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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      Fanboi class is getting worse by the day. Fanbois are only different from recently purged bot/troll accounts in being unironically self-motivated volunteer stans rather than programmed/paid by Russia Celebs who court, pander to, and weaponize them as troll stormtroopers wtf 🙄?!

      2 replies 18 retweets 69 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      If you can *command* serious attention through your work or words, you need to *demand* better behavior from those who supply it. Every time you trade 1 thoughtful follower for 2, 5, or 10 desperately anomic idiots ready to go e-fedayeen for you, you dehumanize yourself and them

      1 reply 6 retweets 45 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      Yes it feels powerful to have armies of 100,000 or more who will direct toxically stupid attention in any direction you suggest with a casual word or glance. But seriously, what hellscape apocalyptic war do you think you’re fighting by raising zombie standing armies?

      3 replies 4 retweets 32 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      It’s a huge tragedy of the commons/lemon market. “That Guy has a 100k strong zombie army, so I must raise one of 150k” is what drives an exodus of all halfway reasonable people. You’re not entering a hellscape, you’re making it one.

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      I’ve lost count of the number of otherwise interesting celebs I don’t follow because they succumbed to the temptation to raise zombie armies simply because they can. Because any interaction carries a risk of their getting petulant and telling their attack dogs, “go, kill!

      1 reply 2 retweets 26 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      Congrats. Thanks to your desperate need to only hear validating things and be able to digitally beat up opponents with zombie troops, you’ve driven away 90% of the thoughtful, kind, interesting people who are also interested in you.

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      Enjoy your damn sovereign nation that nobody dare say anything even slightly negative about: population you plus 100,000 zombies plus the 3 thoughtful but craven people who will put up with your shit who you then deify as the only worthy humans.

      1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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      Retreat to your Mordor full of Orcs you big baby. Enjoy your palantir-Skype calls with Saruman, your only friend who can do more than grunt and smash things.

      11:08 AM - 15 Jul 2018
      • 13 Likes
      • Jeff Nolan d̷r̤e͆ḁm͛ e̴͒ɐt̎e̶͚r̶ 🔪 mark safranski Roberto Greco Corn Woman 🌽 Cyril Sam BigHarmReduction ik3💙
      4 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          A good test of what kind of followership you’ve cultivated is what happens when you say something stupid: are they smart enough to spot it and flag it, and kind enough to do so gently? Or do they simply double down and compound your stupidity, turning it into a trainwreck?

          2 replies 13 retweets 38 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          If you do this, one of two things will happen: a) your own stupidity will grow by feedback until they drag you down to their zombie level b) you will overcompensate by never saying anything that risks being stupid, becoming uninteresting

          1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          People mistakenly think this strategy is antifragile because zombie armies grow bigger/stronger with every battle. But it actually represents fragility. By systematically filtering out a class of signals using hostile defenses, you allow thinking inside to grow weaker.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          As the cognitive potential energy inside your zombie firewall shrinks and ages and fails to attract fresh blood to stay alive, you end up in an equilibrium of derp. No new imaginative thought can penetrate so what’s in there feeds on itself. Positive feedback squeal of 1 idea.

          2 replies 2 retweets 12 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          Straussians are particularly vulnerable to this shit because they believe some version of “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten”. That a few esoteric sources that can cover all they need. That the rest of the world only needs exoteric broadcasts, not listening.

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          Add to that their tendency to believe in the rightness of telling noble lies and the moral/ethical legitimacy of using idiots as tools at scale, and hey you’ve got digital Genghis Khans creating a Zombie Warring States era online. World War Z.0.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          And you know the most ironic thing here? Every one of you reading and agreeing with this thread knows exactly the top few people I’m talking about here but am deliberately not tagging or naming. Because they’d turn THIs thread into a war zone too.

          3 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          They tell themselves that we are cowardly, unimportant digital-middle-class chatterati doing bullshit jobs and intellectualizing without fighting in their big important crusades, and that they’re missing nothing. That we are to be either ignored or burned with righteous wrath.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          In a way it’s the age old conflict pattern: kings+restive peasants against middle classes. But somehow I suspect we’ll last longer. The world is too complex for idiots to run, and too big for a few straussian crypto-monarchs (in all senses of ‘crypto’) to run by themselves.

          2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted

          Note: zombies are mostly CREATED through such exploitative, radicalizing thought leadership. You don’t draw from a large pool of waiting natural-born zombies. You zombify potentially mentally healthy people, by betraying trust earned through original work https://twitter.com/neilscudder/status/1018561267345211392?s=20 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          This Tweet is unavailable.
          3 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 15 Jul 2018
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          One more. I try but fail to see the world from the zombie stormtrooper perspective. All I can imagine is they’re lonely people who turn a slight emotional resonance with a distant celebrity, plus a small sign of royal favor like a like, into an entire desperately protected psyche

          3 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
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        13. End of conversation

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