person who called me visa
lesson from football: get a referee who’s non-aligned
i liked ted talks tbh some were great
I have less $ than people assume
sometimes the best thing you can do for your work is take a break from it
sorry free this is a no-self-loathing-allowed zone. hey, don’t say shit about my friend
counter-mob as a service
every failure is a learning opportunity
john oliver episode on asian americans is peak season 2
easier to make $300/hr (now $500/hr) online than in my hometown
you don’t have to defend your mediocrity to me i don’t care. enjoy your life
one day we will discover a 20,000 year old city
we can create sacredness by choosing what to sanctify
social rules will never stop being amusing to me, we are so full of shit as a species
children of expats perform better everywhere i’m sure
FANcoin: the currency is kinship, blocks are chained in your shared social graph, make as many friends as you can, support and encourage them.
having a broader perspective makes you a nomad that everyone loves to hear from, and also an alien that never quite belongs anywhere
“do not tolerate intolerance” sounds like a cute paradox. “do not tolerate contempt” is more practical
you don’t come to someone like me hoping i’ll talk you out of your crazy idea
i’ve talked with hundreds of peoples in my DMs and like half of them avoid the main thing they know is the main thing. they could talk to you about it conceptually but they haven’t done it. (Visa, what is your main thing?)
you can’t build a city with just a central plan
arabic numerals were hindu first
casual bulimia joke in ms congeniality. and also in nanny diaries.
“most pop culture about adhd is narcissistic” – this is an accurate observation that says more about pop culture than adhd
i immersed myself in TRP and it just made me sad for them
we are all jabronis / it’s jabronis all the way down
chart of longest and shortest lived internet plot lines. harambe long half-life
i can’t personally relate to wanting to watch horror movies or BDSM… but maybe i should exposure therapy myself to bollywood
ideology is so weird
horizon zero dawn seemed unrealistic until the pandemic
wife goes from “my drink is too hot pls let me drink urs im baby” to “i was reading that! show it to me, show it to me, ill fuken stab u” in 3 seconds
admire how paramore used its global success to help a local establishment/institution. i hope to do the same
predict indian middle class gonna go a bit mad from indian media, larger marke
novelty-seeking is a trap. think of a decade old friendship that has depth vs not
beauty/beast dynamic can be powerful
i am the mf that wanted to break free of corporate rat life and i fuckin did it. / figured out long ago that fb would be worth a trillion dollars /
my adhd playbook is stop trying to be normal and be maximally abnormal / i try to honor my compulsions
well-prepared: i’m good at my moves bc i have simulated many
its worth taking the scenic route
polite fiction: if you wanna talk to someone, look something up that reminds you of them and send it to them and say “this made me think of you”
guys should study girl media
we practice lmao-ing when the stakes are low so we can lmao when the stakes are high
cain didn’t need advanced tech or media influence to kill abel
i enjoy media disproportionately bc of meta
loneliness can be about not being true to yourself, not having self-respect
old thread about my writing process https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1444118435886108673
reading books: chew the flesh and spit the bones
articulate what you’re avoiding
matching different learnings in different contexts deepens both. learning piano can make you better at twitter if you have the cross-domain module
couples counselling is a good idea even for great couples
strong feelings about bad design
culture lags behind tech but follows it. you can be grumpy but you’ll have to learn or be left behind. zooms already…
frames of reference are very contagious
existence of wikipedia implies possibility of baghdad house of wisdom
gratitude feels amazing in the body
i’m low-trust with calendars
you can become an oasis of peace. keep the flame of the creative spirit alive. heartsong. you can meme yourself into relaxation. in fact how else do you do it?
surely i’m far from the most unreasonable, antagonistic bad-faith person on your timeline
therapy is a reeducation camp for the prevailing orthodoxy. producing individuation is not a goal of the institution of therapy, tho it might be a goal of individual therapists. orthodoxy
funny how much i know about shopify ex-employees
i kinda still believe in power poses
clung on to evernote longer than i thought
designated hornypoasting chat for couples
aladdin genie ending for AI lol “you don’t know what it means to die”
interesting clustering of people DM-ing me to say they found me through some roundabout path
we’re all lowbies in the grand scheme of things
i love mama shops across from schools