thinking in dominos

One of the best memes i’ve come up with is what my friends know as The Dominos Meme – an expression of earnest, ambitious optimism:

It’s really resonated with lots of people, which I am grateful for. What’s funny and interesting about the backstory of this that not so many people know is that it wasn’t something that I came up with out of the blue, or in response to something inspiring – I actually first came up with the bad version, while thinking about ugly and frustrating things about the world:

After making this one, I found myself troubled, and thinking that there has to be something better to focus on – and so I came up with the more optimistic one. In reality of course both domino dynamics are always playing out all over the world in real time, and we have a bit of a “which wolf do you feed?” situation on our hands.

Other dominos i’ve come up with since also include singapore golden age, twitter golden age…

and I also found myself reaching for this essay in another essay, where I was talking about Friendly Ambitious Nerd… I could maybe do a whole side-essay about reaching for other essays mid-essay, and how those are the essays that we’re really supposed to write. Hm! Huh!

tbc