“I’ve noticed a few recent tweets that seem to deviate from your ‘brand’. If you want to continue to grow quickly, review your tweets to ensure consistency…”
(og thread) setting aside the fact that this sort of unsolicited advice is so annoying to receive, it’s also straightforwardly ignorant/wrong from a person who clearly has no experience building a brand themselves.
People who have no understanding/experience of positive deviance will advice you to minimize negative deviance.
I’m not saying “be inconsistent”, that’s still the wrong frame entirely. the correct frame is something like “do what’s interesting/compelling/exciting”.
And when you do that, and then you look back, there will always be some sort of line of best fit that can be drawn through all of your work/utterances, even if you tried to be weird and random, because if you’re being honest, all of it plays out in relation to who you are/were
circling back to the general topic of giving people unsolicited advice.
Generally speaking if you wanna open up a line of comms with someone, start by giving them gifts of appreciation. “i appreciate you” is too vague. tell them something specific that you liked and how/why.
You could also include a question to try and seek alignment on intent. re: “if you want to grow quickly…” why project this assumption onto someone else? unless you can cite a specific thing where they said it. a good question about their intent can be a gift. “What do you think about…”
specific compliment + specific question, wait for a response. they might respond eagerly, because it’s so rare that anybody gives a shit and puts in that effort. or they might not, for any number of reasons.
Once they respond, you build rapport, you can maybe start offering advice.
“but that’s way too much effort I just wanted to say some shit at them” sure, in which case they were right to be defensive and there’s a good chance yer gonna go thru life wondering why everyone seems to be so standoffish and mean towards your well-intentioned annoyance.
Learning to be slightly/marginally better at interfacing with people is the most valuable thing i know and so i am always talking about it, if it’s not relevant feel free to ignore
circling back to the branding thing again, lol:
The actual most important thing in any sort of building endeavor is that you don’t quit. ask anybody who’s built anything tremendous and they will tell you the most important thing is that you don’t quit. too simple? most ppl quit
To avoid dying/quitting, you have to get the ‘unit economics’ right, and emotionally-psychologically that means you have to enjoy the thing more than you dislike the thing.
Every other detail is inconsequential if you die/giveup/quit.
It’s mostly noobs, critics, observers, non-players etc waste time on things like “brand consistency”. Its bikeshedding. it’s easy to point at. and it’s also basically irrelevant noise. the creator’s internal psychology is the prime directive. i’ve witnessed ppl go really far and quit,
intermediate players quit because they accumulate all of this complicated, conflicting advice about what they should or should not do, should or should not care about, how they should position themselves, brand themselves, etc
and all of that obscured their love of the game.
So the survival checklist is
- do u love the game? if yes, do whatever tf you want
- if no, be curious about why. take a break. reevaluate
so OP is very correct to say “fuck off i dont care”. that’s the right move, even if it’s in response to “correct” advice (which its not, lol). its relatively easy to say “fuck off i dont care” to randos. it’s quite a bit harder to say it to friends and family etc. but it can be necessary
the more nuanced frame is something like “i care abt u, i appreciate u caring abt me, but i have to do what is right for me…”
another way of framing all of this is in terms of sovereignty. If you want your advice to someone to be useful, you have to respect their sovereignty while you offer it. if you disrespect their sovereignty they are right to tell you to fuck off.
“but i know better than them”
even if you do (and you might!) this does not justify a sovereignty violation. the implicit thing you are saying is “you should listen to people who claim they know better than you”, and even if you are benevolent, the next person might not be. not just “listen to them” but “do as they say”.
it’s bonkers. theory of mind failure here. somewhat understandable if parents mess up here, close friends, etc. but a stranger? absolutely fuck off lmao c’mon now.
and to embody my own advice on advice, as always, if this stuff is not relevant to you feel free to ignore it. getting in tune with your own feelings and your own experience is more critical than anything some stranger might say to you, even if you’re ‘wrong’ at first.
✱
relevant: deviance, sovereignty, branding